Proposal Writing | Richard White, Federal Sales Consultant & Proposal Specialist

Archive for Proposal Writing

Form Your Joint Venture Now for Alliant 2 GWAC

March 31, 2016 Federal Contracting, Proposal Writing Comments Off

Form Your Joint Venture Now for Alliant 2 GWAC; the Largest Federal IT Contract of the Next 10 Years

The Final RFP for GSA’s Alliant 2 GWAC will be released in the next several months.

The Alliant 2 contract is projected to be a huge federal IT services contracts; the Large Business RFP has a $50 billion ceiling while Small Business has a $15 billion ceiling, both over 10 years.

In the draft RFP GSA is telling companies that pricing is an important consideration only at the task order level. Experience will be the primary factor is winning.

The 60 large companies with the highest scores will be selected for Alliant 2 Large Business. The top 80 small business scorers will be selected for Alliant 2 Small Business. Companies can expect billions of dollars of task orders from all agencies. Winning an Alliant 2 award is crucial to a small business success in the IT market.

The $1 million-dollar project experience size requirements for small businesses will force many small businesses to form Joint Ventures. Joint Ventures are complicated legally so start now if you can’t meet the project experience size requirements.

Get a head start on your proposal for a complicated RFP and save days of proposal writing time by using Fedmarket’s Alliant 2 Model Proposals and Full Proposal Writing Services. Call 888 661 4094, Ext. 2 for more information.

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The Dream Proposal Product Does Not Exist

September 25, 2015 Federal Contracting, Proposal Writing Comments Off

Federal proposal writing cannot be automated for one simple reason: the proposal preparation instructions in Requests for Proposal (RFPs) are not standardized. The Federal Acquisition Regulations (FAR) defines the basic content of RFPs, but broad section definitions are not enough. To compound the problem, a significant percentage of RFPs do not even follow the section standards specified in FAR. And even worse, proposal instructions can be scattered throughout an RFP, and if you miss a one-sentence requirement, your proposal can be rejected.

All proposals should start with a compliance matrix to make proposal evaluation easier and more efficient. The content and structure of the compliance matrix should dictate the proposal organization structure. Accordingly, a standard RFP template with a standard compliance matrix would clean up the scattered RFP mess and make proposal writing easier and much cheaper for bidders. It would also make proposal evaluation easier and less costly for the government.

Don’t lie awake waiting for a standard RFP template. The irrationality of the federal bureaucracy is legendary. Even the Department of Defense doesn’t follow standards for posting a bidding opportunity at FBO.gov.

Commercial proposal products currently available are all over the map including:

Database products assisting in organizing and accessing proposal content
Proposal scheduling and management products
Products featuring proposal writer collaboration
Products telling you how to write win themes and selling points
Products that tell you how to organize a proposal
Products that claim to automate the proposal writing process (dream products).

All of these products provide some value but are not the answer to the “make it easy” dream. Proposal writing is not easy and never will be. A winning proposal has to be written by experienced proposal writers.
Fedmarket’s “Recipe for Writing a Compliant Federal Proposal” is different than any other available products. The Recipe teaches inexperienced writers how to write a compliant federal proposal using a “clean” RFP. Then the Recipe provides writers with detailed procedures for filtering messy RFPs (the norm) and using the resulting compliance matrix to produce a draft proposal ready for technical input.

Procedurally, the Recipe:

Untangles an RFP into a compliance matrix and then uses the matrix to set up the proposal volumes to meet the government requirements.
The Recipe then supplies pre-written materials and guides writers on how to provide compliant technical materials to complete the proposal.
The Recipe does not provide required technical content in response to a Statement of Work but sets the organization for the technical response (if there is a technical response requirement in the RFP) and provides instructions on where and how to insert technical content in the draft proposal.

In summary, the Recipe is the closest an application can come to automating federal proposal writing. Applying the Recipe to writing a federal proposal is difficult for inexperienced writers, but the Recipe provides a training tool that reduces the learning curve. And, most importantly, the Recipe makes it possible for an inexperienced writer to write a compliant proposal if time is spent using the training tool.
Unfortunately, the dream product that writes technical content for you doesn’t exist. The Recipe gets as close to a complete draft proposal as possible in the unpredictable and messy world of federal contracting.

Read about Fedmarket’s Recipe for Writing a Compliant Federal Proposal at http://www.fedmarket.com/l/proposals/proposal_tools/recipe_for_writing_a_compliant_federal_proposal_/

Questions about proposal writing? Call Richard White at (301) 960 – 5813.

Proposal Writing for Novices

August 27, 2015 Proposal Writing Comments Off

Your boss has just assigned you the job of writing federal proposals. The company is new to the federal market, has lost several proposals, and no one wants the job. You like to write but are a bit apprehensive about entering this strange new world. Your boss sends you a federal Request for Proposal (RFP) and says: “This one is made for us. Let’s go with it.” You try to read the RFP, and your mild apprehension increases to a level of fear. You read the RFP again, and the fear elevates to panic. Where do I start? Maybe Google can help.

You luckily found this White Paper in the sea of proposal writing advice, books, and assist products.

An inexperienced proposal writer’s greatest fears should be:

Missing a one-sentence requirement buried in the RFP and being rejected for missing the requirement.
Being blamed for a loss resulting from your company’s lack of experience, personnel, or technical capability; all of which have nothing to do with your work in developing the proposal.

Federal proposal writing is inherently messy and fraught with difficulties. Proposal preparation instructions in Requests for Proposal (RFPs) are not standardized. The Federal Acquisition Regulations (FAR) define the basic content of RFPs, but broad section definitions are not enough. To compound the problem, a significant percentage of RFPs do not even follow the section standards specified in FAR. And even worse, proposal instructions can be scattered throughout an RFP, and if you miss a one-sentence requirement, your proposal can be rejected.

All proposals should start with a compliance matrix to make proposal evaluation easier for the writer and, more importantly, for the federal evaluator. The content and structure of the compliance matrix should dictate the proposal organization structure. The matrix forces you to write exactly what evaluators want to score and gives them a roadmap to where they can find what they asked for in the RFP. Evaluators can’t score extra information beyond what is requested in the RFP so the “world class puffery” and extra content designed to make your company look big and powerful can actually reduce your evaluation score.

Fedmarket’s Recipe for Writing a Compliant Federal Proposal is different than any other available proposal writing products. The Recipe teaches inexperienced writers how to write a compliant federal proposal using a “clean” RFP. Inexperienced proposal writers should repeat the clean RFP procedure as many times as necessary to understand the basics of filtering an RFP to produce a compliance matrix.

Part 2 of the Recipe provides writers with detailed procedures for filtering messy RFPs (the norm) and using the resulting compliance matrix to produce a draft proposal ready for technical input.

Procedurally, the Recipe:

Untangles an RFP into a compliance matrix and then uses the matrix to set up the proposal volumes to meet the government requirements.
Supplies pre-written materials and guides writers on how to provide compliant technical materials to complete the proposal.
Sets the organization for the technical response (if there is a technical response requirement in the RFP) and provides instructions on where and how to insert the technical content in the draft proposal.

In summary, the dream product that writes technical content for you doesn’t exist. The Recipe gets as close to a complete draft proposal as possible in the unpredictable and messy world of federal contracting. Applying the Recipe to writing a federal proposal may, at first, seem difficult for inexperienced writers, but the Recipe is a training tool which will reduce your RFP learning curve. And, most importantly, the Recipe makes it possible for an inexperienced writer to write a compliant proposal.

GSA Schedules: The Good, Bad, and Ugly

July 31, 2014 Federal Contracting, GSA Schedules, Proposal Writing No comments

Newcomers to the federal market usually have no idea of the advantages and disadvantages of holding a GSA Schedule contract. For newcomers schedules are essential to success in federal contracting.

The Good

Schedules are always open for a company to submit a proposal, unlike other multiple award contracts.
Schedules are available for almost all commercial products and services.
Schedules reduce competition to almost nothing if used correctly with a federal sales program.
Schedules can be used by any federal agency to place orders.

The Bad

You have to invest dollars in submitting a proposal.
You have to invest dollars in a federal sales program and use schedules to close a deal.
You have to comply with a number of red tape requirements to keep your schedule in compliance with the contract.

The Ugly

Preparing a proposal for a schedule is nearly impossible without schedule experience.
GSA requires a rats nest of red tape and pricing information (100 pages or more) to prove to federal auditors and the public that you are worthy of a schedule award.
GSA is becoming pickier by the day about who they award to because they already have many thousands of companies holding schedule.

The most affordable and best way to be assured a GSA schedule award to use Fedmarket’s GSA at Your Office service.

Richard White, author of The Shortest Path to Federal Dollars:GSA Schedules, has 18 years of GSA experience. Mr. White will visit your office for a full day after he assists you by telephone and email in developing the documents necessary for the proposal.

Call (888) 661 – 4094, Ext. 2 for more information.

Proposal Writing Tips

June 5, 2014 Proposal Writing No comments

Federal proposal writing is misunderstood, frustrating, expensive, and demoralizing. You must have an experienced federal proposal writer (commercial experience doesn’t count), hire someone with experience, or use an outside service.

Most federal insiders consider proposal writing the Achilles heel of the business but know how to play the game and keep their proposal costs within reason.

Secret 1 for newcomers: Don’t write proposals for customers to whom you haven’t sold, or at a minimum, who at least know who you are. Bidding opportunities galore may appear wide-open to all, but invariably they have already been pre-sold by one or more companies well before the opportunity becomes publicly announced.

Secret 2: Some federal contracting officials may imply to newcomers that pre-selling is “naughty” when in fact it is encouraged by federal regulation. How could they buy things without knowing what they are buying? Do you buy software without knowing what you are buying and its value way before you spend the money?

Secret 3: Requests for Proposal (RFPs) are made purposely complex to justify contract awards to aggrieved losers, federal auditors, or the public and press, if they ask.

Essential Elements Federal Proposal Writing

October 30, 2013 Proposal Writing No comments

The five C’s required to write a winning proposal are: customer knowledge, creativity, compliance, clarity and conciseness. All five C’s are needed to maximize proposal evaluation scores.

Newcomers to the federal market underestimate the importance of the five C’s and typically think that slapping together a quick proposal is enough. Proposal evaluators love quick and dirty proposals because they can reject them within minutes and cut down on the work of proposal evaluation; they can get on with evaluating the others in the huge pile of responses. Evaluators hope that many proposals in the pile will lack the five C’s.

Customer Knowledge: The federal buyer must know you and what you can do to solve their problem. You probably should not waste valuable resources writing a proposal without customer knowledge beyond the Request for Proposal (RFP). Advanced sales and customer contact provides (1) the federal buyer with the comfort of reduced risk in selecting you for an award, and (2) you learn what the buyer really wants in order to create a tailored and creative solution to the buyer’s problem (the most critical part of the proposal).
This is what the insiders do (companies with direct federal contracts). They live with the customer and can’t help but understand their needs.

Compliance: Complete compliance with every requirement of the RFP is a necessity because any compliance flaw in your proposal can cause an immediate proposal rejection. Any missed compliance requirement, however small, can relegate you to the reject pile.

Creativity: Once you know the customer, you must creatively present your solution to their problem. A creative technical approach seals the deal. A winning technical approach emanates from (1) customer knowledge and (2) a highly structured proposal writing system. A structured system can take various forms, but the essential element is that the system should produce a detailed proposal outline containing legacy content and instructions before any writing begins.

Most technical writers (the people on the firing line) need structure and guidance to write a clear and concise technical content. Without a system, chaos usually results, particularly if there are several technical writers involved.

Clarity and Conciseness: Your English teachers probably taught you that clear and concise writing begins with a tight outline (organization structure). Government proposal evaluators do not like evaluating lengthy tomes and demand clarity and conciseness. Your proposal evaluation scores will suffer without it. A structured proposal writing system enhances clarity and conciseness.

Avoid letting your CEO throw in self-serving sales pitches without backup and clear evidence relevant to the requirements. An example of this: “ABC Co is a World Class or Best of Breed Company.” Proposal evaluators laugh at such statements; they are the polar opposite of clarity and conciseness.

NASA SWEP V Due Day Extended to November 1

October 18, 2013 Federal Contracting, Proposal Writing No comments

Interested parties in the Solutions for Enterprise-Wide Procurement – SEWP V Procurement are hereby notified that NASA/GSFC received a significant number of questions to the subject solicitation. Amendment #5 to the solicitation has been released to extend the proposal submission date to November 1, 2013.

All Questions and Answers will be posted for Industry’s review and updates to the final Request for Proposal shall be incorporated in the next release. The next amendment is anticipated to be released on or about October 22, 2013.

This announcement was published on October 17th, 2 minutes after the announcement that the date has been extended to November 1, 2013. Note the statement about the number of questions received and the timing of the posting would indicate that the questions were received within 2 minutes of the extension announcement. To us this would indicate that another extension could be forthcoming on October 22.

Small businesses have by far the best chances of an award by responding to Category B/Group B & Category B/Group C. You have the least technical requirements in these two groups (complimentary IT products) and it is set aside for small businesses. You would be competing with only your peers.

Fedmarket is offering SWEP proposal writing services.

Call sales at 888 661 4094, Ext. 2.

OASIS: Small Businesses Can Still Make an Offer

October 16, 2013 Federal Contracting, Proposal Writing No comments

OASIS FBO Notice of October 7: The OASIS Program Office fully intends to establish the proposal due dates 10-14 calendar days from the date that the Government shutdown is resolved. While we foresee no changes to this plan, if there are any changes, the OASIS Program Office will update Offerors here on FedBizOpps.

Most people are predicting that the shutdown will end mid next week which would make the OASIS due date around November 1.

Companies that are primarily information technology (IT) service companies may qualify for OASIS if they have:

Two (2) professional service that carry NAICS Codes that are not IT codes.
Minimum of three (3) and up to five (5) primary projects (contracts), each as a prime contractor, and the combined annual value of all primary projects must be equal to or greater than $750,000. And no individual project can be less than $150,000 per year.

By qualifying for OASIS, IT companies have the opportunity to expand their capabilities into other professional service disciplines like management consulting, engineering, and finance. Everyone needs broader capabilities in the current federal market

Our OASIS Model Proposal Template saves companies 4 – 6 billable days of proposal writing time and gives you a head start if the proposal writing deadline is tight.

Read more about Fedmarket’s OASIS Model Proposal and call us to view the template.

Fedmarket also offers full-service proposal writing services for OASIS, call 888 661 4094, Ext. 2 for more information.

OASIS Due Date Extended Indefinitely

October 6, 2013 Proposal Writing No comments

On 10/3 GSA issued an Amendment to both the Small and Large Business OASIS Solicitations at FBO.gov. Fedmarket published the OASIS solicitation links on our home page. As indicated in the Amendment the new offer due date is unknown and will be published as an amendment at FBO.gov.

In consideration of the Government shutdown and the associated potential impact on the OASIS proposal preparation process, the proposal due date of this solicitation is hereby suspended indefinitely. A definitive proposal due date will be established once the Government shutdown situation is resolved. Offerors are instructed to NOT submit proposals until further instruction. No other changes.

The updated OASIS Quick Reference Guide at Fedmarket.com shows the core qualifications required by GSA for an award. The primary stumbling blocks that most companies are encountering are:

Contract documents for 3 to 5 primary projects meeting the qualifications requirements in the Quick Reference Guide must be submitted to prove the required attributes of the projects. A contact documents means a document from the government, not a document created by you. Subcontracts with federal prime contracts do not qualify (a clarification in Amendment 4).

You must prove through government documents that you have two Pool Qualification Projects performed under at least one of the listed NAICS Codes to qualify for a pool. Each pool you qualify for is awarded as a separate OASIS contract. If you are having trouble finding NAICS Codes in your contract documents, ask the government for a document that shows that you performed the project under specific NAIS Codes(s).

Evaluation points are heavily weighted toward the evaluation of 3 or more primary projects with high performance evaluation scores. 4 projects are better than 3 and 5 projects are better than 4.

Projects not scored in the federal past performance data base must provide a performance rating questionnaire obtained from the government. You must use the government’s standard point scoring table to score yourself based on the subjective rating in the past performance questionnaire. (The table is not part of the questionnaire). The conversion of subjective ratings to point scores in required in order to complete the self-scoring document required in your offer.

Fedmarket’s OASIS Model Proposal can save days of proposal writing time. Not to mention the proposal writer migraines’ caused by an overly complex solicitation.

Read more about Fedmarket’s OASIS Model Proposal and call us to review the template

Fedmarket also offers full-service proposal writing services for OASIS, call 888 661 4094, Ext. 2 for more information.

Why Proposals Lose

June 17, 2013 Proposal Writing No comments

Fedmarket uses a structured RFP-driven proposal process that ensures proposal compliance. We win a majority of the proposals we write and almost all of the multiple award (IDIQ) bids. Yet some of the single award proposals we write proposals lose. Why, because the customer:

Was stretching its capabilities and experience and corporate egos hate to admit it.
Did not write the critical technical content required to win (a proposal service company usually cannot write complex technical solution content. This has to come from the customers technical staff or proposal library.
Won technically but lost on price.
Did not understand what the customer asked for in the RFP, e.g., they wanted experience in building barracks and the fact that you built huge shopping centers did not score points.

And sometimes the customer just wanted to work with the company they know and love.