The process of managing and producing a winning proposal response to the Federal Government is largely two-fold. The first challenge is to manage organized, efficient data collection methods for your subject-matter experts (SMEs), subcontractors, and internal team members; and the second challenge is to use that data to construct a consistent, cohesive, and technically sound response.
We have all experienced different levels of stakeholder engagement regarding to our response efforts. It is common for government solicitations to require responses that are detailed at a high-level, requiring a significant effort on behalf of bidders. Even when emphasis is placed on meticulous attention to detail in response to the award or evaluation criteria as we strategize our proposals, most contractors acknowledge that each bid is a gamble. The mantra here might be: in government contracting, you have to spend money to make money. So, it’s worth using care to drive an efficient data collection process to the maximum extent possible.
Knowing this, how can we get strong buy-in and participation from our team members? How can we make the process of requesting and collecting information from participants as painless as possible? Below are some practical tips that have evolved from many years of facing challenges as a part of this complex process.
Request a single point of contact for each subcontractor. And give your subcontractors and SMEs the same courtesy. The Government frequently requests a single point of contact in technical management approaches because otherwise, roles, responsibilities, and deliverables can become complicated, and the lack of streamlined communication can be costly. The same complications can be applicable in proposal management.
Start early. Establish a schedule for initial data, being cognizant that, once received, it is likely there will be follow-up questions and additional data that will need to be gathered in order to complete the request. It’s advisable to pack in extra days to your hard deadlines, as issues, questions, concerns, changes on account of solicitation amendments, and other urgent issues may arise that will impact the timeline associated with your successful data collection. If you are still collecting information days before the response has to be finalized, you will be missing opportunities for the most advantageous presentation available to you and your team.
Schedule a strategy session that doubles as an “experts’ interview.” Make sure you have strong understanding of what your subcontractors and SMEs can contribute by holding a strategy session to review the Scope of Work and to flesh out the advantages and value your team offers the government. Before diving into requesting specific information from individuals, make sure you know the full story surrounding your teammates’ capabilities – you want to first understand any and all differentiators that you have available to weave into your technical approach.
Be ambassador of the overall win strategy. Explain to your team members how your subcontractors’ and SMEs’ input impacts the overall win strategy. Many times, the technical strength of your response will hinge on subcontractor and SME expertise. If your partners question your ability to win the work because they don’t understand the overall strategy, they may not invest fully in the process.
Provide everyone with the same standardized templates. Show your interpretation of the requirements and how you’d like your SMEs and subcontractors to format their responses. This will potentially save you having to go back with a second round of data calls for the information you could have collected during the initial round. This might apply to past performance references, technical Scope of Work approaches, experience questionnaires, and general company data. For example, if your subs and SMEs are assisting with a “how to” response to certain technical elements of the Scope of Work, send a Word document that sets out the length of the desired response and provides placeholders that indicate what the response should entail – e.g., specific risk-mitigation techniques, lessons learned, cost-saving measures, the inclusion of specific examples, and so on.
These steps may seem obvious, but if we don’t take care to implement them and commit to them at the onset of the proposal effort, we may find ourselves in “crisis mode” in the second half of the process – frantically trying to collect final bits of required information when in fact our attention should be on composition and finalization.