Writing a compelling and persuasive proposal can significantly improve your chances of winning. In this series we will provide some tips professional proposal writers use to make sure their proposal has the best chance of winning the contract.
Are you sure that your proposals are compliant? When there are lots of proposals submitted, the easiest way to reduce the number of proposals that must be evaluated is to disqualify as many as possible based on non-compliance with proposal instructions. Functional compliance is not enough. The Contracting Officer is often the person who makes this first review, whittling down the number of proposals the evaluators must read to only those that are absolutely compliant with every requirement for proposal submission. This means that if you are not compliant with every requirement for proposal submission, your proposal may not even get evaluated.
We had a client come to us to help with this very thing. They are a large prime contractor, and had submitted a proposal for a competitive acquisition a few months before. They had just been notified that their proposal had been found noncompliant and would not be evaluated. It didn’t matter what their proposed approach was, what their price was, or how great their past performance was.
The evaluators would never even see the proposal they had submitted. Why? They had missed (or ignored) the requirement in the RFP instructions that the proposal be double spaced, not single spaced. Seriously.
Since they had spent hundreds of man-hours tracking and preparing the proposal, they had thrown away about $100,000 because they didn’t double space their proposal in compliance with the proposal submission requirements.
I have seen a proposal excluded from competition because they forgot to submit a form that was required. Another was rejected for noncompliance because the proposal was not organized in accordance with instructions and the evaluator did not find a piece of the proposal. So, how do you keep this from happening to your proposal?
• Establish a Compliance Matrix, for complex proposals (or a proposal check list for simpler proposals) that captures all of the requirements in the RFP, including the Performance Work Statement (PWS), any Special Provisions, Proposal Instructions, Evaluation Criteria, Attachments and Exhibits to the RFP.
• Have at least one other person check the compliance matrix against the RFP to ensure it is complete and accurate.
• Make sure there is one person designated with the responsibility to maintain the compliance matrix up to date as Amendments are issued by the government.
• Check the proposal against the Compliance Matrix/Proposal Checklist, once during the draft review and again during the final proposal review. Preferably have someone who has not been involved in the proposal preparation do the compliance checks. Fresh eyes see things you can’t see anymore!
Compliance is a pass/fail evaluation factor that is applied to ALL proposals. If it isn’t compliant, it isn’t awarded. Make sure yours doesn’t hit this roadblock!