Where you should focus your proposal resources to optimize your chances of winning actually differs depending on a number of variables. For example, if the procurement is a sealed bid, then focusing your efforts on determining the absolute best price you can offer the government is of course where you focus your efforts. If, however, the procurement is a $50 million contract to provide engineering and program management support services for the government, establishing name recognition and developing a relationship with the agency long before the procurement is advertised becomes critical to increasing your probability of win. For most procurements, the answer is somewhere in between. And there are some areas that you need to focus on regardless of size and type of procurement.
• Target your market. Here at Skyway, we talk a lot about this particular area because so very many companies entering the government contracting arena overlook this crucial step. Take the time to find the agencies that truly are interested in what you have to offer. Regardless of what you sell, I can pretty much guarantee you that somebody in the government buys it. Think I’m kidding? What about goats? Did you know that both the Veterans Administration (VA) and the Department of Interior have contracted with farmers to deliver goats to a specific location and graze them there to help remove ground cover and reduce the chance of fires? Or that the Department of the Army contracted for certain types of goats to conduct research? If you didn’t research and target your market, you’d never know which agencies to approach to sell your goats to! Targeting your market focuses your resources on the agencies who truly are your potential customers.
• Qualify your bids. Just because one of your potential customers advertises an opportunity for a contract for services that you can provide doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s one you should spend your resources on trying to pursue. There are a number of questions that you need to ask yourself before committing to spend your proposal resources on chasing it. For example, can you do everything required in the performance work statement, or will you need to partner with another company who can fill the gaps? Do you have a relationship already established with such a partner or will you have try to find someone? Have you performed the same or similar services for the government (and better yet the specific agency)? Does the agency know who you are? Do you have the resources required to perform the contract if you do win it? I can tell you that one thing that the large prime contractors do is carefully qualify each potential opportunity before they spend a penny on putting pen to paper writing the proposal. And even after the proposal is underway, if some piece of information comes to light (a new competitor emerges who has an inside track, for example), even after the proposal is underway, if the if the chance of winning drops by even a small percentage below their predetermined threshold they pull the plug on the proposal, and move on to the next opportunity. (For help in qualifying your opportunities, check out our “RFP Score,” for a useful tool in determining whether or not a procurement is worth your time and resources.)
• Develop a Capabilities Statement. Have you seen something called a “Sources Sought” in FedBizOps? Sometimes they’re called “Requests for Information (RFIs).” This is how the government searches for businesses who can provide the products or services they need. It is predominantly used for finding small businesses in particular. Why? The Contracting Officer is required to find out if there are sufficient qualified, interested potential offerors (at least three) who can and will submit an offer. Even potential “sole source” procurements must be advertised to allow industry the opportunity to show what it can do. Maybe there really is only one source who can perform the work. But as a Contracting Officer, I had more than one “sole source” procurement determination overturned because of the responses we received to our synopsis. If enough small businesses respond, and give the government sufficient information to know that they are serious offerors, then the government may set the procurement aside for only small businesses to compete on, so you’ve helped to exclude a number of your big business potential competitors before the RFP is even out! In addition, most of what you write and put into the Capabilities Statement will be useable in whatever proposals you need to submit later on, so you’re getting a jump on your proposal writing. Getting double use of your materials means you are maximizing the use of your resources!
• Read and follow the solicitation instructions. No amount of preparation, relationship building, or well researched pricing will help you win if you don’t read the solicitation thoroughly and follow the proposal instructions provided by the government. You’d be surprised at how many businesses think that you really don’t have to read “all of those pages of esoteric clauses and legalese” in order to win a competitive contract. In fact, you do and if you do not, you will not be successful in winning competitive government procurements of any size! Proposal and contract performance requirements are often scattered throughout the Request for Proposal. Woe to the offeror who misses one of the stated proposal requirements! Just recently, one of my clients (a large DoD prime contractor who has been working with the government for more than 50 years) told me that the reason they were seeking our help was because they had just lost a contract because they were thrown out of the competition for not double spacing their technical proposal submission, as required by the RFP! They didn’t follow the RFP instructions, so the government didn’t even evaluate it!
Focusing your proposal resources on carefully targeting your market and being choosey about which opportunity you pursue means you are focusing your limited resources on opportunities you have the best chance of winning. Responding to RFIs and Sources Sought, writing your Capabilities Statement in advance of needing to write a proposal, and a thorough reading and understanding of the solicitation will maximize your chances of winning government contracts, while not costing you a fortune in business development costs!