There are a number of reasons why discussions are awesome, but first and foremost the best thing about them is that your company’s proposal made the competitive range. The other offerors were likely eliminated because their proposal demonstrated a lack of understanding, contained major technical or cost deficiencies which discussions would not overcome, or was not one of the more highly rated proposals. So now that you have made the cut, it is time to regroup and focus on the last stretch of the source selection.
Aside from the reasons stated above, one of the benefits of discussions is that they are tailored specifically to each company’s proposal. In doing so, the government is required to address each significant weakness or deficiency; however, you will normally find that even minor weaknesses are addressed in an effort to conduct meaningful discussions. This process helps provide the offeror with a stronger understanding of the solicitation instructions and requirement while also providing the opportunity to explain their proposed approach in order to increase the government’s understanding. In addition, this process often identifies ambiguities in the solicitation that the contracting officer can resolve via a solicitation amendment.
During this process, be sure to ask well-structured questions to enhance your understanding of the findings and expectations of the source selection team. A proposal team that continues to guess what the government is asking for puts its success in jeopardy. If you are unsure about anything at this point then ask; however, do not expect the contracting officer to provide you with the solution. Therefore, a strategic set of questions specific to the proposal and requirement will serve a team well to successfully respond to the findings. This approach can help identify other areas of the proposal which may be improved upon. I would also recommend asking the contracting officer if there are any weaknesses which were not discussed. This will give the source selection team an opportunity to reconsider other issues not addressed to ensure they meet the intent of “meaningful discussions” since failure to do so could result in a protest.
In addition to addressing deficiencies and weaknesses, discussions should also address any new adverse past performance information. This is great because the offeror is given the opportunity to share their side of the story. While the response may not make the past performance evaluation change, it can minimize the impact if the response demonstrates how the company overcame an incident and took corrective actions to mitigate future occurrences. However, sometimes a bad rating is more attributed to personality conflicts than true performance issues. I am sure many contractors have dealt with a bad contracting officer representative or technical point of contact. In this case, if the negative rating can be shown to be an outlier during discussions, it will minimize the impacts on the overall performance confidence rating assigned by the source selection team.
The discussions forum can also be of great benefit for offerors if the contracting officer elects to conduct face-to-face discussions. For these meetings, come fully prepared to present your response and approach to resolving each weakness and deficiency. In doing so, this will show the government that your team “gets it”, but in addition it will provide an opportunity to see the source selection team’s reaction to the proposed solutions… body language can speak volumes. For this reason, you MUST attend discussions in person if given the opportunity. Furthermore, even though the traditional source selection process evaluates proposal based on what is written, there is value in the evaluators seeing the faces behind the proposal.
Finally, discussions mean you get to fix your proposal. Following each round of discussions, the offerors will submit a formal response to the findings, to include proposal change pages. This is awesome, because it is another opportunity to receive feedback on the proposed approach and hopefully discussions can be closed without any open issues. Your goal should be to have all issues resolved by the time the contracting officer closes discussions. I can only imagine how a contractor cringed when, as a contracting officer, I closed discussions and they were notified that weaknesses remained. Remember, the FAR only requires that the government conduct meaningful discussions, it does not require the contracting officer to keep discussions open indefinitely. Therefore, put in your best approach/offeror from the beginning of discussions and do not wait for the issuance of the request for Final Proposal Revisions.
There are thousands of companies vying for government work today and if your company has made it to discussions, then congratulations. Make sure you approach this next phase with as much time and energy as the initial proposal and you will see that discussion can be awesome. So, take a deep breath, regroup, and good luck!