GCAP Presents:

 The Incredibly Important Pre-Proposal Activities  The Science of Proposal Development  The Art of Strategic Communications  The Anxiety of the Evaluation and Award  Post Award Happy Dance or Singing the Blues

 Intelligence Gathering  Understanding your business capabilities  Understanding your strengths and weaknesses  Know your competition  Is there an incumbent contractor?  What are their strengths and weaknesses?  Primary, secondary, tertiary targets

 Reviewing RFP and Contract Documents  Read completely and thoroughly  Make working copies  Make sure you understand what the Customer wants  If you have questions…Ask  Make sure you understand the contract documents  If you have questions…Ask

 Analyzing RFP components  Customer Concerns  Scope of Work  Process and Schedule  Format and Evaluation Factors  Annotate Issues  Begin to consider how you match up

 Understanding cost factors:  Material Costs  Direct Labor Costs  Other Direct Costs – travel, and other items charged direct.  Indirect Costs  Profit considerations

 The importance of attending the pre-proposal conference:  If there is one….go, even if it is non-mandatory

 Creating Your WIN Strategy  The Driving Question: Why Us?  This becomes the main proposal strategy and theme  This is the “Value Added” component to your proposed approach, above and beyond “we will comply”  This drives your approach and should be infused throughout proposal

 Creating Your WIN Strategy  How?  Taking stock of your intelligence gathering, RFP analysis, pre-proposal conferences.  Define the customer (agency) worries, issues, problems, challenges, concerns.  Indentify your strengths relative to these issues.  Indentify weaknesses and if/how to neutralize.  Capture this strategy on paper

Customer Worries/Issues EXAMPLES: 1. Accuracy and timeliness of collecting bioassay samples. 2. Technically Competent personnel 3. Accurate testing 4. Timely completion of Tasks 5. Environmental Considerations  Our Approach

 Use data collected from intelligence gathering, analysis, and win strategy session  Step back: Objectively evaluate  Always better to have more than one person in the process (devil’s advocate)  Balancing aggressiveness with realism

 Proposal development and delivery schedule  Work backward from due date  Give yourself enough time for all development components:  Writing, reviewing, editing, graphics, copies, delivery, etc.

 Proposal Outline and format  Follow format dictated in RFP  Comply with page, font, binding, pagination, and printing requirements  Address the issues raised within the SOW within the framework of the evaluation criteria  Ensure complete compliance

 Brainstorming your Response  With your WIN strategy, SOW, Evaluation Factors  Begin to address each proposal module  Better to be done with all authors, managers, team members in room  Gets everyone on same track  Allows for technical interchange  Ensures strategy infusion

 RFP section:  Thesis of proposal module  1,  2  3  Major topics of module (paragraph level)  A  B  C  Any tables or graphs needed?

 Improved “Writing Skills” do not necessarily lead to better proposals  The quality of your proposal is directly realted to:  The ability to manage the information flow  The ability to provide a strategic response

 “We will comply” is the minimum response  The agency wants to know:  you will comply  how you will comply  and how your approach sets you apart from your competition  Your “approach” has to be a surplus over simply complying…compliance plus strategy

 Your strategy for this proposal is the “added value” of your approach.  Your strategy is “discovered” as a basis of:  Intelligence gathering  RFP analysis  Q&A at pre-proposal conference  The strategy is infused throughout proposal

 Negative proposal factors:  Unproven understanding of agency’s requirements  Incomplete response: critical sections left out  Non-compliant  Insufficient resources (time, personnel, etc) to accomplish tasks  Insufficient information about your company  Poor proposal organization: difficult to correlate proposal content to RFP/SOW

 Negative Proposal factors:  Failure to show relevance of past experience to proposed project  Unsubstantiated or unconvincing rationale for proposed approaches or solutions  Wordiness  Repeating requirements without discussing how you will perform (the old parrot trick).

 The value of the Red Team Review  An important, but often neglected process  Usually jettisoned due to time constraints  Pick members for competence, knowledge, honesty, and not intimately associated with this effort  Can annotate Q’s or flag (e.g. unclear, garbled, already stated, contradiction, “where did you go to school?” [managers only] )

 Evaluation Process  Individual team member scoring  Master scoring sheet  Written clarifications  Competitive Range  Oral presentations  Discussions  Site visits  Best and Final Offer Optional

 Final evaluation and tentative selection  Contract negotiation  Notice of intent to award  Agency approval and contract execution  Work begins!!

 Debriefing (unsuccessful and successful)  Can reveal weak or deficient areas that lowered score  Cannot reveal other companies’ approach or merits, or score  Post Mortem and “Lessons Learned” file  Electronic proposal files (don’t let them become boilerplate)