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so i'm rebecca haydock i'm the director of the central virginia small business development center and we are so excited to have lisa wood with us today lisa has been doing a number of programs i'm assuming that some of you have attended some of our other programs linda tuberty is with me as well today she is our events coordinator and if you have any questions or need anything in terms of follow-up please reach out to linda i know you all have her email because it came through with registration but very briefly and i'm going to get let lisa get right to it um the small business development center in central virginia is here to help you with a number of the things that lisa is going to go over today and we also work with companies to find access to capital work on state contracting other business contracting as well as general business development lisa is the director of the procurement technical assistance program she covers 80 counties she is a wealth of information and knowledge she's been doing this for so many years and i can personally say i've worked with her with a number of companies and her assistance is invaluable in helping them identify who to market to in the federal government and really get information together so you are successful in government contracting so i'm going to stop talking now and let lisa take it over thank you lisa thank you becky so i'm really happy to be here today um to teach some techniques for what writing winning proposal so this is by no means comprehensive this class normally covers hours upon hours of instruction and we do offer workshops through the ptac that are free to you that really go into a deep dive into writing proposals but what i'm offering you today is my view on how to write a winning proposal because i used to be the person who read these i was a contracting specialist for bechtel our only client was the nuclear navy so my job was to send out a solicitation receive the proposals review them and award to the winning proposal so through the years of doing that in the years i've worked in ptac i have developed some specialized knowledge on what works and what doesn't work so we're going to get into that today and hopefully you will take something away that will help you write that winning proposal so we're going to go over today the uniform contract format for a federal request for proposal it's very different than anything else that the state would do or a municipal government and that's only one section of the presentation once we're past that we're going to go into the tips on writing the proposal which will cover how you respond to state and even commercial entity proposals so it's just basic common sense guidelines on writing a perfect proposal but in the beginning we're going to cover federal because that is a completely different animal and then we're going to go into how to get organized before you write to proposal and things to consider beforehand like whether you're actually going to do it or not that bid or no bid then we'll go over some tips um i'll talk to you about the typical evaluation how somebody picks up your proposal and looks at it and analyzes and evaluates what you wrote we're going to get into capture management and win theme development those are words that you're going to hear a lot when you're studying proposal writing we're going to talk about how proposals succeed and how they are won and we're going to look at what exactly is included in a winning proposal and then we're also going to talk about how proposals lose which is invaluable because if you just look at that it's like okay i've done that before that's probably why i didn't win so we're going to really dig into why proposals lose and that is going to be probably the major takeaway so first of all the anatomy of a federal rfp so that's covered in far and that's federal acquisition regulations part 15 if you want to know more and it's laid out in parts so each part has different sections so part one is a through h part two are the contract clauses which is section i part three are attachments and exhibits section j sometimes nothing will even go in there and part four your reps instructions selection criteria which is k through m so i'll tell you up front the most critical parts of your proposal is section c l and m so when you're reading that rfp you have to spend extra time on c l and m and we'll get into those individually and i'll tell you why they're so important so part one a a through h it just basically describes everything that's going on um it's the technical spectrum deliverables period of performance schedule personnel requirements this is all really important things and it sort of like builds the foundation for the whole effort you need to read this section and then have somebody else read it and i always recommend read it and highlight certain areas because when you go back you might not find that area that really jumped out at you and then have a second set of eyes in your firm read it as well and highlight in a different color areas that they feel is important to them and what might be a critical point to discuss so in part a it's the one page solicitation form and that's where they tell you where and when to submit the bid which is pretty important because if you if you miss that though it gets tossed so you want to know that the contact information that's the contracting officer who is sending you that information and it may include some special instructions in there so you just want to make sure you're reading that thoroughly and noting if anything is required like a fill-in or an add-in on that spot so b will be your supplies or services price and cost so this is pretty important because these are your line item deliverables and they're actually going to show you okay we want this delivered on this date we'll say um october 10th we want the first deliverable november 10th we want the second deliverable december 10th we want the third deliverable and they're going to be very specific about when they want these deliverables it's also going to discuss pricing structure so make sure you understand are they asking for her item pricing are they asking for per pallet pricing so you need to really understand what the pricing structure is because you do not want to get that wrong because that's how you get paid and you don't want to make any mistakes on that so if it's per hour or it's per event you need to understand how they want to see your pricing shown here no they'll give you an actual little schedule that you'll fill out so see okay that's one of the really important areas that i discussed a little bit ago it's your statement of work so this is the heart this is the guts of the actual um proposal so it's really going to get specific about what they need what is it is it supplies is it service or a combination of both and it's going to give a detailed explanation of what these requirements are they may make references to supplements in schedule j not always but if they're if it's really complex they'll probably throw something in j for you to make sure you read don't miss anything and do not deviate i cannot stress this enough if they say they want five widgets that are blue you'll give them five widgets that are blue you don't come back and say yeah i can give you the five widgets but they're going to be green you you can't do that so i know i'm being simplistic but believe me i've seen people try to rewrite the specifications you do not want to rewrite it give them exactly what they need now if you find that it's not sustainable or they've made a mistake then you would make a suggestion to the buyer and that can come out in question and answer period so every big solicitation or rfp is going to have a question and answer period where the buyer will come out and say okay you have x amount of days to submit any questions you have on this rfp they will close it at a specific date after that they will post answers to those questions you want to make sure you participate in this because you will glean a wealth of wisdom from the question and answer period not only can you ask your own questions you're going to read the questions others ask and you're going to say wow i didn't even think of asking that and reading the responses is actually going to help you write your proposal because it's going to give you insider information on how that contracting officer procurement specialist is thinking and section c is also great for being the outline for your proposal so many people come to me and say lisa how do i write a proposal i don't even know what format to use well they give you the format and it's in sketch and section c it's just like writing those outlines we used to do when we were writing themed papers in school you're going to have the headings that they're going to give you in section c and you're just answering every item that they're calling out so use your section c as your outline for the proposal and to give you a tip they read it compared to what they gave you so if you give them a proposal that matches the rfp headings they will be able to read it more easily because they're going down item by item following what they wrote and if you've put it in that format and you follow their headings the way they wrote them now they've got an easy to read proposal if they have to go through the whole proposal looking for information and looking for answers they're not it's going to get tossed so packaging and markings this is a pretty big deal and it's in sections effort g how items are packaged or labeled is critical because they will sit if on a loading dock if it's a commodity and they won't touch them if they're not packaged correctly or they'll get refused so i had a client once that sent some pretty pretty big electrical components to fort belvoir dla here in virginia but they're sending them from ear epa and he knew that they had been received they were there but no one was acknowledging it and he wasn't getting paid so eventually he got a response from dla and they said well you didn't put the rfid tags on it so it was just sitting on a loading dock they would have sat there forever had he not pursued and found somebody that actually said yeah you're missing rfid tags he got in his car and drove to fort belvoir and added the rfid tags they then accepted the shipment and he got paid so it's that critical you want to make sure you're not missing any of that because you don't want to not get paid for something you built manufactured delivered and it was not accepted and you're not getting paid you want to make sure that everything is in order and you're following the instructions perfectly and sometimes they'll use mil standard 129 other mil specs astm there are a lot of different commercial packaging so also if you're uncomfortable with packaging find a firm who does that many of my clients are uncomfortable with following the guidelines of packaging because it's written in government hieroglyphics and they will go to a firm that specializes in it that's what they do that's all they do is package for government they know how to do the rfids the iuids and the specific packaging because it could be treated pallets it could be no plastic it could be any number of things depending on where it's going especially in the war effort human conditions sandy conditions so sometimes it's worth the effort to pay somebody to do that for you to make sure you get it right you also have to be mindful for the cost to deliver the package so you might overlook the fact that you're gonna have to pay a carrier to take that package across the country and you didn't add that to your your bid and you won because you know you were a lo if it's a low price technically acceptable you're winning now all of a sudden you're eating the cost of delivery so you have to make sure you understand what it's going to cost to deliver that item or package it especially if you're using a third-party packager inspection and acceptance so sometimes inspections occur on site sometimes they occur upon delivery at the end source so you want to make sure where that's going to take place or if it's going to take place sometimes they have an inspection called first article inspection which means the first one off the line the dcma rep is going to be there to look at it and inspect it and if it is a dod effort make sure you know who your dcma inspection person is there's one assigned to various regions throughout the country always know who your dcma person is i've had firms waiting for a dcma inspector to show up at their site when really that dcma inspector was at the end waiting for the delivery to come so you really want to make sure you understand everything that's expected for inspection and acceptance so deliveries and performance when and how the items are to be delivered so dla has something called first destination meaning all you need to do is tell them it's ready to go they come and get it and they take it and they deliver it and it's included in your your pricing so you do not have to put in there the cost of delivery because dla is going to handle that because it's first destination so you want to make sure you don't miss that once again i've had clients send items to dla missing the fact it was first inspection and dla is not accepting it because they're waiting to hear from the supplier that they can come and pick the items up so needless to say it now it's late it's past the time of delivery even though they're sitting there on a loading dock so mistakes happen it's a big huge agency they're all about mission support for the military so items get if if items are not being sent or delivered in the way they were specified they're not looking for them so you want to make sure you understand who's delivering is it you or is the agency going to come and pick it up and also make sure you have adequate time to deliver so if you're in pittsburgh and you're sending it to denver and it's february you know nine times out of ten it's going to get stuck in a snowstorm somewhere you want to make sure you've allowed enough time for a delivery to be delayed it happens so leaving adequate time to deliver is important because the one thing government really has a strong view on is on time deliveries they hate it when you're late they want it either before or on the date that was specified people who are late with deliveries get a bad report card in cpars late deliveries is a killer for your business so administration of the contract section g sometimes you could be really good at what you do but you miss out on the administrative details that is critical in government you have to understand how you're going to get paid who's going to be doing the accounting how you're going to invoice who's reading that invoice if there's any forms to be filled out are you supposed to go into wide area workflow or is it a credit card transaction who should you be talking to that's all covered in section g so once again this is how you get paid and this is how you're supposed to administer the contract it's just as important as the good or service that you are delivering they need to know that you are able to administer a contract effectively and efficiently so h is just a catch-all anything else that's a special contract requirement is going to show up in h so part two the clauses you know all those clauses that you see in sam well those clauses also show up in a contract you want to make sure you read and understand every single one of them if you do not understand one of those clauses or several then find somebody who can explain it to you never ever sign that contract if you do not understand all the clauses because when you sign you are bound by those clauses it is a legal executed document so if you say yeah i'm level one with nist 800 171 for cyber security and you're not you just sound signed a document saying you are and if somebody pushes back and says show me your ssp and your poem now all of a sudden you don't have it but you signed for it or if you have a security breach cyber wise they're going to go back and see what you signed in your contract for the clauses so you want to make sure that you understand those i've had clients say to me i never read those i just sign it no please don't do that get an attorney or come to p-tech and we'll go through them together so jay once again list of attachments if there are any okay reps inserts um it's your eligibility to bid so if you are a certified wosb and this is a wosb set aside this is where you show your certificate of being approved as a wosb from the sba and so that is documenting your socioeconomic status as a set-aside they may ask for income tax returns hiring and employment practices you may have to provide that equal opportunity and so forth so make sure your qualified bid l that's another section that is critical that we talked about before c we've already discussed and now we're in l proposal preparation instructions this is where they actually tell you how to prepare the proposal the formatting packaging submission so and they can really get in the weeds and we'll talk about this later on but they're going to be very specific about how they want that formatted pages staples font where it's to be delivered how it's to be packaged time frames dates their policy on amendments whether you have to send them the amendment that it's signed sewing that you read it sometimes something will be amended six times before you actually send out your proposal where it's to be delivered how it's to be delivered any deviation from any of these will get your contract tossed you have to make sure you are following the instructions for the preparation of that proposal you don't want to spend all the time on this and get it tossed because you used a 10 point font instead of 12. m our third really important section of the rfp that's the evaluation factors this is how they evaluate your proposal so you're scored your proposal was actually scored and they assign points to each section they will tell you specifically what points they are evaluating towards each part of your proposal meaning let's say your technical package is 50 50 points your past performance will be 20 points and your package will be your actually pricing package will be another 30. so that's a hundred percent they will tell you what they are so you want to make sure that you are paying careful attention to those majority ones like the scope of work how your technical package if it's 50 you know you're really gonna have to spend extra time on that because that's half your value so any anyone that's coming out on top is going to win the proposal so if you did really great on your pricing and your technical package but messed up on your past performance you're going to lose to somebody who did well on the past performance even though your pricing and technical package were spot on if you missed out on that little tiny past performance section thinking it's not really that important you're going to lose to somebody who did think it was important so the go no go decision this is pretty important and i've seen people who've just gone headfirst in the deep end of the pool and went ahead with a proposal even though they weren't prepared you really have to ask yourself some soul-searching questions do you have the resources to do the work the time the capacity the finances the technical skill and experience because if you don't have the bodies to perform this even if you have to subcontract out then you're not going to be able to perform and if it calls for a thousand widgets a month and you can only perform eight and you think you can bring your production up to standard to do that you're not going to be able to it's going to be a strain on your resources and finances if it's a huge complex procurement and you're not going to get paid for six months how are you going to keep the lights on how are you going to pay your suppliers how are you going to pay for your employees and team do you have a line of credit or do you have the cash reserves to keep the lights on and pay the bills until you finally get paid and do you have the experience is this something you know 100 you're a subject matter expert you've done it before and you did it successfully and you can do it here you really have to be honest with yourself if it's no to any of these you will pass don't do it either team with somebody who has the missing pieces or wait until you have the experience and the resources to actually move forward with a complex procurement so if it's no go if you say no really lisa we we didn't have all of those so we're not gonna do it and that's fine they appreciate it when somebody is honest with themselves and doesn't submit but stay in the game submit a no-bid letter and explain why and the reason why is they'll remember that and they'll appreciate it and they'll leave you on a list for future opportunities but it's also possible that you refused to do it because of a specific technical reason that could have been a problem within the rfp itself and if they get enough people saying uh we decided not to bid and this is why and it's all the same they're gonna take a hard look at that and say you know maybe we should amend this and fix it we have a problem here that didn't come up in question and answer period and they might modify it and go back out as a recompete so if you do decide to go you need to know who your audience is you have to make yourself intimately familiar with the end user have a comprehensive feel for what you're going to say to them what you're going to prove what is it exactly that they're looking for and what is what are the hot buttons what do you really want to show to them you are capable of doing in response to this rfp so that is actually capture strategy so in a capture strategy you're going to re-examine the entire solicitation package you're going to go out and you're going to do market research on anything you could find in this area of expertise and you're going to develop your own key reasons why the government should choose you over a competitor and i'll tell you now i used to get six proposals for in response to an rfp and they were six excellent proposals and i could only choose one and they really had to work hard to prove to me why they were better than their competitors so just think about that think about why you're better or how you're better and that that's going to take you actually going out and thinking of who else is probably competing on this it's probably somebody you know and determining how you are better faster stronger than they are and you're going to weave that strategy throughout the proposal and this is called a win theme you're going to remind that buyer over and over again throughout the proposal you are the best most logical choice so in preparing to respond you want to make sure you've read the directions the instructions you understand the evaluation criteria and your team understands the evaluation criteria your deliverables the the pricing items all the fill-ins because there are a lot of fill-ins you want to make sure you don't miss any you don't want to get it tossed because somebody forgot to fill something in in a blank items that might need your attention make sure all the standard forms don't make forms up if they call out a form go get it and you understand the clause so that's all in your prep work and then you have to get organized you have to build your team because one person can't do a major rfp you need a team so you're going to make working copies of elicitation for everyone on your team create a storyboard i've seen war rooms with sticky notes all around the room with a timeline on how this proposal was going to be laid out and you have to pull in people accounting pricing graphic design production engineering whoever you have depending on the scope of work who's going to touch this proposal everyone will have their task something that they have to do and you're going to create a proposal preparation checklist and you'll just check it off as the items come in as completed you need to make sure that you are monitoring that opportunity on fedbizopps because they amend them all the time you want to make sure you're catching those amendments because you have to read them and make sure it's not going to impact your pricing for example the original solicitation might have said we are not going to cover the cost of travel and then it ends up they amend it and say okay well we decided we will cover the cost of travel now all of a sudden that's going to impact your pricing so you want to make sure you're reading all those amendments signing them including them in the submission package and making sure your team understands what that amendment means to your effort and how it's impacting the bottom line so when things so the win themes of course we're revisiting that again it demonstrates to the buyer you understand the requirement you know what they're looking for you know what the hot buttons are and what's important to them you really need to make them feel warm and fuzzy about your ability to fulfill this procurement you want to show that you are the best value and let me explain to you what best value is in government you're either a low price technically acceptable which is usually commercial items or you are best i best value which means you don't have to be the lowest price they're looking for the best value to them who is the best who's the most qualified who understands and gets us and they're able to fulfill what we need so that is a win theme because remember you're up against people who do the same thing you do but you have to show them how you are better you are the best candidate for the project so in the development of your win theme of course you're going to go through your strengths your experience your leadership and and that goes into a little bit when you're talking about yourself you're still selling yourself you have the technology you have well of develop strategies and you have a commitment to quality which means you have a written quality control quality assurance plan differentiators key what separates you from the back what makes you so special and basically it's your value your quality and your past performance so if you clearly articulate that hey we've done this same thing before and we did it successfully and this is how we did it and this is how we think we can approach your needs and complete this for you in a way that will be agreeable and profitable for your agency so you really need you're selling you're selling yourself and you're selling your experience you're just not talking about how great you are you can't do that and i see it often you just talk about yeah we get what you're saying we can do that we can provide that we understand you need this no you're telling them how you're going to do that what methods are you using what is your strategy to perform this procurement they're looking for your ideas they're they're looking to have that aha moment like oh wow yeah they really know what they're talking about they are really capable of doing this over all the other ones that we've read so the past performance once again past performance seems like a small thing but it is not when you're giving the past performance you want to include if there were problems because they need to know you know how to resolve problems you could say there was a problem with delivery there is a problem with specs and this is how we resolve that problem for a successful end resolutions lessons learned talk about key players names contact information people within the organization that you dealt with they're going to be very specific about how they want to see that as well they will call out what they want to see on past performance and how long it needs to be sometimes they will send past performance forms out to those individuals and have them fill it out and send it back to them so you want to make sure your information is going to match so it should of course include the basic size they might want it to be no more than a thousand words 12 point font new times roman they're going to be very specific make sure you follow those instructions to the t don't ever skimp on past performance it's also going to guide them to see pars if your past performance was a federal agency because federal agencies are required to report into cpars and that's the contract performance reporting system it's your report card and they'll say whether you were on time within technical spec and within budget they they have a criteria they're not going to say you know they were really hard to work with and we don't ever want to work with them again it's not a it's not like a mean girl personality issue they're just going to talk about the specifics so just make sure that the project that you're giving as past performance is relevant to the project that you're bidding on so if you do several things let's say you're in construction trades and this project you're bidding on is for the hvac system but you're giving past performance on drywall and electrical that's not relevant they want to know what have you done that is relevant to this scope that is the past performance that you give them so on the evaluation goals this is what they're going to look like they want to see that experience in the supplies and services they want to see your technical capability do you have the technical capability and wherewithal to perform this function what is the soundness of your quality control program because they might call you up and say hey i want to see your written quality control plan so make sure you have a written one what about your management capabilities because it's all about the project or program manager if you don't have anyone leading you who is successful and proven in the field then it doesn't matter how good your technical people are if they're not being led by somebody who's experienced the caliber of your purchasing what about your vendors your suppliers a really good prime can get screwed by a second or third tier supplier because they're late or the product they're sending them is off it's out of scope or it's not within tolerance you need to be able to demonstrate you've got great subs and that those subs if cyber requirements are flow down which most of them are you want to make sure those subs are compliant to those cyber requirements as well and of course your past performance a history of on-time delivery really brag about that brag about it and brag about it because that's going to be important to them also the evaluation which is in m remember section m is how they evaluate you go back in there and make sure that you're going through that because they use m to eliminate contractors who are not qualified to perform the work they're going to go through your m section and if it doesn't fit what they feel is compliant and what they had in their section m than the solicitation they're just going to toss you so you want to make sure that you are managing and mitigating the risk they feel by awarding to somebody they're not familiar with also more evaluation factors of course past performance the references financial stability we talked about that can you keep the lights on during this long contract your approach how you are approaching the solution to the request for proposal so they have a problem they're looking for solutions that make sense and if you have a fresh approach to that that makes sense and you've proven it you've documented it and you're very clear about how you're going to solve their problem that's a huge plus in the evaluation portion do you have that strong management team do you have the safety delivery and warranty disaster assistance plan so do you have a plan in the back up that if your firm is destroyed by a fire or flood storm whatever you have the backup to complete the project that's making me feel warm and fuzzy like okay if something bad happens they have backup they have a backup plan so successful proposals these these are the proposals that when they show that you understand what they're asking for you understand the scope of work you understand what the problem is and you can solve that problem you provide best value they're not looking for low price technical acceptable they're looking for the best value for them you have the best warranty the best team the best materials the best ideas and strategy on how to solve this problem you can do the job you've proven it you've done it before you did it on time within budget within technical spec you've given them all the information they need to make an educated decision you need to show that you followed the instructions even as simple as 12 point font new times roman and staples or no staples or binders you understand the problem in scope and you submit on time we used to say a date and five o'clock and they would still come in after five o'clock and they're not even going to get red they're getting tossed so all that work for nothing because they couldn't get them in on time and make sure you know it's professional it looks professional even if you have to hire somebody to put it together for you formatted properly not all over the place you're following section c in your formatting you understand how you were being evaluated they can tell if you had really paid attention in section m for that evaluations and you wove that through your proposal and of course your pricing is reasonable they will still try to beat you up on it but stick to your guns so this is why proposals lose people don't follow instructions and believe me it happens i read proposals all the time people give them to me say hey i wrote this proposal can you review it for me and like right off the bat i can tell they didn't follow the instructions people who don't really have an understanding of what the problem is and they're just parroting back what the government has asked for yes we understand that we have to provide xyz not saying how they're going to provide x y z of course incomplete responses no signatures no compliance with the specs um not showing they have sufficient capacity like if it is a large capacity order they need to demonstrate they can bring on another shift they can demonstrate i have people in the background i had a young lady miss out on a huge transcription job and it was because she could not demonstrate that she had people to help her with the weight of the actually volume of work so it was enough work for 10 people and she was one person and she had them she had other transcriptionists on hold waiting to help her if she did this effort but she did not demonstrate that in the proposal so she lost because she never let the government know that she had these people in the background who would have worked for her as 1099s so because of that lack of information even though she was highly qualified and would have done a great job she just didn't include that information and you have to make sure your technical and pricing is is within what's called competitive range so they might come back to you and say okay your pricing did not meet our internal budget that we've we did ourselves and that's what they do they price it out themselves to see where the proposals are going to come in at that's called the competitive range you might be too low you might be too high so they're going to go back out and tell everyone you're not within the competitive range come back with a best and final and normally when that happens the low people come up and the hype people come down and you get everyone within the competitive range but they're looking for that they're looking for your price to be basically close to what they came up with because if it's off by too much they're thinking you miss something or you're trying to you know gouge them for more money and of course poor proposal organization they will not look for the information if you don't lay it out in the way that they wrote that solicitation as in section c they're not going to read it if it's too wordy if you're just going on and on and on using adjectives and adverbs and glowing um opinions of how wonderful you are it is not going to win keep to the word count if they say no more than 3 000 words it's no more than 3 000 words so this is else why they fail show the relevance of the past performance if your past performance is not relevant to the effort you cannot demonstrate that you can do the work and if you're giving an approach of how you're going to solve their problem and it you don't have backup for that rationale they're not going to believe in it you really need to demonstrate you have an understanding of the problem and clear strategy on how that problem is going to be solved and of course restating the requirements parroting back to them what they want without explaining how it's going to be performed and really unprofessional appearance typos smudges poorly written it makes a difference if that buyer is reading six to ten proposals and they're badly written they're not even gonna get through it they're just gonna toss it because it's a lot of work reading a proposal so you want to make sure it is easy to read it's well done well laid out and professional no coffee stains also your proposal will fail if your personnel is inexperienced you want to make sure you have the people on board to perform that work and the technical scope you need to really come up with a definitive understanding of that scope of work especially if it's technical we'll say in in the manufacturing realm you understand those material drawings you haven't addressed safety concerns or have that disaster backup plan if your facilities are not adequate to perform the work it's not going to win for you relevant past performance once again you have to show that you've done it in the past you have to show a written quality assurance plan process and accounting generally accepted accounting principles so you just can't say i use quickbooks that's not the same as understanding gaap having an accountant who definitely understands gaap yeah that's that's understanding accounting and of course sufficient capacity you need to show you've got the resources to perform the work final prep so you're going to go through your list everyone gets a copy everyone's checking what they did they're checking other people's works everyone's going through it you're checking off the checklist everything's filled in anything that needs attention like let's say you're going to write a caption on a photo which is acceptable if it's warranted like a specific machine or building something that they want to see a picture of and it will enhance the actual uh proposal you make sure that's all in there and everyone is on board everyone's on the same page everyone has reviewed so you just need to make sure that you have followed all those evaluation factors everything's clean and neat there's no typos and you understand what they were actually asking for and you have followed through and given them exactly what they're asking for and you are showing them a strategy to solve their problem once again font sizes page limitations word counts you met the the evaluation criteria how about your deliverables you know what's going to happen there with packaging and and shipping you you understand all that and i keep saying fill ins because so many people missed the villains they forgot to sign somewhere or initial and of course punctuation and grammar review it all again you can't review it enough and not just one person because you can read over the same mistake over and over again and not see it but somebody else can pick it up and read it and know that oh yeah hey look you missed this or you misspelled this so it's good to have a couple people looking at it and of course review of the clauses and delivery you know everything of where it's going you have followed all the instructions to buy not bind envelopes clips no clips staples no staples timestamp proof of actual shipment and delivery all your deliveries are accounted for and of course the standard forms if you lose you did all that work and it was fabulous and you followed all the instructions and you thought you are a shoe-in but you didn't win it ask for a debriefing that is a a requirement they have to give you a debriefing that's in the far be respectful don't be confrontational find out what was missing find out how it could be improved thank the contracting officer for their time and consideration and stay in the game don't get frustrated because once again i would have six proposals that were all perfect and i had to pick one that means there was one winner and five losers those five losers hated me but in the back of my mind i was thinking okay next time around it will be the same six and i will take turns awarding so they might not award to you this time but they're going to remember you and they know you did a good job but they happen to go with somebody else for whatever reason please don't stop because the next time it might be your turn so don't get frustrated and quit just because you didn't win on a really good proposal that contracting officer is going to remember you if you win yay you will ask for a debriefing as well because now you want to go over that whole package with them you're going to schedule a kick-off meeting you're going to request and negotiate milestone payments if necessary and once again thank the ceo for their time and consideration they really appreciate that because believe me they get beat up people yell and scream at them and call them names and question their credibility and accuse them of all sorts of things so when you thank them and show appreciation they'll appreciate you so that's it thank you for your time and consideration it's been a pleasure teaching this class i i love to tell people about proposals because sometimes it's just the little things that will make uh the difference between a win and a lose on a proposal so if you have any questions now i'd be happy to fill them so lisa we have some questions in the chat would you like me to start reading through them sure okay the first one is well before an rfp is issued how should you make yourself know known to the right contacts at target agencies and have a good understanding of what they're looking for if you're a trusted vendor will or can you be asked to help formulate rfp guidelines in order to not make assumptions about evaluation criteria criteria you're sure about how an agency is making its decision how do you go about asking for clarity of its evaluation criteria and create your proposal to meet those specific criteria and how does one go about submitting a proposal for federal contract agency that does not yet have a rfp for a company's products or services first of all you call your local ptac and sign up as a client no kidding aside the best way to do that of course is marketing attending matchmaking events industry days having a comprehensive capability statement designed for that federal agency if you know you're going to be marketing to a specific agency you need to know everything about them you have to do your due diligence you have to be known to the small business office and you can do that by matchmaking events and timely but not stalking timely correspondence with them maybe quarterly you can always ask them how often you can send an updated capability statement you also need to respond to sources sought so on fedbizopps there are sources sought request for information and draft proposals those three areas are a great way to introduce yourself to a contracting officer it's not a full-blown rfp it might never be a full-blown rfp what it is is the federal agency's way of getting to know who is out there so for example a contracting officer is considering taking a potential rfp and sending it out as a set aside for wosb they're going to do a source of sought and they're going to see who responds to that source aside if they get too reasonably responsible and responsive bidders that are wosbs certified wosbs i'll add then they can go ahead and create that set aside opportunity they're not going to do it unless they meet the rules too they're just not going to say one day hey i think i'm going to do a service disabled veteran set aside they need to know that the market will support that because it's a time saver knowing that the market will support it also it's a way for you to introduce yourself to that contracting officer because they just may reach out to you and say hey i see you responded the source of sought if this comes out as an rfp will you respond and you will say yes sir i will respond also it's an introduction like i said it's a handshake they might not move forward with that particular effort but they're going to remember your response to the rfai or sources spot or or drop proposal also sometimes they don't have a clear path on how to move forward with a particular problem so they're going to go out with a draft proposal to pick your brain and see what solutions you might have to offer on a particular effort and then once that comes in now they have already some built-in potential vendors for an effort that they're going to go out on for requests for proposals so you may often ask yourself why when these rfps come out they only give you a week or 10 days to turn it around it's because they've already gone out with a source assad or rfi or draft proposal and already got the interest of some really great firms so they already know they've got a good competitive pool out there that's going to respond to that rfp that's why they don't need to give you two months to respond they'll give you only two weeks because they know those ones that already responded previously to the pre-work are going to respond so i hope that answers your question because there's a lot involved with that if not reach out to me and and we'll talk about it that's really great thank you lisa um we have a few more if you have a few more minutes i do okay great um another was um susan rowe i missed what you said about discussing prior experience in the pws response is it positive or negative to include statements regarding the work we have done that is similar or the same as the requirement and then state what we will do for them well you need to show them relevant past performance if i'm following this they're not going to award to somebody who has never done the work you really have to demonstrate that you have done the work before and done it successfully so that's where the past performance comes in if you do not have that past performance don't bid on that opportunity team with somebody be a subcontractor to somebody who has that past performance now you're going to get the past performance because you're working as a sub to a prime on that particular effort that starts to build your past performance so when you design your past performance you'll say subcontracted to xyz prime on an effort for the army and give the scope of work and what you did that's valid past performance even though you weren't priming that work okay great we've got another question from bill regarding competitive range he wanted to know do they tell you if you're low or high i wouldn't want to be low or go lower yes um so i used to say um you were considerably less than the internal estimate or you were considerably more than the internal estimate so you know please sharpen your pencils and go back and review your information to make sure there are no errors and give me your best and final so yes they're not going to say you were just not it tell you you were actually too low and you're going to wonder why like was i too high or too low no they're not going to allow you to do that they'll they'll be very clear if they're not ask for ask for validation or clarification okay that's great um susan had a clarifying comment she said i meant discussing it when responding to the technical approach of course i will provide past performance response as well i'm not sure about your technical package you want to make sure that your technical package clearly shows you understand the scope the technical scope and your past performance can include when you've done similar technical packages so it's all in how you write it when you're doing your technical package you're going to state in there when and how you did similar efforts in the past and how you are approaching this particular scope or technical scope so you can you can go back and say okay when we did it here we did it this way but here we are suggesting that we move forward with this strategy because maybe something didn't work with the other one or it wasn't cost effective so you're using that past performance from when you did something very similar in the past and how you're enhancing it for this particular effort to solve that problem so hopefully that's a little better answer okay that's great um there are no other questions in the chat box if anyone would like to unmute themselves and ask a question you are welcome to do so um lisa just you know we've popped some um we popped your website into the chat box as well as ours so people can get some help from both organizations us hopefully preparing other things and you of course with government contracting um and you know i just want to say thank you again the amount of information that you provide the insight is invaluable we've got lots of folks that have requested your slides which we will send out um lots of things little handout 100 words not to use in a proposal oh great make sure you send that that's critical okay we will do all right have also please get on the piece