Mark Technical Proposal Template Made Easy

Signature service general contractor services proposal

all right once again good morning everyone and welcome to our writing technical proposals webinar part 1 just a heads up that will be video recording this session and it will be emailed to you along with the slides within the next day will also join our archive of webinar resources on our website at NorCal PTAC org slash webinars if you would we're gonna have a question a Q&A time at the end I'm go ahead and save your questions until then or you can enter them into the chat window so thanks again for joining before we hand things over to Mary Jo Juarez who is the procurement specialist who will be giving a presentation today I'd like to tell you a bit about our program and the free services we offer to small businesses like you my name is James Forrest and I'm the program coordinator for the Northern California procurement Technical Assistance Center which is a bit of a mouthful so we just call it NorCal PTAC for short our very own procurement specialist Mary Jo Juarez will be facilitating today's workshop NorCal PTAC is a non-profit program set up to help small businesses achieve success in the government marketplace we're funded primarily by the Defense Logistics Agency or the DLA with extra funding from grants from other state and local funds this is all good news for you because it allows us to provide our services at no cost to the public we're hosted at Humboldt State University sponsored programs foundation up in Arcadia California and last year believe it or not North Cal PTAC actually helped our clients win more than two hundred and sixty eight million dollars in government contracts if you're located and if you have a small business or a pre venture enterprise located in one of these 15 counties listed here on the map in green then you're eligible to apply for one on one procurement counseling as I mentioned our main offices is up in Arcada up in the top of the state on the coast there but our team is located all over the US including Los Angeles Nevada Washington State and in New Mexico and Virginia we brought together the best expert specialists from across the country to help you succeed all counseling can be provided remotely by phone email or video conference and we now have office hours in the Bay Area at San Francisco and Richmond so you don't even have to leave your office if you don't want to receive the help you need every PTAC provides three core services go back a couple slides here the first one is one-on-one counseling procurement specialists like Mary Jo here at NEP sac can help you individually with Sam registrations getting a dum Duns number any of the government certifications crafting capability statements gsa schedules getting your company cyber security compliance and really any other government contracting topics we can help you understand where your business fits in the government marketplace and how to market yourself we also have a paid subscription for a program that aggregates all federal state local and School District purchases so we can provide custom reports to our clients and no costs to help you determine who is buying what you're selling and how to target how to help you target your marketing the second service we offer is regular in-person in virtual workshops like this one on government contracting topics these webinars and workshops are always free and under unlike our other services they're open to anyone regardless of location or client status check out our website at North Cal Pizza org slash calendar to find more upcoming events and third we can set our clients up with a free bid matching service with daily access to federal state local and even prime contractor opportunities with this tool you'll be notified when a bid request is posted that matches your desired criteria so you can stay on top of the opportunities available to you to apply for NorCal PTAC services visit North Cal peta.org and click on the apply Now button on the page banner create a profile fill out steps one through seven and hit save then you'll be contacted by email typically within two business days and signed to a procurement specialist if you are accepted as a note if you've ever worked with a Small Business Development Center or SBDC in the northern region before since we share an application portal with them you'll likely need to email us at info at NorCal PA org also on the bottom there and we'll send you a specialized link to apply from the registration list it looks like some of you are joining from somewhere outside of our service area which is perfectly fine but we just want you to be aware that we're only one of ninety four p tax nationwide including several others in California all P tax provide similar services within different geographic regions so if you're not located in one of those 15 counties I showed before we encourage you to look up your local PTAC and reach out to them for counseling services we've got links on here but you can also simply search find a PTAC in your web browser and it should be the first option we also partner with SBDCs small business development centers who provide more general business assistance like help getting access to loans so feel free to contact us at the phone number or email address on the banner below if you need help registering to be in NorCal p tax client or help finding the nearest PTAC to you so a little bit of housekeeping here to prevent noise interference your all started off muted during today's webinar but if you have any questions during the presentation there is a chat feature please enter your questions into the chat window window and make sure to select to everyone as your recipients will answer those questions during the Q&A at the end also feel free to unmute yourself once we reach the QA but not before then please and and then you can actually ask the question to everyone and we can hear your voice as another note please keep your video off during the presentation so we can all focus on the slides alright with that I'm going to turn it over to our NorCal PTAC procurement specialist mary jo juarez for the main presentation thank you so much Mary Jo appreciate that we did okay so before we begin our main presentation here I'm just need to share this disclosure with you that the information provided here in is accurate to the best of my ability at this of this presentation some are all the provisions mentioned here in could or may be changed by the current administration with or without prior notice so I'm going to share with you a little bit of my background so you know where this presentation is coming from I retired from the federal government after over 30 years with them my last 20 years I was a Contracting Officer with the Navy at the end of my career toward the end I became the deputy for small business for that branch of the Navy that I was working with and that's where my passion became clear I love working with small businesses I love helping you to be successful in obtaining contracts and performing them well so you can get more contract what I really like about being retired is I can sharing things with you now that I was not able to share with you during my time that I was working with the government and the reason for that is because we had to be always extremely careful and cognizant that everybody that we talked to receive the same information from us so there was just some basic information I could share with you if you came up and talked to me at that particular time but if I wasn't sharing it with all the other small businesses I wrote them aloud necessarily to share that with to you so even with this presentation that things I'm going to share with you are not things that I've been able to necessarily share in the past with small business nough suring that rule that I believe it will make a difference in how you see and view the clients that you're working with I became a pit tag counselor about ten years ago and for various ptex thing that I need to make clear up front to everybody right now I am NOT a proposal writer I am a proposal reviewer so I'm not going to share necessarily the technique and this and that of how to write your proposal but I'm going to share with the eyes of someone who is reviewing their proposal and what we're thinking as we're going through that process so my goal today is just to help you understand what the government is looking for in a proposal response and I always have a word of the day because to me it's really important if you remember one thing from this webinar today it's going to be risk because everything we're going to be talking about today is different tips and elements that you can incorporate to help you lower your client's risk and at times also lowering your risk okay so common challenges government contracting is a road with its own language and rituals oh heavens we've all encountered that haven't we just with the acronyms that you have to learn that are contracting them actually state contracting any technical proposal writing is both for significant business expense and your time and money contracting regulations for the federal government are usually established on lessons learned basically what the federal government does is anytime they go to court or there's a claim and they learn a lesson they go ahead and and end up making a new rule to address that and as a result it's a hundred percent procedure driven which is something that would see so before we want the next slide I just want to share a story of a an experience I had with with a couple clients and this is this theme is going to come up throughout this webinar which is why I'm sharing it with you now a couple years ago the Navy had a multiple award construction contract Mac MACC but was awarded to six contractors they receive 29 proposals it had a two-phase process where 15 proposals were sent forward and the others were immediately disregarded out of those 29 proposals only the a-plus proposals moved forward the average and above average did not so keep in mind that 29 proposals that the reviewers looking at because I'm going to keep going back to it and two points from this story number one that contract was for five years so those six contractors who won that that particular contract how that works locked up for the next five years so it wasn't out there for you to propose or bid on however the most important point the second point is always consider subcontracting because they were all out there looking for small businesses so just food for thought so now with all this wonderful information I've just shared why do you want to do this well because it's a lot of money who doesn't want a piece piece of that pie I've helped contractors that you would need I mean the government buys everything I helped award a contract for a dog to chase the geese off of the military runway because they didn't want the piece the runway was near the water and the geese would come in and settle and right before their jets would take off we would have the contractor send the dogs out to chase all the be stopped or they wouldn't get caught in those jet engines and those multi-million dollar machines as they were taken off I helped them sold balloon she came up to me at a pitch a conference and it said I've got one for you I sell balloons but you say the government buys everything prove it well we found a six-week owned actually several situation she's still doing this where the government like when the Navy ships come in they have those those big arcs of balloons and the various services even the hospital might not have their dances because it's very military employee-driven she was providing the balloons for those situations one of the funniest ones I did was goats and the client that I was working with monic goats this was on a Marine Corps Air Base they wanted goats to take over the lawn services part for lung services and also some of the brush that was on the base and it worked really really well on the brush but I got a call right away because the girls weren't really well behaved and they were head but even military members when they walked out the door and chasing the children so sometimes it works and sometimes we have to make adjustments for sorry Genda we're going to cover four things today this is class is really a two to afford a class so I picked up some things that I think are most important for you to focus on so we're going to talk about reading and understanding the solicitation following the instructions without exception writing to the client and investing in a thorough reading review this slide is about reading and understanding solicitations the types of solicitations performs the acronyms if you don't know that a Clem's sub-clan and Edelen are pricing terms that they use it's a great time to contact your PTAC who can give you webinars their classes we can to connect your lip garbology who has a wonderful session on different types of solicitations ok so why is your slide important to you why are you listening to this because if you don't know where to look where the information is going to be buried you're going to get in trouble the government whether it's a local is like any other organization and run by humans and sometimes a critical information you need might be buried in a solicitation and it can take you under if you don't know where to look and what you're looking for ok so follow the instructions basically the format for your technical proposal is pretty much the same as far as the mechanics of it go as what you would present for any reader so this is pretty much the same information you would follow in preparing the resume possibly writing a new dessert achill what you want to focus on is what the reader wants to hear not what you want to say because if you get all the instructions as a reviewer I'm thinking how are you going to be able to follow the contract and deliver to me on time so make it as easy as possible for the reader and these are some suggestions for doing that be visually appearing appealing and then destructable the second one the only time I'll ever tell you to mirror back what the government is doing is when you're setting up the tabs the paragraph and the test numbers that way the reviewer has spent a lot of time going over the request for proposal that they sent out the RFP and their mind is thinking in that format so if you set up your technical technical proposal to mirror that format not the words with that format it's going to help the reader tremendously mark every page keep the elements shortened to the quaint never exceed the page numbers okay so if you if the requirement asks you to send in 25 pages and you send in 26 what happens is before the review team even gets a proposal the extra pages are taken off and shredded because they ask for 25 pages and that's all that they're going to read a void narrative and we're going to do an exercise on this one in a minute so you can just get a visual of this bollock eyes whenever possible never marry the requirement that qualify and quantify every requirement we'll do it Delmas and more on our next webinar in March don't make assumptions for the reader and this one I'm going to mention it I don't think it's it's not a deal-breaker by any means but just something to think about you might want to play around with it breaking the flow of document into the columns for ease of reading sometimes that works and sometimes that just doesn't work that it's just there in case you want to revisit it one day now again your whole purpose of this is you want to present everything to the reader you don't want them to have to hunt for it and you don't want them to have to do a lot over court you don't you want everything to just be visually there where they can see it because that also demonstrates to the reader that you have a grasp of the general concept of the contract more suggestions think back where we were talking I was talking about at the beginning about 29 proposals so what happens is there's a review team that's seated in the room usually with no windows because I don't want people looking in and by chance seeing what's on somebody's proposal and they're going through 29 proposals so anything you can do to set your proposal ahead that's written within the restrictions of the RFP our request for proposal we're going to make it easier on the reader and your information will be there so use the bold heading italics borders color whatever to cut the monotony use whatever special font they they specify and if not don't use a fancy one use a plain one usually they don't want it any smaller than 12-point consistency is important adding images that's completely up to you remember that your proposal in zone way is marketing your company so as a marketing tool you want to include your logo if you have one or use the same company name throughout throughout the proposal okay if you need to be a great candidate no matter how much experience you have if you can't get the paperwork right you're not going to get the work and what's really unusual and I've seen this happen time and time again is incumbents of a particular contract somebody who's been doing that contract for two years five years however long they more often lose the contract when it comes out for bid again then they stay in and and regain it when you look at the percentages the incumbents lose on a higher basis it's easier for them to lose than it is necessarily for you to get a new contract and the reason for that is because they have been living it and they know so much information and they make assumptions that the government knows and what they can do but the government can't evaluate their proposal based on what the government knows the government can only evaluate the incumbents proposal based on what they write and some of the hardest proposals that I've had to review where I've had to go back multiple time and multiple time to a company or where they're considered the incumbents okay so now let's do a little exercise so the screen I have up here I'm not going to read this whole thing by any means don't panic but it's it says basically provide a detailed description of the project and the relevance each of the proposed project requirements of the RFP and this is actually very well-written that's got photos doesn't there to break it up a bit it's got paragraphs it qualifies and quantifies they've got a three-story 30,000 square foot and them down below they've got a two-story 66,000 square foot this is what we talk about when I talk about a narrative okay this is the same information the same slides but it's just broken into bullets how much easier is this on your eyes to read it's just like things are jumping out at me even now as I'm going through it I'm going to go back to the first one again okay I'm reading 29 proposes this is might can be a little bit of a headache but I get through it this I would be able to take my evaluation sheet and pull the information right out and market check check met this method so let me tell you a little situation that I encountered as a paycheck counselor with a document like this I was asked by one of our clients to go with them to a debriefing on the client knew ahead of time because they had been notified by the government that they had not won the award of the contract but they wanted to be briefing to figure out why because they could tell that their price proposal was slower and it was technically acceptable low price and they knew they just knew in their hearts that were technically acceptable so we got to the debriefing and the government started telling them everything that was great through their proposal you meant this you meant that your price as low as however we cannot award to you because you did not address the safety criteria that we had in our requests for the proposal and the client said wait a minute it's here on page 27 and sure enough we all took the page 27 and there it was buried in narrative like this and the government missed it okay now think about that if if it had been called out they would have probably had a number 11 down here and another bullet underneath it addressing the safety of places the safety part of the proposal rather than burying it in this narrative so those are the type of instances that come up in situations like that and it was it was just a really kind of a heartbreaking situation this one oops this one the meat is buried this one doesn't have flaw and you can see what you need to see right away just keeping your mind as you're doing these about relief for the complacent now we're going to do another little exercise because this is probably the best way to illustrate writing to the client okay so the client in this case is a construction branch of the military and this is an actual technical proposal requirement and once again I'm not going to read this out loud to you but I'm just going to kind of read a few important parts so six point one point one point six point one point one point one says provide a brief but concise written summary of the organization and approach to management the narrative chill address both the approach to managing the project included and the approach to managing multiple projects okay wonderful six point one point one point two organizational chart dates include a simple organizational chart illustrating the lines of communication the key personnel literally depicting the names okay this is our requirement we're looking at so in class when I ask everybody take a few minutes let's take five minutes and I want you just to to write up a brief organ a simple organizational chart brief but concise you know all of these buzzword is men that does what this requirement asks this is what I usually receive and this is normal there's nothing this you can see at the top that they're two companies involved under Senor construction and John Hill works it goes down it shows you the project manager the design advisor it's simple it's free it's concise this is what's normal this is what most companies show the client this is what the client wants to see now when I'm in a class everybody's usually dropping their head to the table when I probably heard a little bit of a gasp out there from everybody but I'm going to walk through with you on this and show you that it contains death it can be for any industry it doesn't have to be this much but you're still going to be able to make it a little bit more supporting of what you're showing your second all pictured this word is worth a million words and by doing you ever have to do an organization chart let's just walk through this briefly to show you how you can do this to benefit your company so again at the very top there are two companies Anderson Hill construction Pearson Enterprises the difference is each company has Shoen who they have in their back pocket that can help them and this doesn't in this particular case that this construction so they've got like Anderson Hill has got ready bit so they've got equipment it doesn't even necessarily need to be you know the same family name this is just an example here but it shows that the client was thinking about the requirements that were in the RFP what the scope of work involves and they've got some backing to make this work and then the arrows go down where it becomes a joint venture and from the joint venture it breaks out into the quality control and the design control which are all mentioned I believe in that paragraph somewhere and the manager now the other important thing for those of you who have are looking at applying for ID ID ID IQ contracts and definite quantity indefinite delivery type contracts where if you don't know those are the contracts where the Gustloff government does not know at the time that they're putting in the contract out what all the requirements are going to be and they're kind of hard to kind of hard to propose on in some ways because the government might have a seed project but they don't know exactly what the future is going to be losing so at the bottom on the right-hand side where it says task order superintendent designer to be selected construction subcontractor for those types of contracts this shows that you have thought about what could be happening in the future you don't know if the work is going to be electrical you don't know if the work is going to be concrete you don't know if the work is going to be roofing and it doesn't matter it shows that you put some thought into it you can't fill out the blocks completely but you can show that you thought about it what usually throws people off when we go back here - the requirement is that first sentence under six point one point one point to include a simple organizational chart and remember simple is all in the definition so today just trying to show you the differences and how simple can be to one person and simple can be to another will hopefully help you take away some tips that you can use and again if you need help in putting one of these together you can get a hold of your PTAC were more than happy to help you with this this type of situation okay so let's talk for a few minutes about a red team reviews so the blue team and a large business or a bigger small business the blue team usually does a technical proposal the green team does the price proposal the red team is an independent review and the White team approves and signs so in a small business you're usually all of these you're the one who does a technical proposal you to the price you might review it and you also approve them sign it and what I would like to share with you today is to consider even if you do the whole proposal yourself consider an independent review you can use your PTAC you can use someone else in your own company just somebody who hasn't looked at it because it's really hard to review your own work it doesn't matter what you're writing it's really really difficult to review your own work so just a little bit of food for thought what happens is you get caught up in your own story and you leave the important stuff out and then it becomes you know the readers opinion now another little element that might help is as you read through the RFP for the first time the request for proposal make yourself a little tracking chart and it doesn't have to be this exact one by by any means it could be anything that works for you but where there is a requirement write it down and leave some blocks so that you were the PTAC or the individual who is reviewing it can check and make sure that you have included everything that's important and it's the easiest to find that your first time through the RFP then you're taking away the readers opinion and you're making it a checklist in your proposal review so they're going through somebody is going through and checking and making sure you've got the main title and signature that you've addressed the roles and responsibilities and that is all done okay that's also going to help you to save on pages because if your reviewer is looking through the document and you're thinking how am I going to sleep this all in and they start taking out the fluff and the stuff that you don't need and focus on the information that's on your team reviewed tracking chart oftentimes the page numbers go down significantly to give you more space or either photos or charts or whatever you want to include so I made a suggestion about a year ago to a small business who was who was brand new when government contracting and I said I'm just on column George George you've really got to sit down and you need to hear that just do a little chart in on a piece of paper and I said go through the proposal and come or not the proposed of the RFP and come up with everything that you see is really important because when I was reviewing your RFP I noticed that you had to go to a sole source with a material or whatever it was he was building at the time there was only one company in the southern part of the United States that had that particular material available for whatever component he was building and he would need to contact them to get not only a price but to make sure that the material would be available and he said oh thank you so much for the help and then I did not see George again until after he got the award and he came in to me and he said Mary Jo you know what what you talked about and I said yes how did it go he goes I got the award and I said well that's great news then he goes no it's not because I didn't follow through I didn't do the tracking and I forgot to get a hold of that company down in Mississippi and now they're telling me that I don't have a document that honor surprisement they can't deliver when the client is expecting material well what ended up happening to him is the government told him that he would have to pay the difference between the amount of money he proposed and the next little bit he would have this company would have to cover that difference for them so just you know again it's a thought press process to understand how the people you are reviewing this for you are thinking and what safeguards you can put into place to protect yourself and your company just kind of some items to review to consider as you're reviewing do you understand the customers needs do you have a mini felicitations to reshow features benefits improve because every word count and we'll talk about words in great detail next month do we have a clear approach or we compliant with the RFP are we boring and tiring to the right readers eyes do we describe our approach even more important do you stay with your approach because again what happens is readers can see when a client goes off tangent it's pretty easy to see as you're reviewing these type of things and you're taking a reader place they don't need to go and that they can evaluate so your approach and sticking to your approach is super important if you have areas where you can address problems you've encountered and solved and in March we'll talk more about that also it's just food for thought for you here did we address the requirements of the evaluation criteria are we mindful confident and amazing and presenting our proposal and the hardest part of that again has been mindful and staying on track with what the RFP requirements are so I wanted to make sure we had plenty of time for questions our next our next of webinar is March 18th here's the link where you can go to register we're going to talk more about the red team review we're going to go through and discuss and we'll go through every single word but I've got a a session for you on 100 words - ROI which is going to help you recognize and avoiding the fluff and get to the guts of what we need to say we're going to talk about evaluating your writing and we're also going to talk about some steps that you can take nail to prepare some documents of head of time because a lot of the evaluation criteria is tends to be set by the flora that the government the federal government who are goes by and so there's some of that that you can start pulling documents together now and be able to use it time after time again so we'll go through some of those and our words maximum will be qualified and quantify and I'm going to turn this back over to James thanks Mary Jo that was very informative so thank you so much for presenting on this topic we have ample time now for a Q&A session as I mentioned in the beginning there's two ways to ask a question to our wonderful presenter here the first way is to type your question into the chat feature if you're using zoom in the version that I'm familiar with it should be a meeting controls option bottom in there which says chat if you click on that and there should window that says two and you can select different participants you're going to want to select everyone so so don't don't just message me directly although you're welcome to do that better to select everyone so we can all read along the question and don't be shy the second way to do it is to unmute yourself as long as you're orderly and polite about it go ahead and go into your zoom participants options next to your name there's a unmute button and you can click on mute and then go ahead and speak your question and clear tones and Mary Jo should be able to respond and so with no further ado go ahead and send any questions or ask any questions that you'd like so someone is Mary Jo I'm going to read the questions out to Mary Jo when you when you send them in the chat feature so someone is asking where Mary Jo is located dress that or not it's not really relevant but okay I'm actually located in silver Dale Washington but I'm happy to work with you as a peacock I am either through a zoom meeting or through email through phone whatever will work for you that's why all of our counselors can do remote sessions so we have a lot of different ways of connecting with the clients and one of the great things about Nortel PTAC is that we do have we've searched the entire united states for the best procurement specialists with the best experience or most suited to help your small business succeed and they are great the other great thing James is that I think we're all planning to be together is it in May talk about our upcoming events via on May 29th we're going to have a bit NorCal procurement Expo and we also have a matchmaker before then on April 2nd I'll go over these at the end of our Q&A if you'd like I'm actually I'll medical go over them now in case folks are wanting to log off so we have an ongoing series of webinars and workshops that we're always working on putting together the next one coming up is the let's see see we have a webinar on building relationships with prime contractors on March 5th we have a webinar on how to prepare for a matchmaking event which is particularly relevant because we have one coming up and that's on March 24th then we have a webinar on a power pitch how to make a great first impression that's sort of your elevator speech that's the next day on the 25th of March and then as I mentioned our our big matchmaker is in Santa Rosa on April 2nd which you can register for on Eventbrite you can find on our web page and then our big NorCal procurement Expo is on May 29 down in San Ramon California near the Bay Area so all of these are available on our website there they all cost nothing so go to NorCal PTAC org and click on our center calendar and you can find the details for all of these all right I'll get to the questions here someone asks when an RFP specifies page margins to the margins include or exclude headers and footers that is that is a really good question and I would have to take a look at the language that's in the RFP because it could be either alright let's see does the RF does the RFP pertain to your business plan also does the business plan help with assistance from the government as far as grants ok the I can answer the first part of that games the RFP it depends upon what's in your business plan if they ask for a management plan or they ask for the structure of your business it could have some information that would be in your business plan that you would pull from that but it depends upon each RFP is is basically individual a lot of times they might depending on the industry there might be some commonalities through all of them but I don't necessarily know that I would consider using the business plan as a basis for answering an RFP although there might be bits and pieces of information you could pull an RFP the government is going to be wanting to know in in your proposal how well you can do something and that's what the questions are leading to how well you've done it if you've done it in the past how well you've done it if you performed on time within budget what's your expertise is that type of thing and so the second part of the question does the business plan help with assistance from the government as far as grants as far as I'm understanding we're not covering grants and this grant writing in this process right may jump right right and I don't know well I think desk yeah grant funding is quite separate from proposal writing so it's a different question someone asks Shankar Roy asks I have opened a brand-new company I am NOT able to get certified as a small business till six months how do I get my foot in the door that's that is also a really good question and I think it would be really release I think you make the right a client because we could we could help you with that it can help you to look at what steps you need to take to get everything in place if you're going to be looking at working with either the state of California local government or eventually the federal government there's certain websites and places you need to go to register and we can at least meet one-on-one with you through the phone or through a zoom meeting and sit down and go over some of that information with you to make sure that this is what you want to do and that you're on on track for doing it if it is in fact what you would like to do all right thank you next question is I am interested in the writing process of a project proposal I missed out on an opportunity because I didn't know how to write a technical and a financial proposal do you offer such training and James please correct me if I'm wrong but I believe that we do and actually if you have one of those there's two things we could do there's two things that I do with my clients number one if they're interested in learning how to respond to a technical proposal I often ask them if they have one that they attempted to respond to previously that they did not win and I asked them for the RFP and the proposal that they sent and then I evaluate it as an evaluator and then sit down with them and we go through things that can make it stronger make it better for the next proposal the other option is if there is an RFP out there that you want to respond to if you could send it to your P Tech counselor as early as you can because we have to review that RFP too to make sure that you're complying with everything in there so oftentimes I'm reviewing an RFP at the same time the client is and then when the client does address proposal and send it to me we can all have reviewed it for risks and hidden factors and that type of thing also that we can share and we kind of work on it to prepare the proposal as a response in real-time but the best way to do that is not to send a proposal to your P chat client the day before it's due but she used as much time as you have available to get it and I know that sometimes they don't give you a lot of time to respond but as much time as we as P type counselors can have to help you is going to make you stronger does that answer um thank you someone mentioned that is that the Eventbrite page says that the relationships with prime contractors webinar has sales ended I'll look into that and and see if sales are actually ended or if that's long if that's on purpose or not you can also email me at info at NorCal PTAC or at the bottom of the page there if you're curious about any of our events someone says I have a question I would like to speak it out and you are very welcome to unmute yourself Thank You Ravi here so we don't a consulting company and I did IT consulting company so the bits that come out include some forms like I'll do an example it could be the phone would be about the work experience of the consultant that we want to propose and it's all in PDF so I have a couple of questions regarding that one question the first question is that when when we have to input information in the past what we've done is we've converted that to a word document the form recreated that form in a Word document filled in the information and then put it reckon we converted back to PDF is that the right way to do or should we use it Adobe Reader and go ahead and fill in the form um James I might need your help on this one but my understanding is doesn't when you do it the way you're doing it where you're putting it in PDF doesn't that protect some protect you from having anybody to change it are you are used to them yes I'm here so man what I was saying was that yes we converted back to PDF from word to PDF so would you suggest us suggest that we don't go towards you conversion to word and back to PDF and just stick to PDF book in itself um I I would really you know next time you you have one with those you have an RFP with those words I really like to look at it because I'm always going to tell you to do whatever the RFP tells you to do okay um but I understand also that PDF unless I'm wrong I understand that PDF will protect your document from anybody going and then changing it which is important also so okay yeah I'd be happy to look at the words with you to see I think I will take a one-on-one session with you man that'll be more yeah thank you yes or with your Peter counselor whatever it will work yes definitely thank you so much all right we have another question here someone is asking is there any literature you could recommend on how to write proposals um I don't I'm just trying to think in our in our next webinar I'm going to be going I'm going to actually have some documents in there which are actually handouts that we give to companies in writing proposals I I don't write proposals per se so I don't really have any literature on how to write them but I'm more than happy to to go in with you and review something that you've done and help you to to make changes and make it better alright and wind change yeah I'm sorry James would there be someone else and in our p-tech who might better be able to answer that question is that something that we could ask the group and then maybe send out yeah if any of you would like follow up on a question or or or feel like there's there's a you know you're looking for a deeper answer go ahead and email me at Intuit NorCal PT org I can follow up with either Mary Jo or one of our other procurement specialists or a whole team so we're very very open to follow-up questions so so don't be shy we have another question that says how do you find RFPs we are on new company ok so again that would be a great session with a peach a counselor the best tool that I personally know of is our bid match which James talked about in the very beginning which will connect you with opportunities from a number of sources as your keywords and makes codes pop up it's something that as a counselor we can adjust with you to make sure that we can make it work so James do you have anything to add to that yeah absolutely our like you said our bid bid matching service is something that we actually pay for with our grant funded money so we can offer it to you for free and it's really it a grits state federal and local RFPs and other opportunities so you can bid on them so that's a very good way to do it to me that's the best way to do it because it saves you from having to go out James and I could give you any number of websites where you could go and you could do a search but that's going to take your time or it's going to take you hiring somebody to do that we're bid match does it basically for you the only thing that matches if it's not working as you want it you need to get back to us and let us work with you to adjust it to make sure that it is a tool that you can use alright we already shall Emma says I have a few questions can I speak out you were welcome to unmute yourself to speak I haven't already addressed that um hello hello hi um I'm actually um I went on the website and just signed up for a bunch of webinars because I want to learn as much as I can I haven't started my business but I'm writing everything out and stuff like that and I want to know who like those webinars for is it for all small businesses or for just businesses wanting to send technical proposals to the government you mean this webinar specifically or you mean the part to this webinar and part two so this is specifically for writing technical proposals but if it's something you're looking to get into in the future and that's definitely you know you can take notes and you can save our slides in this video recording for future reference and we we have a wide variety of events and webinars and we accept clients who haven't established their small business yet because we find that getting advice on whether you should set government contracting as one of your main goals for revenue that's helpful at any stage and many of the tips if you do decide to go into government contracting many of the tips we offer are useful at any stage especially if you are inclined to be taking notes alright does that answer your question um yes that does answer my question AB one more question actually um what um what is a matchmaking event a matchmaking event is you you're gonna sign up and indicate what your business sells and then we will match you if your if your business is eligible we're gonna match you with agencies who may be looking to buy what you sell and you'll have a series of very short one-on-one meetings okay thank you for answering my questions absolutely have a good day um okay busy day and I believe for another meeting just want to to be included any follow-up comms thank you so much for your time and you follow up all right not sure what exactly you mean there will will it will be sending out the slides in this video presentation so if there's any questions that you missed you can scroll you can zoom to the end we have a couple things here and someone asks it can we enroll in to bid match for free and I can go ahead and answer that if you are an or Cal P tax client you can certainly enroll in bid match for flea free and I believe that other Pete acts I'm in California and other states have similar platforms that they use as well in my understanding of it is that they should be free so I can't guarantee for another program because we're all independently run but our version is free so go ahead and contact us if you'd like if you're understanding these services someone is asking how do I get a PTAC counselor and this is the last question we have unless anyone wants to ask any more the way you get in touch with the PTAC counselor is by going to our website and you can our website is norcal PTAC org and once you're there you'll see a banner at the top of the webpage in red that says apply now if you click on that banner it will take you to our application portal if you create an account just username with the email address and a password then you will be guided through application it has seven steps they're all pretty short if there's itty bit of information you aren't sure of you don't have a Duns number or a cage code or you don't know your revenue you can enter something in there as a placeholder or 0 or click I don't know and your procurement specialist if you're accepted we'll go over that with you I'll help you get those bits of information together so it's a very easy application process just go to our website wwlp.com there if you need any help you can give me a call at seven oh seven eight two six three nine one six or give me email at info at North County Tech or which are both at the bottom of these slides come on asks do we have any specific webinars for import-export processes I am not actually sure about that specific topic but you're very welcome to go to our website under the resources tab on our website we have past webinars so we have a wide selection of the past webinars we've done in the past few years and you can browse to see if there's a topic that's similar enough I'm not sure about the important export process unfortunately so where you have some more thank yous seems that well we're appreciative of your presentation Mary Jo does anyone have any other questions before we end the session you can feel free to unmute yourself now all right so thank you again Mary Jo and for everyone for joining we really appreciate you you're taking the time set aside to help your small business and participate in North County Tax events we'll have to cut things off now but want to let you know that you should have just received an email from us or should receive it very soon this email will have a link to a survey evaluation that we'd really appreciate if you fill out to let us know how you felt about this webinar we always want to be improving our services so we can help you guys out so go ahead and fill that out in the email and send it back to us also in that email as promised or in the follow-up email there will be a recording and today's slides posted so we've been recording this whole time so you can come back and reference it later this email give you a link where you can be able to find those resources and I should get that up no later than tomorrow also please don't forget as mentioned that Mary Jo will be presenting the follow-up the part two to this webinar which will be on March 18th you can also find on our website calendar and you can see on this slide here once again thank you so much for joining our writing technical proposals webinar and have a great day thank you thank you