Transcript Pre-Proposal Activities

GCAP Presents:
THE RFP & PROPOSAL DEVELOPMENT
THE RFP & PROPOSAL DEVELOPMENT
The Incredibly Important Pre-Proposal Activities
 The Science of Proposal Development
 The Art of Strategic Communications
 The Anxiety of the Evaluation and Award
 Post Award Happy Dance or Singing the Blues

PRE-PROPOSAL ACTIVITIES

Intelligence Gathering
 Understanding
your business capabilities
 Understanding your strengths and weaknesses
 Know your competition
 Is there an incumbent contractor?
 What are their strengths and weaknesses?
 Primary, secondary, tertiary targets
PRE-PROPOSAL ACTIVITIES

Reviewing RFP and Contract Documents
 Read
completely and thoroughly
 Make working copies
 Make sure you understand what the Customer
wants
 If you have questions…Ask
 Make sure you understand the contract documents
 If you have questions…Ask
PRE-PROPOSAL ACTIVITIES

Analyzing RFP components
 Customer
Concerns
 Scope of Work
 Process and Schedule
 Format and Evaluation Factors
 Annotate Issues
 Begin to consider how you match up
PRE-PROPOSAL ACTIVITIES

Understanding cost factors:
 Material
Costs
 Direct Labor Costs
 Other Direct Costs – travel, and other items
charged direct.
 Indirect Costs
 Profit considerations
PRE-PROPOSAL ACTIVITIES

The importance of attending the pre-proposal
conference:
 If
there is one….go, even if it is non-mandatory
PRE-PROPOSAL ACTIVITIES

Creating Your WIN Strategy
 The
Driving Question: Why Us?
 This becomes the main proposal strategy and
theme
 This is the “Value Added” component to your
proposed approach, above and beyond “we will
comply”
 This drives your approach and should be infused
throughout proposal
PRE-PROPOSAL ACTIVITIES

Creating Your WIN Strategy
 How?
 Taking
stock of your intelligence gathering, RFP analysis,
pre-proposal conferences.
 Define the customer (agency) worries, issues, problems,
challenges, concerns.
 Indentify your strengths relative to these issues.
 Indentify weaknesses and if/how to neutralize.
 Capture this strategy on paper
PRE-PROPOSAL ACTIVITIES (WIN STRATEGY)
Customer Worries/Issues
EXAMPLES:
1. Accuracy and timeliness of
collecting bioassay
samples.
2. Technically Competent
personnel
3. Accurate testing
4. Timely completion of Tasks
5. Environmental
Considerations

Our Approach
PRE-PROPOSAL: GO/NO-GO DECISION
Use data collected from intelligence gathering,
analysis, and win strategy session
 Step back: Objectively evaluate
 Always better to have more than one person in
the process (devil’s advocate)
 Balancing aggressiveness with realism

PROPOSAL DEVELOPMENT ACTIVITIES

Proposal development and delivery schedule
Work backward from due date
 Give yourself enough time for all development
components:
 Writing, reviewing, editing, graphics, copies,
delivery, etc.

PROPOSAL DEVELOPMENT ACTIVITIES

Proposal Outline and format
 Follow
format dictated in RFP
 Comply with page, font, binding , pagination, and
printing requirements
 Address the issues raised within the SOW within the
framework of the evaluation criteria
 Ensure complete compliance
PROPOSAL DEVELOPMENT ACTIVITIES

Brainstorming your Response
 With
your WIN strategy, SOW, Evaluation Factors
 Begin to address each proposal module
 Better to be done with all authors, managers, team
members in room
 Gets everyone on same track
 Allows for technical interchange
 Ensures strategy infusion
STORYBOARDING AS A TOOL
RFP section:
 Thesis of proposal module

1,
2
3


Major topics of module (paragraph level)
A
B
C


Any tables or graphs needed?
THE ART OF STRATEGIC COMMUNICATIONS
Improved “Writing Skills” do not necessarily
lead to better proposals
 The quality of your proposal is directly realted
to:

 The
ability to manage the information flow
 The ability to provide a strategic response
THE ART OF STRATEGIC COMMUNICATIONS
“We will comply” is the minimum response
 The agency wants to know:

you will comply
 how you will comply
 and how your approach sets you apart from your
competition


Your “approach” has to be a surplus over
simply complying…compliance plus strategy
THE ART OF STRATEGIC COMMUNICATIONS
Your strategy for this proposal is the “added
value” of your approach.
 Your strategy is “discovered” as a basis of:

 Intelligence
gathering
 RFP analysis
 Q&A at pre-proposal conference

The strategy is infused throughout proposal
THE ART OF STRATEGIC COMMUNICATIONS

Negative proposal factors:
 Unproven
understanding of agency’s requirements
 Incomplete response: critical sections left out
 Non-compliant
 Insufficient resources (time, personnel, etc) to
accomplish tasks
 Insufficient information about your company
 Poor proposal organization: difficult to correlate
proposal content to RFP/SOW
THE ART OF STRATEGIC COMMUNICATIONS

Negative Proposal factors:
 Failure
to show relevance of past experience to
proposed project
 Unsubstantiated or unconvincing rationale for
proposed approaches or solutions
 Wordiness
 Repeating requirements without discussing how
you will perform (the old parrot trick).
THE ART OF STRATEGIC COMMUNICATIONS

The value of the Red Team Review
 An
important, but often neglected process
 Usually jettisoned due to time constraints
 Pick members for competence, knowledge,
honesty, and not intimately associated with this
effort
 Can annotate Q’s or flag (e.g. unclear, garbled,
already stated, contradiction, “where did you go to
school?” [managers only])
EVALUATION AND AWARD ACTIVITIES

Evaluation Process
 Individual
team member scoring
 Master scoring sheet
 Written clarifications
 Competitive Range
 Oral presentations
 Discussions
 Site visits
 Best and Final Offer
Optional
EVALUATION AND AWARD ACTIVITIES
Final evaluation and tentative selection
 Contract negotiation
 Notice of intent to award
 Agency approval and contract execution
 Work begins!!

POST-AWARD ACTIVITIES

Debriefing (unsuccessful and successful)
 Can
reveal weak or deficient areas that
lowered score
 Cannot reveal other companies’ approach or
merits, or score
Post Mortem and “Lessons Learned” file
 Electronic proposal files (don’t let them
become boilerplate)

QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS