Public Bid Posting Doesn’t Mean a Level Playing Field

The U.S. Government is all about transparency: it posts bids publicly. Yet, just because most opportunities are posted for the world to see, that doesn’t mean a level playing field. You have to learn how to take advantage of other open sources of information, in...

2013 APMP Conference Updates

APMP 2013 Bid & Proposal conference in Atlanta became a great success with hundreds of people attending. And we are happy to announce that on behalf of the National Capital Area Chapter Olessia accepted the 2012 Communications Award, and especially the fact that our colleagues from OST, Julia Pochekueva and Alex Brown were largely responsible for the chapter communications during 2012 (Julia as the E-zine Chair and Alex as the Marketing Chair).

Three Categories of Win Themes

To develop your proposal winning strategy, you need cross-functional contributions that might include people in your organization who know the customer well, subject matter experts in the statement of work, contracts, pricing, and account executives or business developers who communicate with the customer.

Start the first team meeting with a presentation on the opportunity background, and then discuss what to expect during the meeting. Then, explain to your team what your win themes are, and how you are going to go about developing them.

Why You Need a Proposal Process

A robust proposal process is integral to writing winning proposals. Being able to translate all the great information collected during capture into a compelling, concise, and compliant proposal by the due date (and without undue stress) is the key to success of a proposal effort. The use of proven processes eliminates chaos and it enhances and coordinates everyone’s efforts.

Keeping Your IDIQ Team on the Same Page

Having your IDIQ vehicle information documented correctly and in one easily accessible for the team place brings many benefits to your proposal development process, contributing to better communication and collaboration among team members, more efficient use of scarce...

How is FedBizOpps Useful in Business Development?

Anyone in the know in business development doesn’t get too excited if they happen to see something that looks exactly like what they are trying to bid on when searching FedBizOpps.gov (FBO). The Federal Government is supposed to post all unclassified opportunities over $25,000 on FBO. It is safe to say, however, that FBO is pretty much useless to you for bidding purposes because most of the opportunities that appear there have been discovered already by your competitors.

Your competitors may have been planning for these opportunities for a while, throughout the entire acquisition process from when the opportunity was created to the point of its culmination in a Request for Proposal (RFP) or Quote (RFQ). Rarely do you stand a chance of winning if you pick an opportunity off a website as public and popular as FBO late in the game, once a draft RFP, and especially the final RFP, has been issued. It has probably been “spoken for” or “wired” by some company that has taken its time to prepare.