A typical RFP/RFQ in the federal market will receive 5 – 50 responses; sometimes even more. Evaluators have full-time day jobs and have difficulty wading through the responses; typically, after their child’s soccer game. The first pass through the pile of responses is usually “whoops you missed the page count, we asked for a single key person resume and I don’t see one., etc.; that’s it for you.” Seven more to go and its already midnight. My evaluation scores are due tomorrow; there has to be a better way.

The federal contracting press delights in the stories of a $50 million-dollar contract lost because the proposal exceed the page count requirement in the RFP. Guarding against non-compliance requires an experienced proposal writer supported by an effective proposal system. Non-compliance is the biggest reason why proposals are rejected.

The three critical elements of an effective proposal system from a compliance perspective are:

1. Carefully filter the RFP for proposal requirements.
2. Complete a Compliance Matrix based on the results of the filtering process.
3. Use the Compliance Matrix to develop a draft proposal.

Fedmarket can write proposals for you and assist you in improving your in-house proposal writing capabilities for the 2021 - 2022 season. We will provide you with a fixed price quote to write a proposal for you. Send RFP link or the RFP document to sgluck@thefederalmarketplace.com.

We write proposals on a fixed price basis for:

• Companies with limited proposal writing capabilities
• Proposal organizations that are overloaded with RFP responses
• Companies responding to GWACs and IDIQs; using a model proposal coupled with services for building the model into a compliant proposal.

We use the proposal systems and procedures described in this series of installment to write proposals for companies. Many of our customers have us write the first proposal and then use the results to write subsequent proposals.