Federal Proposal Services has a track record of multi-million-dollar winning proposals (single awards) in the fields of Information Technology and Cybersecurity, Defense and Aerospace, Architectural / Engineering and Construction, Healthcare, Security, Staffing and Management Consulting, Janitorial and Facility Maintenance, and other business sectors. We have been instrumental in capturing and winning more than $500B in IDIQ contracts and more than $30B in requirements-based Federal awards. These awards include highly competitive and coveted vehicles such as the GSA OASIS-SB (all Pools 1, 2, and 3), GSA 8a STARS, NIH CIOSP3-SB, NIHCATSII, VA VECTOR, and several other Agency-specific IDIQ contracts. Businesses have averaged an 85%-win rate on government bids using our services. This has led to a significant return on investment for our clients. We can help you take advantage of the GWACs and IDIQs you’ve already won and provide the resources you need to position your company effectively and respond to multiple, concurrent task order proposals.
Federal Proposal Services helps companies establish a bid and proposal center of excellence to help improve the efficiency of bid and proposal activity. These companies see the value in a unified approach with established methods, processes, and tools necessary to win business.
Federal Proposal Services is experienced in helping clients build and manage an effective and efficient sales/business development operation on the scale and schedule that best fit your needs. This bid and proposal center of excellence will be the basis for building a winning business development culture to sustain growth and promote productivity.
Creating a Proposal Center of Excellence
The term “center of excellence” has become widely popular in the past few years. Its meaning is a clear-a site that embodies the very best in people, skills, methods, and tools. Typically, when an organization undertakes an enterprise-wide program to develop “centers of excellence,” the goal is to institutionalize “best practices” in the form of consistent analytical methodologies, improved approaches to maximize value, and the use of internal resources, and consistent design methodologies and implementation approaches.
Applying that concept to a proposal operation, to create a center of excellence we must identify the characteristics of the people we need in the operation, train them so they possess the right skills, and define the best practices and tools that will enable them to create outstanding proposals, as measured by revenue generation, win ratios, productivity, and customer satisfaction. (The metrics are important because a proposal center operation is not an end in itself. It’s only justified to the extent it helps achieve the broader goals of business capture established by its parent organization.)
So, what does it take to set up a proposal center of excellence?
A clear mission definition. Everyone who works in the proposal center, who contributes content to it, who calls upon it for support, or who manages it must share a common view of the purpose of that center: to increase win ratios while holding the line on proposal costs.
One way to help make sure that the proposal center has the right mission and that everyone sees it in the right light is to position it within the sales and marketing organization. Sales is bottom-line driven, and sales management is used to take an objective view of performance. Having a proposal center report through engineering, technical documentation, customer support, or some other area of the company is much less likely to provide the proper point of view.
The right people. Who should work in a proposal center? Good writers, of course. At least one outstanding graphics person. But people who have a sharp, general sense of business issues. People who are willing to dig and do some research to understand an opportunity better. People who are competitive by nature and who take pride in the wins.
The right training. There are lots of things a good proposal writer needs to know, but the two most important deal with (1) managing the process, and (2) producing a winning deliverable. Managing the process of getting a proposal done is similar in many ways to other complex projects, but there are some unique aspects that a proposal manager or writer needs to know, such as how to hold a kick-off meeting, how to extract information from the field sales team, how to generate consensus among all contributors regarding themes and positioning for the proposal, and so on. Producing a winning deliverable is a matter of knowing how to communicate persuasively. A lot of that is a matter of structure-saying the right things in the right order-but some of it is a matter of style-saying the right things in the right way. Both can be taught, and this kind of training should be required of all members of the proposal team.
The right methods. Writing every proposal from scratch is impossible, and it’s not even desirable. Cutting and pasting proposals together from a single source file doesn’t work, either. The right methods involve storing reusable components that can be selected based on a definition of the opportunity and the client, then assembled into a coherent draft document. In addition, in most proposal centers, multiple writers must work simultaneously on different parts of a large deal. Otherwise, they may never finish in time. As a result, the right methods include team collaboration, too.
The right resources and facilities. In today’s wired world, it’s no longer necessary to have everyone working in the same office. People can collaborate over virtual links, using Web conferencing, Web-based tools for proposal generation and management, and so on.
After assessing needs and objectives, we help design and set up a bid and proposal operations center. Federal Proposal Services has the know-how and personnel to manage this center to maximize efficiency and resources. Federal Proposal Services’ outsourced services help you maximize existing resources, tools, and personnel while combining the know-how and expertise of Federal Proposal Services’ best practices. You will enhance your long-term capability while getting immediate assistance on current sales or capture opportunities. We will operate the center for as long as necessary to help create a winning culture. We determine your long-term needs, design & develop best-in-class processes and institutionalize center operations. We provide end-to-end support to help you develop your process, document key roles, and responsibilities, and provide a roadmap to cost-effectively establish a proposal function.
Take your proposals to the next level and learn how Federal Proposal Services can improve your success rates.
