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Information for Government Contractors Affected by COVID-19

Here are some important updates on help available for Government contractors. Applying for All Possible SBA Loans Hopefully, your company has already applied for all the loans and grants available to date, not only on the federal but state and county levels. In case...

How to Develop Strong Win Themes For Your Proposal

Win Themes Are Reasons to Buy—But Are They Your Customer’s Reasons? Experienced proposal managers know that proposal win themes are the key benefits you’re bringing to the customer’s RFP. But as so often happens in the haste of proposal development, win themes can be...

New Information for Government Contractors on Relief Measures

We at OST are committed to providing the latest news and developments to help you as a Government contractor to weather the pandemic. Here is some useful information. The Senate passed H.R. 748 last night – the third bipartisan COVID-19 relief bill. The House is...

Government Contractor Guidance Regarding the Pandemic

Things change every day and sometimes by the hour with the growing pandemic. Government contractors’ lives have been upended and we are all worried about the future. At OST, we are working hard to help our clients stay cash positive and advocate for all Government...

Federal Proposal Editing: Here’s What You Missed

Proposal managers often get to wear different hats. I am stating the obvious, I know. We do not always get to stand back and orchestrate the overall effort of a winning proposal. Often we have to also get down in the trenches and perform last-minute capture management, fill out pricing and contractual forms, write the technical sections when the Subject Matter Experts are unavailable, and dare I say we even have to edit the proposal after we have written most of it ourselves.

Editing begins early in the proposal writing process and continues throughout the lifecycle, but no matter what stage you are pulled in to edit, it is a distinct task in a proposal’s lifecycle that requires a specific skill set. Editing includes cutting and strengthening text for readability and impact, bringing consistency to diverse materials, achieving a “single voice” in a proposal, and even making your writing sing.

Should We Outsource Federal Proposal Writing? Answer: Yes and No!

Perhaps the most common complaint of proposal teams – besides never having enough time – is limited availability of talent. Business development managers and program leads must make crucial and often last-minute decisions about how to staff the effort. But...

Brainstorming the Blank Proposal Page

The Catch-22 of Government Proposal Graphics Too often, the central graphic that supports the benefit and the win theme of a proposal section is the last thing the author thinks about. Why? Proposal managers and volume leads might not regard themselves as visual...

Invest in Your Business Development Education

As a business owner, we know you recognize that you are ultimately responsible for achieving excellence in business development, which requires constant honing of your skills. Proposal professionals must constantly look for new training and professional challenges....

3 Ways to Become a Better Federal Proposal Writer

A proposal is a sales document. It’s not a technical paper, a white paper, or a point paper. When you create a proposal, you must convince your client to buy from your company. A professional proposal writer needs to demonstrate mastery of knowledge, expertise, and...

Competitor Analysis with a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) Request

The Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests are a critical element of business development and capture. This is how you learn about a pursuit’s history and your competition. The problem is – FOIA requests are tricky:
They take forever to obtain – so someone needs to carefully track them and follow up relentlessly to get any results – sometimes taking months and rendering your requests useless for your capture effort.

How to Effectively Read a Request for Proposal (RFP)

As the saying goes, “well begun is half done”. Reading an RFP effectively is crucial to the rest of the proposal development process to eliminate sections rewritten over and over, omitted requirements, and ultimate lost of a proposal.

Nine Tips for Conducting Effective Pink and Red Team Reviews for Your Proposals

Proposal color reviews, such as Blue Team, Pink Team, Red Team, Gold Team, White Glove, and others, are proven best practices in developing outstanding proposals. However, many color reviews are not very effective despite their ability to dramatically improve the...

A Great Proposal Kick-Off = Smoother Proposal Development

I have a proposal horror story that involves a late and unprepared kick-off: When I was working in a corporation, we got a sudden “you must bid” directive from upper management. At a so-called kick-off, we sat in a room together reading the RFP, with senior people calling all of their contacts, trying to gather last-minute teammates to patch up holes in our strategy, and figuring out who was going to write what section. This was well after the RFP had dropped, with only two weeks left before submission.

How to Entice a Prospective Teaming Partner to Team with You

This is our final article in the Finding Contracting Teammate series. The first article explored the advantages and risks in teaming. The second article explained our detailed process for finding federal contracting teaming partners the right way. So, let’s say you’ve...

Finding Teammates for Federal Contracting Opportunities the Right Way

Finding great Government contracting teammates can increase your chances of winning a contract award. However, if you don’t invest time into selecting the right partners, you instead increase your chances of losing. In our previous article on the benefits and...

Federal Contractors: Team Up for the Benefits While Avoiding the Risks

You’ve come across a great opportunity, but you know your company alone can’t satisfy the customer’s needs. Perhaps you should consider teaming. In this post, we’ll go over why Government contractors team and some of the pitfalls to avoid. In later articles in this...

Focusing on Proposals For the Q3 & Q4 Spending Spree

We’re approaching the Federal Government’s spending rush that comes in the last two quarters of every fiscal year. In 2018, the Federal Government obligated roughly $560 billion to contractors. However, the Government obligated roughly $144 billion (26%) in Q3 and...

Using White Papers and Point Papers to Gain More Federal Business

We’re continuing along with the question, “What should you have in your business developer’s toolkit?” In addition to a capability statement and unsolicited proposals, you should also have white papers and point papers. A white paper is a thorough report that presents...

Using Unsolicited Proposals for Innovative Federal Solutions

Every business developer needs a toolkit. Within that toolkit should be skills and collateral to further your company’s federal business development goals. For example, one asset should be an updated one-pager capability statement. While not standard in your toolkit,...

Master Getting Government Sole Source Awards to Make Life Easier for You and Your Federal Customers

“The supreme art of war is to subdue the enemy without fighting.” The Art of War by Sun Tzu When we talk about the goals of federal business development and capture management at our Bid & Proposal Academy training courses, we pragmatically reduce them to only...