The Power of Substitutes: What Business Are You in?

The Power of Substitutes: What Business Are You in?

When I was teaching our Advanced Capture Management class this week at a client’s company, one of my students made an astute observation that I wanted to share with you. During the strategic competitive analysis discussion, I was explaining Michael Porter’s Five...

Six Strategies to Grow Your Business with the Treasury

Olessia Smotrova-Taylor, OST’s President and Chief Executive Officer, presented “Six Strategies to Grow Your Business with the Treasury” as a speaker at the U.S. Department of the Treasury’s Small Business Outreach in May. More than a hundred of businesses, Government...

How to Capitalize on IDIQs

It seems that the tides have turned in the Government contracting world firmly in the direction of IDIQs and GSA/VA schedules. If you are the Government, it is hard to imagine why it would not be the case. Instead of a lengthy 12-18 months procurement process, the Government can award a contract in two to four months, reducing risk of protest. In addition, the budget approval and end of the fiscal year window shrinking, it is hard to imagine that anything will change any time soon.

Reminder and Olessia’s 5 tips for proposal professionals

I am in foggy San Jose in Silicon Valley, teaching a course for Stevens at NASA Ames. It is an intense, inquisitive, and exceedingly bright group of students. Some of their questions got me to remember some truths in the proposal profession that I began to take for granted – so I am sharing them with you after quickly jotting them down at 4 am (I am still on the East Coast time).

Rules of Thumb for Proposal Win Themes

Picture a daunted proposal evaluator who has yours and a pile of other proposals to read. Visualize hundreds of pages of boring technical text with sparse graphics, until lines turn into ants running through a page. What will this evaluator remember about your proposal by the time he or she reads the next proposal, and the next?