This article was originally published May 16, 2012 in WashingtonTechnology.com.

By Bob Lohfeld

I was asked to review one of the proposals submitted for the first stage of the Army’s multi-billion dollar “Army Eagle” logistics procurement and to advise an unsuccessful bidder why the company had failed to make the cut. My answer was straightforward – the bidder failed to write a proposal for the evaluators to evaluate. Here’s how the proposal went wrong.

Army Eagle is a multiple award procurement for large and small businesses that is being competed in stages. The first-stage submission, which I reviewed, was an advisory stage that required bidders to submit a short proposal describing their understanding of the Army’s logistics program and how their team’s capabilities and resources could help fulfill that mission. Based on this response, the Army advised bidders whether their team might be successful should they decide to proceed to stage 2 of the competition, the submission of a full proposal. Stage 1 was an advisory stage and does not preclude a bidder from proceeding to stage 2 even if the Army advises that the bidder is unlikely to win.

How Evaluators Evaluate

To write a great, short proposal, it’s helpful to imagine how your proposal is likely to be evaluated. In this case, you might visualize evaluators sitting at a large table. At one end of the table are stacks of proposals, and at the other end are two boxes—one for proposals that are likely to be successful and the other for proposals that are likely to be unsuccessful.

You might further imagine that the evaluators have agreed upon a standard for reviewing and scoring these proposals. In this case, the standard would certainly include how well the bidders explained their understanding of the Army’s logistics strategy and how well their team’s experience and resources stacked up against that mission. You should expect that a scoring template would be used to evaluate each proposal and serve as a basis for sorting the proposals into the appropriate box.

Quick Look Assessment

As a proposal professional, you know that when evaluators have multiple proposals to review, they will read and evaluate them in three passes. The first pass is a quick look to make sure that your Eagle proposal followed the RFP instructions. They want to see that you titled sections as expected and structured your proposal so that content appears where it is expected to be. Every proposal should pass this quick-look compliance test and, assuming your proposal does, the evaluator will perform the second evaluation pass.

Proposal Content Skimming

The second pass comprises proposal content skimming. Here you would expect the evaluator to flip through the pages more slowly, looking at the figures and tables and reading the action captions that go with data presented graphically in each proposal section. This pass is like reading a graphic novel with the reader looking at the pictures and expecting the story to be told without having to read the text.

To score well, your Eagle proposal’s first section should have an insightful graphic depicting the bidder’s understanding of the Army’s logistics mission. The next sections, on experience and resources, should have well-crafted data tables proving relevant team experience and resources with action captions explaining how this data relates to fulfilling the Army’s mission. If crafted correctly, the content-skimming pass should establish a solid first impression that your proposal is a winner and should be sufficient for the evaluator to develop an initial score for your proposal. After content skimming, the evaluator should have a pretty good idea which of the two boxes your proposal is destined for.

Detailed Proposal Reading

The third pass is the detailed reading of the proposal text. With the evaluator having developed an expectation from the figures and tables about what the text will convey, the evaluator is now ready to delve deeper into the proposal and understand the full story conveyed by the text. The text should reinforce the story that was told through the graphical presentation and point out any subtleties the evaluator may have missed while skimming figures and tables. The text ties it all together and completes the story.

In reviewing the unsuccessful bidder’s proposal, I found no content to evaluate in the content-skimming second pass. The proposal had no figures and only one data table that was poorly constructed. Content skimming put this proposal solidly in the loser category, and the text did not redeem the offerer.

Upon reflection, I think the bidder had a good team and could have been successful in the stage 1 competition, but the proposal document lost the game.

E-mail your comments to RLohfeld@LohfeldConsulting.com.

Thanks to everyone who stopped by our exhibit at APMP National Capital Area’s (NCA) Proposal Boot Camp 2012 – we really enjoyed visiting with you! Kudos to the NCA Chapter for another great event!

The whole Lohfeld team is looking forward to APMP’s Bid & Proposal Con 2012 in Dallas, TX in just a few weeks (May 22-25). Be sure to stop by our booth for your chance to win a NEW iPad (iPad3), and add our team’s presentations to your “must see” schedule for the conference! Pick up a copy of AppMaven’s Favorite PC Tools and iPad Apps 2012 booklet.

Take a minute to check out our latest capture and proposal-related blog posts:

• 10 Ways to mitigate pursuit phase risks
• Insights on Low Price, Technically Acceptable (LPTA) procurements
• 10 Topics to include in your kick-off meeting agenda
• 12 Required kick-off meeting elements
• 10 Ways to mitigate proposal solution development risks
• 6 Early-stage proposal products to identify and develop

Feel free to send an email to Beth Wingate, our blog editor, with your requests for future topics.

We’ll help keep you current on best practices in our field with valuable information you can apply every day!

Click to read Section L Update eZine – April 2012

This article was originally published April 23, 2012 in WashingtonTechnology.com.

We’re frequently asked how to improve a company’s overall win rate, and I outlined these in the article I wrote in my January 2012 column “How to Raise Your Win Rate by 20 percent” using our seven-factor model. Since then, we’ve been surveying companies to see how well they perform in these seven factors and to identify areas where companies can make immediate improvements.

In this article, I’ll share some of the survey results and show you immediate actions you can take to help raise your company’s overall win rate.

In February and March 2012, we conducted two surveys – one with the Association of Proposal Management Professionals and the other with the Deltek GovCon team. The surveys asked proposal managers, capture managers, and business development professionals to rate how well their companies performed in each of the seven factors. We used 28 questions in the survey to measure performance and to pinpoint areas where companies could make improvements to raise their win rates. Based on the survey, here are six quick fixes that most companies can make to improve their win rates.

1. Capture and Proposal Training: Only 52 percent of the companies surveyed provide career development and professional training for their business development, capture management, and proposal development staffs.

Every company should have career development plans for its employees and offer professional development training for its management, key employees, and especially for those people involved in business development, capture management, and proposal development. They should also provide training in proposal writing for technical and managerial professionals to help them write more compelling proposals.

Companies can develop these training programs internally or contract the training to companies that provide such specialized training. However you do it, some training is better than no training. By offering this kind of training, you can immediately leapfrog half the companies in your market.

2. Business Acquisition Process: 54 percent of the companies surveyed have not documented their business acquisition processes.

It is an indisputable principle that having a well-structured business acquisition process increases business acquisition effectiveness and reduces cost, yet half the companies surveyed compete using undocumented processes. Documenting these processes is the first step in raising the maturity of the business acquisition process. All companies of any reasonable size should have defined, repeatable businesses acquisition processes covering the business development, capture, pre-proposal preparation, proposal development, and post-proposal submission phases of the business acquisition life cycle. These processes should be fully supported by management and used for all new business acquisition.

3. Capture Management: Only 33 percent of companies review their capture progress and use these reviews to make management decisions about pursuing or continuing to pursue new business opportunities.

Companies should evaluate every new business pursuit monthly and make an affirmative decision to continue, delay, or suspend the pursuit. If no reviews are conducted, then every new business opportunity remains in play, even when it is clear that the company can’t win. Proper capture management reduces the effort spent on opportunities that are likely to be losers and focuses effort on opportunities with a better chance of winning. Measuring capture progress and making associated management decisions also are essential parts of the business acquisition process and necessary for increasing your win rate.

4. Management Decisions: Only 45 percent of companies surveyed use gate reviews as part of their business acquisition process.

The purpose of gate reviews is to ensure that management makes timely decisions about continuing to invest in a new business opportunity and to provide an opportunity for executive management to coach the capture team on how to raise its win probability. These gate reviews are fundamental to effective and efficient acquisition of new business.

5. Annotated Outlines: 70 percent of proposal writers begin writing their assigned sections before management has approved what they are going to write.

Annotated outlines or storyboards probably are not used. If they are used, they are not reviewed and approved by management. No wonder there is so much rewriting involved in completing typical proposals.

6. Proposal Quality: 37 percent of companies surveyed said their proposals suffer from errors that could cause them to lose bids.

Professionally developed proposals do not have these problems. They are always compliant, compelling, and responsive. Major improvements in proposal quality are still needed by many companies.

Compete survey results are available on our website.

E-mail your comments to RLohfeld@LohfeldConsulting.com.

Dear Proposal Doctor,

Managing a big, complicated proposal is hard enough without having to listen to my complainers all day. I have two of them. They complain about everything from the quality of the graphics to the mayonnaise on the sandwiches at lunch. Responding to their issues and listening to them vent is just taking too much of my time, and I am worried about meeting our deadline for red team. I might even have to postpone it. How can I deal with these individuals?

Sick and Tired

Dear Sick,

I guess you didn’t see the column I wrote on proposal archetypes. The complainer exhibits many of the behaviors of the martyr and the talker, and probably the worst of both.

Here are two principles to keep in mind. First, forget responding to their specific complaints. The complaints are symptoms of an underlying attitude problem. If you improve the mayonnaise, they will start complaining about the mustard. If you hire a better graphics person, they will start complaining about the desktop publishing. Removing a source of dissatisfaction does not create satisfaction. Second, consider the aptitude/attitude matrix:

The mistake that almost all first-time managers make is to spend their time with people in the lower left quadrant, when they should be spending their time with people in the upper right quadrant.

With these principles in mind, where do your two Bobsey twins fit? We already know they are not in either of the two upper boxes. If they are in the bottom right box, which is to say that they are producing valuable content, then it is worth coaching them individually so that they are aware of the effects of their behavior?

It isn’t just about your time. Complainers sap the energy and enthusiasm of the entire team, and with two of them feeding on each other, you could have a serious morale meltdown if you don’t nip this problem in the bud.

There are plenty of creative ways for complainers to get things off their chest. You can create a space on the electronic Team Site, on the proposal wall, in a journal, on suggestion cards. They can have a 5-minute time slot each day to complain to one other person (preferably someone not on the proposal team). Or you could counsel them to exercise some self control until the proposal is done, after which they can complain to anyone who is willing to listen. On one proposal we had a box on the table for the whiners: each whine carried a $5 price tag.

If your twins are in the bottom left box, it is time to replace them. No matter who takes their place, you won’t be worse off than you are now. And then, make sure you start paying attention to the people in the upper right quadrant. They are the ones who need your attention, recognition, and reinforcement.

Just as an aside, it always amuses me to hear proposal managers complain. When I hear a proposal manager complain about lack of sleep, pressure, too much to do, etc., I always want to ask them why they are in this profession. Complaining appears to be an American tradition, and it is something we excel at. That doesn’t mean that it is admirable or productive.

All the best,

Wendy Frieman, The Proposal Doctor
(Send your proposal-related questions to ProposalDoctor@LohfeldConsulting.com for possible inclusion the Proposal Doctor series.)

During the informative 30-minute webinar session, Bob presented his four fundamentals for how proposals need to be viewed throughout the creation process and how those fundamentals enable you and your team to view your proposal from the government’s perspective.

Title: GovCon Business Development Weekly Four Fundamentals for Creating a Winning Proposal
Date: Tuesday, May 29, 2012
Time: 11:00 – 11:30 am ET
Location: Rebroadcast Video
Cost: Free

Register for the BD Weekly Series, Free

We’ve had great response to our new Insights blog, featuring posts from the entire Lohfeld Consulting Group team. Thanks for the many kind emails! We’re looking forward to sharing lots of great capture, proposal, design, and technology-related best practices, hints, and tips in 2012 and beyond.

Take a minute to check out our latest posts:

• 7 Reasons to meet the client before RFP release
• Back to basics – spring cleaning
• Top 10 reasons to vote your color team reviewers off the island
• Top 5 reasons to gather info about business opportunities – and what to gather
• 4 Major elements of qualified business opportunities
• Top 10 favorite business/proposal development-related books

Kristen Pennypacker, Brooke Crouter, Wendy Frieman, and Beth Wingate are all busily preparing their presentations for the 2012 APMP Bid & Proposal Con in Dallas, TX, May 22-25. Be sure to add them to your schedule of “must see” presentations at the conference – and stop by our booth for your chance to win a NEW iPad (iPad3)!

We’ll help keep you current on best practices in our field with valuable information you can apply every day! Section L Update eZine – March 2012

By Bob Lohfeld

These survey results (7 Proven Factors to Raise You Company’s Win Rate (Survey Results) March 2012-Lohfeld Consulting Group) show how proposal managers from 36 companies rated their individual company’s performance in the 28 factors that we use to predict a company’s overall win rate.  You can see from the survey that there is room for improvement in all of the areas surveyed. Areas where most companies need immediate improvement are:

• Capture and Proposal Training – this training is only provided by 52% of the companies surveyed. Every company should have a career development training program and make capture and proposal training available to appropriate employees.
• Business Acquisition Process – only 54% of the companies surveyed have documented their business acquisition processes. If you are going to have a defined, repeatable, and managed process, the first step is to document the process.
• Process Management – only one company in three reviews their capture and proposal progress and makes decisions about bidding or continuing to bid based on these reviews. This is an essential step in managing, measuring, and optimizing your business acquisition processes.
• Gate Reviews – only 45% of the companies surveyed have gate reviews as part of their business acquisition process. The purpose of gate reviews is to coach participants in how to raise their win probability and to control spending on new business opportunities.
• Proposal Outlines – 70% of proposal writers begin writing before their outlines are reviewed and approved. No wonder there is so much rework needed to complete proposal sections.
• Error Free Proposals – 37% of the companies surveyed said their proposals suffer from errors that could cause them to lose bids. Looks like major improvements are still need in proposal quality control.

E-mail your comments to RLohfeld@LohfeldConsulting.com.

This article was originally published March 22, 2012 in WashingtonTechnology.com.

By Bob Lohfeld

Are protests destined to become just one more milestone in the federal procurement process? Recent evidence might suggest so. Notably, the protested award to Lockheed Martin for the U.S. Antarctic Research program in the South Pole and the Hawker Beechcraft protest of the award of the new light attack aircraft trainer are recent examples.

In addition, market experts predict that as defense budgets decline, companies fighting over fewer dollars will launch more protests when losing procurements that can lock them out of programs or agencies for a decade.

If protests are to become the norm for competing in major programs, then it’s to everyone’s advantage to find ways to reduce the number of protests and awards that are overturned. When companies file protests, everyone loses. The procuring agency loses because procurement time lines get stretched out. Bidders lose because the cost of participating in federal procurements goes up. Even the apparent winner incurs additional costs to defend the award, and the losing bidders incur additional costs to file the protest.

Capture and proposal managers can take some precautions that may help minimize the likelihood that their procurement will be protested or award overturned. To learn first-hand what you can do, I reached out to three attorneys with practices in federal procurement protests to see what they suggest. Here’s what I learned.

According to Dave Nadler, a partner at Dickstein Shapiro LLP in Washington, DC, protests can begin when the government releases a defective request for proposals. “Review the RFP with an eye to unclear, ambiguous, unduly restrictive text, especially text specifying a brand name or written around someone else’s product. It is better to seek clarification and use the Q&A process to make sure the solicitation is clear and that your interpretation is reasonable than to file a protest,” he said.

If you are unclear about the interpretation of proposal instructions (typically Section L) or the evaluation criteria (typically Section M), then the evaluation team will probably be confused too. If the RFP is deficient, and you choose to protest the RFP, then you must file your protest before your proposal is submitted, otherwise the Government Accountability Office will rule that your protest is untimely and will summarily dismiss it, Nadler said.

As a proposal writer, there is nothing more frustrating than working with a poorly written RFP. If you have one of these, let me know and I’ll present your argument to the agency pro bono for the good of our industry. We will all benefit from well-written RFPs.

As you write your proposal, there are other pitfalls to avoid. Shlomo Katz, counsel at Brown Rudnick LLP, reinforces that you must follow the requirement of the RFP precisely. “If the RFP requires certain documentation (e.g., resumes) or certain credentials (e.g., a Ph.D.), and you don’t provide what was required, and the agency selects you anyway, that may be grounds for a successful protest. Similarly, if you make technical claims back them up with data, especially if you are claiming your widget is twice as good, twice as fast, twice as durable, etc. Ditto if you claim you can deliver in half the time of your competitors. Explain your technical approach in sufficient detail to justify that you are the best (if that’s what the evaluation criteria call for),” said Katz.

You can also have protests related to your proposed costs. According to Katz, “If your cost/price is significantly higher than your competition, make sure you explain the value proposition, and if your cost/price is significantly lower than your competition, make sure you explain why it is realistic. I had a protest where the agency selected the offeror whose cost was way below the government estimate, and GAO threw out the award because the proposal did not prove its own cost realism.”

There are also some legal gotchas, according to Carol L. O’Riordan, partner in the O’Riordan Bethel Law Firm, LLP. “Ensure that everyone on the team has current and required licensing, credentials, and past performance in place because it is more than embarrassing if a subcontractor’s employee is put forth as key personnel, but his required license is outdated or lapsed,” O’Riordan said. “If the procurement uses GSA schedule vehicles, make sure the team’s vehicles include the required services. Watch out for organizational conflicts of interest. Starting with all known information regarding the procurement and evaluation, make sure you understand to what extent everyone on the proposed team checked and confirmed that each has no affiliation or involvement with those identified on the other side or other procurements where conflicts may exist.”

As a final thought, some protests can be brought to the procuring agency for review, rather than going directly to GAO. This may be more advantageous, but be mindful that there are certainly timeliness rules that apply to whichever protest venue you choose.

About the Author

Bob Lohfeld is the chief executive officer of Lohfeld Consulting Group. E-mail your comments to RLohfeld@LohfeldConsulting.com.

Did you know your company can raise its win probability by 20% on each and every bid that it submits by following 7 proven steps?

Imagine how much additional revenue your firm could generate if you could increase your win rate by 20% — and imagine how much you could grow your business with the additional profit.

Increasing win rates is everybody’s goal, yet few people address the task of raising overall company win rates.

In this webinar, capture and proposal expert Bob Lohfeld shares Lohfeld Consulting Group’s research on how to increase proposal win rates and explains the 7 factors that affect overall company win rates. Using an online assessment, each participant can use the 7-factor model to assess their company’s performance in key areas that affect win rates and build a preliminary plan for win rate improvement.

The 7 steps to raise your win probability will make you better prepared to compete at the highest competitive levels, improve your capture and proposal game, and help you plan and reduce the workload needed to create winning proposals. The 7 factor model is an excellent free tool for predicting how much win rates will increase from incremental investments to improve the competitiveness of your firm. It also provides a quantitative basis for computing return on investments and presents a clear roadmap to increase your firm’s overall win rate.

Increasing Your Win Rate Touchdowns In 7 Proven Steps – 3-7-12 Webinar Replay

7 Proven Steps to Raise Your Company’s win Rate – GovCon Weekly Webinar 3.7.12 (PowerPoint slide deck)

7 Factor Assessment – click to begin survey

Survey Results – March 2012

We’ll help keep you current on best practices in our field with valuable information you can apply every day! Section L Update eZine – February 2012