Every proposal benefits from outside proposal reviews. Our senior professionals can participate in color reviews, conduct independent reviews against our 7 Quality Measures, and conduct mock government source selection evaluation board (SSEB) reviews. No matter which review you select, you can count on thorough, frank assessments, and actionable out-briefs.
7 Quality Measures Proposal Reviews
We’ve developed 7 criteria to assess a proposal’s quality:
- Compliant structure – proposal is compliant with the instructions, evaluation criteria, and PWS
- Responsive content – each proposal section fully addresses what the RFP requires
- Customer-focused – the emphasis is on the customer, not the bidder
- Compelling and feature rich – proposal includes features and benefits with substantiating proofs that are apparent as strengths
- Easy to evaluate – evaluators can easily score the proposal because it includes cross-references and maps back to the evaluation criteria
- Visual communications – proposal is attractive and uses graphics, icons, and tables to highlight features and benefits
- Well written – proposal uses active voice, maintains a consistent tense and conventions, and avoids vague or empty words as well as unsubstantiated “bragging”
For a live proposal, our experts will review the RFP and score your proposal against our 7 Quality Measures. We understand the last thing you need is a failing grade without knowing how to make it better. Our experts annotate specific recommendations for improving your proposal’s probability of win. At the end of the review, you’ll have an annotated copy of your proposal with a debriefing document that gives you a specific roadmap for improving the proposal’s quality.
To illustrate the power of Lohfeld’s 7 Quality Measures review, consider a small study we conducted with 6 of our clients. We reviewed 23 of their proposals against our 7 Quality Measures with the clients’ commitment to implement 100% of our recommendations. The results were fantastic—win rates improved from an average of 32% on similar bids to 76% for known outcomes (this includes proposals that won on technical but lost on cost). Click here to download the report and read more about our 7 Quality Measures.
Postmortem Proposal Reviews
In addition to live proposals, we also conduct 7 Quality Measures reviews on submitted proposals. We follow the same process as our live proposal reviews including reviewing the RFP, scoring the proposal against our 7 Quality Measures, and annotating the proposal with specific comments. Instead of providing a roadmap for improving this already submitted proposal, we conduct an out-brief discussion on how to improve your proposals generally based on this example.
Mock Government Source Selection Evaluation Board (SSEB) Proposal Reviews
Clients often report that their proposal reviews get sidetracked by grammar, formatting, and other minor concerns, but miss the crux of what it will take to improve a proposal’s chances of winning. Our Mock SSEB approach resolves this concern by conducting the review only against the government’s evaluation factors. Companies have two options for mock SSEB reviews—Mock SSEB Facilitation or Mock SSEB Review.
Mock SSEB Facilitation
During the pre-RFP phase, our expert reviews capture materials and relevant documentation such as draft RFP, strawman RFP, or the prior solicitation to prepare a custom scorecard/matrix that mimics what an actual source selection board would use. The expert meets with your capture team to have them review and buy in on the scorecard. Post RFP, the expert and capture team update the scorecard against RFP requirements, and then the mock source selection evaluation is conducted by our expert and the capture team. Our expert facilitates the review process and collective out-briefing by the capture team.
Mock SSEB Proposal Reviews
Once the RFP has dropped, our expert reviews relevant RFP documentation and related capture materials to develop a scorecard that mimics what an actual source selection board would use. This scorecard requires reviewers to identify strengths, deficiencies, risks, and weaknesses against the proposal sections and RFP’s evaluation criteria. Our expert reviewer can deliver the custom score to your team for use independently, or our expert will use the scorecard to review the proposal and out-brief your team. Outbrief includes the annotated scorecard and proposal and specific instructions for how to improve your proposal score.
Either Mock SSEB option is a transformational process for your team to understand how the government scores proposals and where their revisions will have the greatest payoff for the proposal’s probability of win.
To schedule a 7 Quality Measures, Mock SSEB, or Postmortem review, contact Beth Wingate at BWingate@LohfeldConsulting.com.
