Nearly all commentators predict a significant increase in federal proposal activity in 2018. These predictions are welcome to contractors after the slowest year for solicitation releases in the 21st century. Releases have been slow enough that, we hear complaints -- even from large companies -- that they don’t have enough RFPs to [...]
Gary Everett To get a good first draft of your proposal the team must focus on the following seven key elements of content: 1. The Proposal Manager must produce a numbered and titled outline identifying all topics to be addressed and assign them to knowledgeable authors 2. All Proposal Writers must be [...]
The Army dream of having a single interoperable tactical network gets a huge boost with the coming release of the GTACS II RFP, scheduled in or about February 2018. Less than 200 years after Samuel Morse sent the first telegram, GTACS promises to bring instantaneous communications to the battlefield worldwide. Enabled by [...]
Nearly every year, the battle over appropriations creates great angst in the contractor community. Who will the winners and losers be? For proposal professionals, the question as to when the appropriations will be completed is even more important than how large they will be. When the appropriations are late, there isn’t enough [...]
Gary Everett Capture, marketing and proposal staff must perform key pre-RFP release activities to enhance proposal management and content as follows: 1. Perform Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests for previous contracts, deliverables, SOPs and customer five-year plan to gauge previous contract activity, issues and initiatives 2. Obtain customer phone listing, e-mail [...]
Tim Birdsell I have helped prepare over 500 Task Order (TO) proposals. In this article I will share what I have learned about, how to scale your large proposal process for the quick-turn Task Order (TO) environment. First, let’s clarify what we are talking about. A quick-turn task order is one with [...]
Bill Kane Coaching 200 Orals over 20 years has provided insight into the question, “What is the difference between a winning Orals and a loser?” The government evaluation team has brought your actual Program Manager and key staff there to winnow the wheat from the chaff. When they see your key people in [...]
Guest Contributor: Vince O'Connell I’ve seen hundreds of proposal-losing management plans. Usually they are compliant. But they fail to strongly contribute to winning the contract. Below I will share what I have learned in the past 30 years about producing a management plan the helps you win. Push Your People Since most [...]
APMP-NCA’s final Speaker Series dinner for 2017 offers industry professionals insight into preparing successful oral presentations from some of the areas most highly regarded Orals Coaches and professionals. The event will be held on Wednesday, November 15, at the Center for Innovative Technology (CIT) building at 2214 Rock Hill Rd., Herndon, VA [...]
In the spirit of Halloween we decided to gather a handful of our favorite proposal horror stories. Is the Headless Horseman or a Late Proposal Worse? Vince O’Connell If you think seeing a headless horseman riding through the woods is cause for fright, you haven’t been through the horror a proposal manager [...]
