This article is #3 of our “Opportunity Development” series.

A proposal competitor assessment is a crucial step in maximizing your chances of success in government procurements. By thoroughly evaluating your competitors’ strategies, prior award data, and key decision makers, you can gain valuable insights to refine your own bid approach. In this article, we delve into the importance of competitor assessment and provide practical tips to help you outshine your rivals and secure winning contracts.

This is article #3 in our “Opportunity Development” Series.

Developing Accurate Insights from Source Selection Plan (SSP) for Procurement Success

Article #2 Recap: You should have developed accurate insights of the Source Selection Plan (SSP) content for your subject procurement. These are combined with trends in the Technical Customer’s SOWs/Performance Specs, etc. as supported by your customer-identified Most Important Requirements (MIRs), gathered during Opportunity Identification.

Predicting Competitors’ Bid and Win Strategies Using SSP Insights

Moving On – Now that you have started improving your Pwin with Customer insights, it’s time to predict the competition’s bid and win strategies – against those specific SSP insights.

Essential Steps for Effective Proposal Competitor Assessment

Competitor assessments rely on, among other things, the availability of prior same/similar award data for the competitor’s Business Unit (BU) bidding on this opportunity. We cannot stress enough the importance of focusing on the exact BU Director and Program Manager, because they will make all business decisions for the upcoming bid based on a mixture of organizational growth objectives and present market position demands – just like you do. And they are resource, budget, and time-constrained – just like you are. So, they rely on proposal reuse materials, already-invented-here materials (strangely enough – posted to their website) and they hire topic SME consultants just like you do. And, they have the same/favorite proposal processes consultants – just like you do.

Gathering and Analyzing Competitor Data to Enhance Your Win Strategy

Competitor data can be gathered similarly to Customer data gathering discussed in Article 2. We recommend you also perform as many of the following proposal competitor assessments as possible to fully identify what/who you must beat IAW the SSP:

  • Assign 2–3-day tiger teams to brainstorm competitor proposals, at the storyboard level. Define every Technical, Management, Past Performance response – Identity bid trends and trust that they will be repeated
  • Define your competitor’s most likely win strategies for the top ten customer MIRs
  • Assign Action Items (AI) to track down source data for your “we don’t know” guesses.
  • Closed AI increases your Pwin and moves you a step away from being forced into an LPTA bid decision (either initially or at BAFO). This is critical to your win.

Overcoming Losses and Achieving Growth in Government Proposals with OCI’s Expertise

If you are finding yourself “surprised” by recent losses. Or you are watching your Capture/B&P dollars turn to vapor with inadequate growth results; OCI can help you get back to the basics of winning before and during proposal development, while avoiding LPTA decisions.

CTA for Proposal Competitor Assesment

 

Start early, do your homework, define the win before you commit to the bid.