Miscellaneous Proposal Tips

Tips for proposal management How to make the most out of your resources
People are not interchangeable parts. You should use people where you can get the most out of them. Some people are better than others at tracking and record keeping, following instructions, document formatting, proof reading, sticking to the schedule, following the RFP, etc. These skills do not always correspond to experience or pay-grade.
It will help if you understand what you really need. For example, some people have knowledge, but are lousy writers. They can contribute information, but the best way to get it might not be to ask them to write a section. Instead, pair them up with someone who has good interviewing and writing skills. If you have a good writer, instead of giving them a specific section, you might want to task them with re-writing instead. Then you can feed them the input from all of your subject matter experts. There is always more than one way to divide up the work that needs to be done. Pick the approach that best fits the resources you have available.
How to deal with subcontractors
Your subcontracts will always be late with their submissions, and when you get them they will not be what you asked for. Plan accordingly:
Put your subcontractors on a different schedule from everybody else. Get their stuff early. Make sure you have multiple contacts at the subcontractor, including the boss of your primary point of contact. Make expectations absolutely clear. People will agree and then be late anyway, but at least it won’t be because they didn’t know what you wanted. Get your subcontractors to commit to being present and working out of your office at key times. If key writing will take place over a few days or a week, ask them to be there. Do this early, when they are still excited about the opportunity to team. Better yet, make it part of the teaming agreement. A version control process is vital
You must have a simple to follow, preferably documented, process for version control. It should include your file naming conventions, and address back-ups and roll-backs in case of a problem. But most of all, it should provide a complete and thorough audit trail. You may need to know who made what change when. You may not be able to simply rely on file date stamps, and may need to use tracking sheets.
How to use compliance tables
One of the major reasons that people are forced to do proposals The Wrong Way™ is that they are out of time. This is almost always caused by starting too late. You probably even know why and who’s to blame, but can’t do anything about it and have to figure out a way to submit anyway.
When you create your proposal outline, you can create extra work for yourself, or you can save yourself effort by combining requirements. A good proposal will track to the RFP perfectly and will address all requirements in detail and with examples. But you don’t have time for that. Instead, consider combining similar requirements and addressing them as a group. If you have time, you can provide a list of RFP paragraph numbers that a given section addresses.
RFPs often say that you should not simply respond by saying that you will comply with the requirement. So you have to do it without anyone catching on to what you are doing.
One way is to combine requirements in a table or exhibit. Then introduce the topic with high-level language talking about what will be done, the benefits it will provide, or your experience with it. Then refer to the table for a list of steps or components of your solution. You can improve on this by providing a column in the table for your approach (where you provide a single sentence’s worth of detail), the benefits of your approach, or how your approach mitigates risk.
Miscellaneous Tips
Process is whatever you call it. The purpose of a proposal process is to ensure that information flows in an orderly and reliable way into the document. The goal is the orderly and reliable flow of information into a winning document – not process. Therefore, when in doubt: cheat. Do the proposal The Wrong Way™. Achieve the goal if not the process. Avoid having to show authors that their changes were made. While verifying that changes were made correctly is a good idea for quality assurance, that does not mean that you have to include the original author. For one thing, you might decide not to include all of the edits! Especially near final production, if an edit won’t affect the evaluation score of the proposal, you might decide to ignore the edit. You won’t have time to discuss the finer nuances of every edit you ignore. Start a Text book library. Text books are filled with wonderful high-level lists that can be used to invent an approach out of thin air. And since most text books don’t deal with real-world applications, a lot of what you will find sounds really good and technical, but doesn’t actually commit you to much. Feed people. Have food available so that you don’t even have to take time away from the proposal to order it. Wasted food is better (and cheaper!) than wasted time. And the cost of the food is miniscule compared to the investment in the proposal.

Tips for Solving Last Minute Page Count Problems An important part of finishing any proposal is making the final page count. Many government agencies have a policy of returning excess pages to the bidder unread. At least one agency starts their review by counting pages from the front of the proposal. When they get to whatever their magic number is, they remove all the rest and send them back to the bidder unread. If this happens to your proposal, you have problems. Not only will your evaluators not see something that your team thought was important (whatever was in those returned pages), you will probably be judged "non responsive" to parts of the RFP. You will also have left your evaluators with the indelible impression that you cannot follow instructions… not exactly a message to make someone want to choose you instead of a competitor!
So how do you get your 20%-over-page-count, ready-to-go-to-press, Final draft down to size? The first step is to have the authors and volume managers make one last pass through the almost-final document. After authors and volume managers take their last shot at page count, consider going to the "3-2-1 system." With one or two days to go before printing, three people - good candidates are the Capture Manager, Program Architect, and Proposal Manager - take the entire proposal and try to take out material. With half a day to go, cut the number of people "negotiating" to two. And with a hour before any section has to be printed, anoint someone king (ideally, you already have - the Capture Manager) and let him or her make the final decisions. But page reduction is not just a matter of judgment about what to cut and what to keep. In many cases, because of the way sections break between pages, just removing a few words can save an entire page. Here are some useful hints that will help you reduce pages.
Look for paragraphs with only one or two words on the last line. Find some way to reword part of the paragraph to eliminate the extra words. It is almost always possible to do this without losing any meaning. Ways to do this include: Rewrite wordy phrases. Even after a good edit, there are ways to rewrite sentences that may not be as pleasing to the eye or ear, but take up less space. - Change from passive to active voice. "We did…" takes up less space than, "Thus-and-so was done by us." Adjust paragraph margins by as little as 0.05". A punctuation mark after a word is treated as part of the word, sometimes causing the whole word to wrap to the next line. While this trick may technically violate the strict letter of the RFP, it will not be noticed in a paper-only submittal. If you don't overdo it, the odds of anyone noticing it, or complaining if they do, in an electronic submittal are negligible. Turn on automatic hyphenation. Adjust the "hyphenation zone" in your word processor to a smaller number and allow unlimited sequential hyphens. The result may look a bit awkward, but you'll get more words to the page. And lastly, one that seems very odd but actually works quite well: Eliminate every instance of the definite article "the" in the paragraph. Then reread it and put the "the's" back where they are absolutely necessary. (I once cut nearly one full page from a 100-page proposal using this technique. And the proposal actually read better!) Allow sentence fragments as Headlines. Newspapers do this all the time. If you have boxed summaries at the start of sections, allow sentence fragments there, too. Change stand-alone Headlines to run-in heads. No, they don't look as nice, but looks must sometimes take a back seat to content. If the RFP doesn't specify a maximum number of lines per page, consider reducing the leading of the paragraph. ("Leading" is the spacing between lines of the paragraph.) You can also reduce the spacing between paragraphs. While both of these tricks certainly push the intent of page budgets in the first place (and if you aren't careful, you can make the pages look very crammed), they do work. But don't overdo it, either in the amount of leading reduced on each page or the number of pages on which you use this trick. Used judiciously, the chances of aggravating an evaluator with either of these techniques are small. Change the typeface in your tables. Even if the RFP calls for a specific type size in tables, it is rare to see a typeface specified. There are many condensed typefaces that will allow you to pack a lot of information in a small space but are still quite readable. Eliminate references to artwork. If your artwork is clear and well-captioned, eliminating references is not a bad compromise to increase information density. Eliminate unnecessary graphics. Look for artwork whose only purpose is to reinforce points made in the text. Reduce the amount of substantiation of any claim. If you have two examples to illustrate a point, make it one. If you provide excerpts of data from some report, eliminate the excepts all together. While the preceding list is not complete, it does demonstrate that there are lots of ways you can meet page count, even when you discover the problems at the last minute. But a better way to address the problem is to prevent it in the first place. Practice the P7 rule: Proper prior planning prevents probably poor performance.

Pricing Strategies If you anticipate being higher in cost than your competition, your proposal should justify the value in your bid. If possible, you should quantify that value. For example, if you have a higher up-front cost but offer lower long-term total cost of ownership, you should show how much you will save the customer in the long run. In Federal Government contracting, the evaluators specifically look for "Best Value" and may consider awarding to a higher priced bid if they can substantiate why it represents a better value. If you are worried about being undercut in price, then emphasize risk and continuity of service. Again, it is important to quantify things. Show the customer what an interruption in service can cost. If a lower cost means lower capacity or longer delivery time, show how the customer will be impacted. If a lower cost means lower quality, then demonstrate the cost of defects. The costs don't necessary have to be in dollars. For example, a delay might not have a dollar cost, but the customer will be negatively impacted. Show the down-side to every trade-off decision that can result in a lower cost. Position yourself as the low cost provider, because anything lower is simply unrealistic and not worth the risk. Show that you are cost conscious and how you have a lean, mean, and highly productive solution that is worth it because it represents the best value to the customer.
If you anticipate being lower in cost than you competition, you need to defend against the higher costs justifications above. Steal their themes. Demonstrate how your bid is the best value. Describe in detail how you've mitigated the risks. Provide a credible story for how you will ensure the customer is not negatively impacted. If there are trade-off decisions, show that the ones you made represent the best value. Show that you've provided the right amount of capacity, capability, and quality without building in any unnecessary costs. Show that there are added benefits to the customer of having an efficient solution. Turn things around and show how you can be quicker and more responsive because you've built in less fat.
If you are not sure whether you will be high or low, you have to assume that you will be high. But as you can see in both examples above, the key is value and how you show it. If you think you are probably in-between the highest and lowest costs, then you can position yourself as the best trade-off --- you have the lowest possible costs without making high-risk sacrifices. People often make this claim, but for it to be credible, you have to show the risks and how you've mitigated them.

What not to say in your proposals Instead of being afraid of saying something wrong that causes you to lose the whole proposal, you should be more concerned with saying a bunch of little things that dilute your message. This happens far more often. Maybe it's because people take a while to get warmed up before they start writing anything decent. Many of the examples below are things that people often write out of habit to help them get started. You can write a better proposal just by breaking these habits.
Qualifications Without Benefits
It's not about you. Your proposal should be about your customer. Instead of saying:
When you were founded Who the founder was How much you have grown How long you have been in business How big you are How many employees you have How many cleared staff you have How many locations you have What your mission is About your other customers Where you are located We're ISO certified We're certified in... We're an 8(a) or SDB Say how your size, age, location, or other qualification will benefit the customer. Make it about them and not about you.
Who cares?
If you find yourself saying any of the following, you should find a way to re-write it so that the customer will care:
We are pleased to respond We pride ourselves Our strength is our people We believe Empty assertions
The adjectives below are often used without any substantiation. Empty assertions do damage to your credibility and do the opposite of persuading the customer. Avoid saying that you are these things, unless you prove it. You may be able to drop the adjective and just keep the proof.
State-of-the-art technology Top firm Great reputation Premier Low risk Excellent customer service Best value Respected Our customers come first We are the only ones Best of breed/class Leading edge State of the art Quality focused Uniquely qualified Innovative Miscellaneous Don'ts
Don't tell the customer what their needs are. If you feel the need to document the requirement, do it in the form of a statement about what you are going to do to fulfill the requirement. Don't summarize requirement. You can show your understanding by stating what you will do to fulfill the client's needs. When you summarize the requirement, it's redundant with the RFP and runs the risk of being patronizing or just plain wrong. When you say what you are going to do and how the customer will benefit, they will recognize it as something they need (or at least something close). Don't use passive voice. It's a grammar thing. If you don't know what it is, look it up. It's important. And finally, here are some things that are OK to say...
We don't know, but we'll find out What you expect of the customer What other people say about you There are risks associated with the project There is nothing wrong with being human. You don't have to be perfect or have all of the answers. You just have to show that you are an excellent partner to work with through the ups and downs of the project.

5 Things You Must Do to Avoid Proposal Failure It is possible to eliminate the false starts and “do overs” that seem to plague proposals. Here are solutions that can prevent the most common ways that proposals go bad. They may not be easy to achieve, but they do make it clear what you have to do.
Achieve executive level buy-in for process enforcement and adherence by the executives themselves. You’ve got to start at the top. Typically this means the Executive Sponsor of a bid, or the person with profit and loss (P&L) oversight responsibility and control of resource allocation. The problems you need to be on guard against are: Late starts due to indecisiveness or a failure to commit at the beginning. Radical changes in direction near the deadline because it’s the first time that the person in charge has actually looked at the document. Reviews that are not called for by the process, but required by the Executive Sponsor and usually introduced without warning. You cannot prevent the Executive Sponsor from leading in a direction that is different from what you would choose. But what you can do is get the Executive Sponsor’s buy-in so that their own self-discipline prevents it. We recommend three strategies:
Be up front and honest about what you want --- their support and enforcement of the process, starting with themselves. Let them know exactly what they can expect. If your process is not well defined, then they have no way of knowing what to expect from it. We designed the MustWin Process so that you can place it in their hands and they can see exactly want to expect at every step. Remember, they have the P&L responsibility and really want to know how things are going to go. Give them a chance to opt-out. Let them know that they are not forced to do it your way. Forcing them is just begging for resistance throughout the process. Instead, after showing them the process, ask them if they want what the process will deliver (efficiency, expectation management, quality validation, etc.). If they want that, then there are certain things they need to do in order to get it. If they want it, they are less likely to break it. We have found it to be very effective to forge a pact with the Executive Sponsor based on you both having commitments to each other.
Gain access to staff who are able to fulfill your expectations.Because many proposals do not have enough people assigned to them, people tend to think in terms of having enough staff. It almost seems unreasonable to ask for top quality staff when you can barely get staff of any quality. But you need to apply a filter, because staff who cannot fulfill your expectations are no good to you. However, you must be able to define your expectations. Consider these: Able to conceive of a winning solution to the customer’s problem and then write about it. Able to read an RFP and incorporate the requirements into the proposed solution. Able to formulate a content plan prior to writing and then to incorporate all of its instructions into the text when writing starts. Able and sufficiently available to meet the proposal’s deadlines. Familiar with both the technical terminology and the customer’s terminology. Having some of what you need is not always better than nothing on proposals. Wasting time with someone who fails to deliver or delivers a broken write-up can leave you with no time to recover. Don’t simply accept the staff offered. If you expect to deliver a quality proposal, you need to filter your staff to make sure they can meet your expectations.
Be able to articulate your expectations. Expectation management is critical to addressing the needs of a team of people and having their individual efforts align to create a document that will win over the hearts and minds of the proposal evaluators. Managing expectations is often easier than articulating them. Before you start the proposal, you should consider all of the many ways you will need to be prepared to state what you expect: Before the proposal starts At the start of the proposal When planning the content Before making assignments When enforcing the process When enforcing the schedule When preparing a validation plan Before assigning and guiding reviewers When receiving reviews and assigning changes/corrections Before finalizing changes Before starting production When preparing the proposal for delivery Keep in mind that you will also have to manage the expectations of others. You may even have to articulate their expectations for them. Also consider all the various stakeholders who will be involved in expectation management. One of the reasons that our MustWin Process is so helpful, is that it documents the expectations of the entire team in a way that you can put into each person’s hands. If people don’t know what is expected of them, they probably won’t deliver.
Define quality in objective, measurable terms. Defining quality will not only end arguments over whether the proposal is “any good” but will also enable you to measure progress against it. You should use a definition of proposal quality that: Reflects what it will take to win Makes clear what writers should deliver Is measurable Can be used to validate the design and execution of the proposal document We go far beyond simply providing a definition for quality in the MustWin Process. We built the entire process around that definition. Instead of measuring performance against the outline or the deadline, we measure it by whether the proposal fulfills the quality criteria, which in turn are based on what it will take to win.
Discover problems before it is too late. If you wait until you’ve got an end-to-end draft or until you can see the proposal the way the customer will see it to discover problems with it, it will be too late. Engineers don’t build a car and then begin the process of looking for problems in the design. They validate the design at every step along the way. They actually have it easier, because they have the luxury of time to develop a prototype. It might be more valid to compare building a proposal to building a rocket without having any engine tests before the launch. Instead of writing the proposal and then reviewing it, you need to hold reviews prior to writing so you know that what you're going to get will be what you need on the first try. The review that comes after the writing is just to make sure that what is produced is within spec. The MustWin Process provides a methodology for Proposal Quality Validation that enables you to validate the individual attributes of what you need in the final product so that you can check them as early as possible.

Listen Up! The Customer is Speaking… No matter how smart a business development consultant is, he or she is not the customer. I relish every chance I get to talk to customers to try to better understand how they think. In our last newsletter, we asked people who have participated in evaluating proposals to send us their comments. The validation of the advice we have been giving people was very satisfying. Here are some excellent suggestions we got from those evaluators who wanted to pass on some advice to proposal writers.
An evaluator of childhood literacy, teen pregnancy prevention, and academic enrichment programs didn't like having to read through irrelevant information, but did like concise proposals that linked staffing, pricing, and other information to the program's objectives. An evaluator of grants for teacher training institutes liked bullets and a description of how each activity addressed the program's objectives. An evaluator of marketing services did not like being overwhelmed with irrelevant information about the background of the service provider, but did like it when the responses followed the order of the RFP requirements and the pricing was aligned with the services to be provided. An evaluator of IT, finance and property management, and training services was put off by people who waffled and talked too much about how "excellent" they are. He made awards to people with a track record who submitted simple proposals that were easy to understand. A telecommunications procurement evaluator deducted points when people didn't follow the RFP instructions for formatting. A user who participated in the evaluation of a design, build, and operate commercial project saw major players lose because they did not fully read and understand the RFP. An evaluator of military avionics, engines, and systems procurements noted that proposals lost when they didn't clearly state the benefits of the offering to the end users. A rural economic development evaluator took notice when people put more effort into the formatting than on the information in the proposal, or filled their proposals with meaningless fluff. The offerors who won didn't promise the sky for the lowest price, but instead provided a realistic plan. An evaluator of consulting proposals saw those who properly scoped and understood the work lose contracts because they didn't follow the RFP criteria. The winner understood the work and followed the RFP. A government contracting officer liked the use of an RFP cross-reference matrix, hated the use of small type, and was honest about making awards based on the lowest price. Other recommendations included:
Minimize the use of buzzwords Make the pricing clear Keep any recommendations to the client relevant to what you have been asked to provide Check to ensure your references are current It's remarkable how similar the comments are. Whether reviewing a grant for social services, procurement of military hardware, information technology services, consulting services, a government acquisition, or a commercial procurement, the evaluators all had similar concerns. What are the common themes? Customers don't want proposals; they want the product or service that will fulfill their needs. If your proposal doesn't show, clearly and simply, why buying from you will fulfill those needs, the evaluators will not be pleased. Evaluators also expect you to follow the RFP. Don't overwhelm them with information just because you think they should have it, or provide generic information that isn't directly relevant to the RFP. Just give them what they need to evaluate against the RFP — and drop the fluff. If you align your pricing with the services and benefits you offer, customers often will often spend more to get more. But you have to know the customer, becuase not all will. Even small players can win over big players, if they make an effort to understand the customer.

Past Performance - Hints on Preparing Especially after reform in contracting, past performance has become the section that often decides who wins or loses the contract. The dozens of proposals we have worked during the past three years have usually assigned 30 - 40% of the total evaluation score to past performance. Past performance can assume an even more important position in the proposal, however, because no Source Selection committee is going to award a contract to a vendor lacking strong past performance.
The key questions are these: (1) How complete is the past performance archive? (2) How is the process of preparing the past performance going to be managed? And (3) who is going to write the past performance?
It has been our experience that the number of companies that maintain an up-to-date past performance archive is small. The usual case is that the past performance citations are out of date, incomplete, or non-existent.
The first step in the job of producing a responsive past performance section is to assess the requirements and plan accordingly. How many past performance citations are required? What are all the technical / experience areas that must be addressed by the citations? How many of the requirements will need to be addressed by citations from subcontractor firms? Given the situation, how many person- hours of labor will be necessary to complete the past performance section? Which citations are long-lead items requiring advance planning because of the need to interface with subcontractors or develop information lost from corporate memory?
The question asking who will write the citations can have different answers. Occasionally, there will be project or program managers with the time and ability to write at least a first-draft response on some of the citations. Usually, most of the work will default to the editor(s) assigned to take responsibility for the past performance section.
If the past performance section is complex at all, it will be helpful to begin with an audit of the solicitation requirements. Determine what are the important elements of experience required to do the job. Format the past performance so that each citation addresses as many parts of the spec as possible. At the end, audit the body of the citations to ensure that you have conclusively demonstrated the capability to do all parts of the spec.
Our experience has been that, at least 90% of past performance citations will have to be edited to a lesser or greater extent. Usually, the citations are out of date, incomplete, or fail to adequately address the requirements of the job being proposed. Consequently, it is incumbent on the bidder to edit the citations as appropriate to tell an effective story.
Usually, you can plan on expending at least four hours per citation, if not double that, given average field conditions. The editors will sometimes be lucky in having one or two citations that are already close to the spec. However, it is more frequently the case to have citations that require complete reformatting. Often this work will require the editors to interview the cognizant project / program managers on the phone, and just finding these individuals frequently requires a significant expenditure of time. In cases where these managers have left the company, the editors may need to use their creative imagination.
Many solicitations require the bidder to provide references in the past performance section, including the name and phone number of a customer contact person who can be called. It has been our experience that, for every proposal, any references provided need to be checked. Sometimes, it is a challenge to even find the references, as they have changed job, or agency. Consultants are good to do this, because the references will speak more candidly to the consultant than to the contractor. Any bidder who skips this step is courting disaster, as companies sometimes do not have an accurate understanding of their customer opinion.

How to Ensure You Are Ready To Bid Most companies know that to have the best chance of winning an opportunity, you have to be aware of the opportunity before the Request for Proposals (RFP) is released. When you are aware of an opportunity prior to release, you have better access to information about the customer, the opportunity, and the competition, as well as time to find out more. You also have a chance to influence the RFP. Finding out about the RFP prior to its release gives you a chance at tilting the playing field in your favor. Finding out about opportunities prior to RFP release is one of the most important things you can do to gain a competitive edge.
Unfortunately, most companies do not do a good job of taking advantage of the time before RFP release, even when they know about an opportunity in advance. They end up starting the proposal without being as well positioned or informed as they should be.
The reason for this is that most companies never define what "bid readiness" means. They don't have a specific plan of action for how to best take advantage of the time before RFP release. While they put their best effort into it, they treat bid preparation as part of the sales process or some mysterious art that cannot be measured. How can you be ready to bid if you don't have specific criteria that tell you when you are ready? How do you measure your progress towards being ready? How do you know what you have accomplished and what you still need to work on? Making bid preparation measurable is the only way you can consistently be prepared.
Unfortunately, this is difficult for a number of reasons:
You don't know what will trigger the start of the process. You don't know how much time you will have --- it can range from days to years. The customer controls most of the milestones and they vary greatly from opportunity to opportunity. You will never be able to collect all the intelligence you would like to have. Most companies just try to do "the best job they can" at collecting intelligence and preparing for RFP release.
There is a better way…
The first step is to identify the information you need in order to be prepared. We generally break these down into categories such as:
Scope of work Schedule Acquisition Strategy Evaluation Criteria Financial Points of Contact Competitive Intelligence Competitive Advantage Teaming We have identified a list of typical questions for each of the areas identified above, and have published them in a separate article.
We recommend checking your progress at least four times between when you first become aware of an opportunity and when the RFP is released. If you become aware of an opportunity a year in advance, you have three months between each check. If you become aware of it one month before the RFP is to be released, you only have a week between each check.
The purpose of checking is to determine whether the progress made to date is sufficient to ensure readiness when the RFP is released. While you will have limited knowledge at first, by the time the RFP is released you need to be ready. The checks ensure that progress is made in an orderly manner, without things being left to the last minute or forgotten entirely. Each check provides an opportunity to re-evaluate how you are going to get answers to the questions that you do not have answers for yet.
At each review you should see progress towards being able to answer those questions. Also, at each check the answers should become more detailed and more specific. The first time you review your progress, it may be sufficient to have a high level description of the scope of work and a point of contact. By the fourth progress review, you should be able to answer most of the questions and be turning that information into specific plans and strategies for your proposal.
The combination of specific questions to answer and regular progress reviews ensures that the critical time before the RFP is not wasted. After all, it would be a shame to squander the advantage that being aware of the opportunity provides you with. This is what happens all too often when companies lack a definition of bid readiness and the means to measure progress towards it.

47 Things to Know Before The RFP is Released Most companies just try to do "the best job they can" at collecting intelligence and preparing for an RFP release. If they have any structure to their process at all, usually it emphasizes collecting intelligence to justify a bid decision. While establishing a positive return on investment is a good thing, there are a lot of other things you need to know to write a winning proposal. Here is a list of things you can use to assess your progress.
Scope
Define the scope of work Determine the locations of work Influence the scope to your advantage and to the competition's disadvantage Develop approaches to fulfilling the requirements Scope staffing requirements Identify any gaps between the scope and your own capabilities Identify relevant project references Identify relevant internal subject matter experts Schedule
What is driving the customer's procurement schedule? What are the milestones in the customer's procurement schedule? When is the RFP release expected? How much time will be allowed for preparing the proposal? When would the customer like the project to start? When would the customer like the project to be complete? Will there be a phase-in/transition period? Acquisition Strategy
What are the customer's acquisition strategy, contract vehicle, and/or approach? What are the customer's procurement process/procedures? Will there be any small business, local business, or other preferences? Evaluation Criteria
Will the customer have written evaluation criteria? If so, what are they? If not, what are their unwritten criteria? How is your company positioned against the evaluation criteria? Can you influence the customer's evaluation criteria? Do you understand what it will take to win? Financial
What is the estimated value of the opportunity? What is the customer's budget? Is it funded/approved? Can you influence the customer's budget for the opportunity? Points of Contact
Can you draw the customer's organizational chart? Do you understand the lines of authority and influence? Who are the points of contact (POCs)? Who should be contacted for which reason and by which person in your company? Do you have a contact plan? Competitive Intelligence
Can you identify all potential incumbents? What other companies might be interested in bidding? If you can't identify the potential competitors by name, have you identified them by profile (type, size, etc.)? What are the strengths and weaknesses of each one? Competitive Advantage
What are your strengths and weaknesses compared to the competition? What is your strategy for positioning against the competition? Why will the customer select you instead of the competition? What are your other win strategies? Can you articulate what you offer the customer and why they should select you? Teaming
Who could potentially fill any gaps in your ability to cover the scope of work? What companies could potentially strengthen your bid or position? Are there any companies that you would rather team with than compete against? Identify reasons for and against teaming with other companies to pursue the opportunity. Identify the requirements, process, and negotiation strategies for potential teaming partners.

Post-Award Debriefs Generally, the Government is required to give a meaningful de-brief to the bidders in a competition. And, again generally, the Government is pretty good about doing it, even though I suspect the individual de-briefers would just as soon be doing almost anything but performing this task. Here are some rules that work regarding de-briefs:
The time to insist on a commitment to a meaningful de-brief is BEFORE you create the proposal, not AFTER it. I suggest that your marketing people arrange for a face-to-face meeting with the Government Program Manager, or even a higher authority (your best guess at the Source Selection Authority - the person who is actually going to make the procurement decision - is a good start). Of course, this must be done well before the curtain goes down on customer contact, at which point you can deal ONLY with the Contracting Officer. Typically, this is 3 months or maybe 6 weeks BEFORE the solicitation comes out. The essence of this brief meeting is: We intend to bid on this job. We bid only to win, and therefore, we’re bidding with the expectation of winning. Win or lose, we expect, in return for our hard work in seeking your business, that we will obtain a detailed, comprehensive, candid de-brief of how our proposal was evaluated highly, and where you found it lacking. Win or lose? Why would you want a de-brief if you WIN? Hey, we’ve won. That’s enough. Now let’s proceed with the program. WRONG. Even when you win, your proposal probably had some hard points. And just because you won doesn’t mean that you won for the reason you THOUGHT made you win. I’ve heard of cases in which the supposition was that "we won on our superior technical solution“, when in fact the only reason you won was your price, and the customer wasn’t all that crazy about your technical solution - you won IN SPITE OF a so-so technical plan! Take along at least one Designated Listener / Designated Recorder. This ensures that at least someone on your de-brief team is taking careful notes, not only of what was said, but the body language of the de-briefers. If the Program Manager-Designate and the Marketing Manager are asking questions, and probably emotionally involved (especially if you’ve lost a "must-win“ competition), these people can’t be good note-takers or objective observers. Document the results, and circulate it widely. This is true even if the results are an embarrassment to some individuals. Yes, this is risky, and you must use SOME discretion, but the organization as a whole, and especially those proposal team members who labored long and hard in the trenches to create a winning proposal, DESERVE to hear the positive feed-back that comes from a win, and NEED to know the negative feedback from a losing proposal. The only way to get better is to learn from your hits and misses. Insist on, and then carry through with, de-briefs.

How to Deliver Bad News in Writing While you can't turn bad news into good through clever wording, the way that you deliver bad news in writing can affect how it is received the same way that it does when speaking. Some speakers know how to deliver bad news, and others only make it worse. The same is true in writing.
The introduction is very important. It sets the context for the bad news, and context has a lot to do with how bad news is received. Instead of jumping straight into the bad, try leading with something positive. Describe what went well or a beneficial outcome. Or explain something positive about the future. Take the long term view, and present a positive vision for the future.
The bad news itself should go in the middle of your message. If there are five paragraphs, the bad news should hide in the middle of the third. Your goal is not so much to hide or minimize the fact of the bad news, so much as it is to place it in context and make it part of an overall message. You need to introduce it, and you need to leave them with it explained and in context, so the bad news should go in the middle.
Once delivered, the bad news should be followed by the remedy, lesson learned, or course of action that will result in future prevention or improvement. You should consider making a commitment to taking some kind of corrective action. Turn your weakness into a strength. However, your response must be credible and verifiable.
Conclude by showing that you care. It could be nothing more than an apology, but it should show genuine empathy. You have mastered the art when your handling of the situation earns you respect and you are seen as someone who can be relied on when things go bad. And it's OK to tell the reader that this is what you hope will result in the long run. You want your reader to recognize that everyone has to deliver bad news sometimes, that you are making an effort to do it right, and that if the shoe was on the other foot, they would be saying and doing the same things.
The key to delivering bad news is trust. When you have bad news to deliver, it often means that your trust has already been damaged. If your message is not credible or you fail to live up to your commitments to make positive changes, the result can make things worse instead of better. If your delivery of bad news is deceitful or lacks credibility, it will be like pouring gasoline on the fire. If the reader's trust in you is damaged, it can be earned back, but only if you are willing to make the effort.