ABSTRACT
Contractors tend to become mechanical in bidding government and commercial contracts. They read what the other side is asking for and they respond to those words. That is not an innovative approach. That is not going to produce the most successful bids.
Contractors must find a way to submit a compelling proposal to the other side. A compelling proposal is one that is so superior and so good that the party must accept it. It is almost an offer that they cannot refuse. Mechanical approaches will not produce this type of compelling proposal. We set out below issues that need analysis and thought to produce a compelling proposal. The material is intended to stimulate your thinking.
We set out below issues that need analysis and thought to produce a compelling proposal. The material is intended to stimulate your thinking. We are prepared to conduct individual webinars with companies to further flesh out these materials in the setting of each individual company’s business situation.
But with or without the webinar, these materials will start you thinking.
1. Introduction to Issues.
• Are you just going through the motions in bidding? Are you just answering the mail and nothing more?
• Do you really understand what your customer is asking for? Have you talked to the using agencies and understood what they want as opposed to what the specifications might say?
• Have you carefully thought through what it is that you’re doing and where this work is going long term?
• Do you know what your competitors are doing and maybe thinking on all of the same issues above?
If it’s been some time since you’ve answered these hard questions, you need to sit down and do it again.
2. The bidding on all contracts – government and commercial – requires a link up to how you’re going to actually perform the contract.
• I heard a senior company official in the construction area say – “We don’t build buildings. We manage contracts to build buildings.”
• It’s a subtle difference you need to understand to bid better and win more contracts. Your customer wants to understand that you know the difference and that you are owning the management of the whole contract process. You are not just delivering a one-off item and walking away.
3. Much of bidding involves how you read the contract drawings, specifications and other work requirements.
• Obviously, the analysis phase pre-bid is the most important part of proposal submission. What are you doing about bidders’ questions – are you just spewing them out when engineers and others in the company ask for them to be submitted?
• Obviously, every bidder’s question goes to every other bidder. Do you want this to happen? Do you want to tell everyone what you are thinking? Many companies have decided, “no,” they will be very selective in the bidders’ questions they submit.
• Do you understand the difference between a patent and a latent ambiguity? As to bidders’ questions, you need only submit when there is a patent ambiguity.
• Do you understand what it means to take a minimalist interpretation of the specifications and drawings? In other words, you make your own determination without a bidder’s question and without interaction with the agency on what the lowest cost approach is that you can reasonably propose. There is tremendous advantage to doing this in terms of being low. There is tremendous risk in doing this in terms of having your work rejected. Are you ready to balance these in order to win more business?
• You and your staff need to have these things consistently in mind while you’re making bidding decisions. This is a dynamic situation in which all issues and decisions are interconnected and are in constant flux. Recognize it – take advantage of it and be smarter than your competitors.
• Some companies will withdraw from the bidding completely if they’re required to ask any bidders’ questions. Why are they doing that? Because they don’t want to give any competitor insight into their thinking. This is a harsh approach.
• There are overriding questions which you occasionally need to be asked. But as a general matter, far too many thoughtless questions are asked. They just help your competitors get better.
4. Proposals and Bidding.
• Are you submitting compelling proposals with your bids/price?
Are you giving the customer what they’re asking for as opposed to what you think they should be asking for?
• Are you utilizing alternative proposals?
5. Procurement Integrity.
• What are the rules by which you must abide when bidding to the federal government versus commercially? Does your staff who are submitting the proposals understand the rules and abide by them? A procurement integrity foul up can cost you the bid after you have won it.
• What information can you have in your possession?
• What information can you solicit?
• Remember that your competitors are looking for you to make a mistake – they’ll use that mistake to knock you out of the competition if you win.
6. A Systematic Approach.
• Bidding decisions must be linked to performance plans and decisions. If you have won using a minimalist approach to the specifications and drawings, you must be prepared to enforce that during performance. Do you have a system in place to do so?
• Do you have the will to manage all these issues together? The most successful companies have the will and utilize it through all their employees every day.
• This is not easy. It’s a real challenge to utilize a systematic approach when there are so many different moving parts involved.
CONCLUSION
The foregoing should stimulate your thinking that there are a multitude of issues to be considered in bidding government and commercial contracts. It is far more than writing down answers to questions that the other side has submitted in the bidding/proposal document. You must stake out your own way of proceeding. You must be bold and innovative. You must indeed recognize that many times your customer in some ways does not understand what they are doing. Your competitors will suffer from a similar infirmity.
How do you successfully deal with this is the recurring question.
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