A proposal strategy is comprised of the methods and value propositions your business presents to potential clients, demonstrating why your proposal offers greater advantages than any other. Before you determine your proposal’s strategy, you should have already confirmed if your business is qualified to do the work listed and wants to pursue the project. Once you know that you are both capable of doing the work and how you will complete it, we can begin developing a winning strategy.  

Due to how widespread and lucrative federal opportunities are, competition tends to be very high. This often leads to contracting officers and agencies being overworked and needing a way to quickly sort out who’s a qualified bidder and who should be ignored. One of the most obvious ways to do this is through compliance. By requiring that every proposal be in a certain font size or adhere to a specific file format or page length contracting officers can know which bidders took the time to read through the entire proposal and care enough to follow every rule given. This is especially important for first-time bidders, as the government is far less lenient with companies that they don’t have a relationship with. 

Any proposal that is found to be non-compliant will almost always be rejected. Especially in the government space where even if a non-compliant proposal wins it can be protested by a competitor and end up being overturned due to not following the proper guidelines. Which is why it is so important that your team triple checks that they have followed all the guidelines set forth by the agency that published the contract. 

Making sure your proposal is compliant is generally a very simple and straightforward process. In the primary bidding document, the government will include a section titled Instructions to Offerors. Sometimes this will go under a different name, such as Bidding Instructions or Submission Requirements. They provide bidders with clear and exact guidelines to follow. Your proposal structure, page length, checklist of forms to be completed, and anything else that you will need to know to submit a compliant offer can be found here. 

We recommend creating your own compliance matrix or checklist based off this section, and mark each item as it gets finished. That way you can be sure your bid will not be rejected for non-compliance. 

• Understanding the implied needs of the agency and contracting officer, then responding to them.  

• Defining the benefits of your offer. Once you’re done telling them what you will do, follow up with the benefits that answer the “so what” that all contracting officers will need to answer. Answer them by highlighting exactly how you can assist them and why they should care. 

• Mirroring the language and structural writing of the contracting officer. 

• Demonstrating how your business and team is aligned with their culture and values 

• Providing quality assurance that lets the government know you are a safe bet 

• Pricing your bid both competitively and reasonably 

Having a compliant bid will get your foot in the door. Being responsive gets you all the way through the threshold. Responsive proposals go one step past the baseline requirements and address the implied concerns and goals of the government agency. They want to know that you understand their key issues, which might only be implied by the solicitation but never directly said. To be truly responsive consider how your offer will support the agency’s larger goals beyond the stated objective of this one contract. 

Being both responsive and compliant is what separates successful contracts from the ones whose bids keep getting rejected, even though they made sure to follow all the rules. Without being responsive you are essentially crossing your fingers and hoping that all your competition will either forget to submit their bids in time or get disqualified. 

Once you have gone through the Scope of Work and identified any hot button issues, it’s time to investigate how your proposal will be graded. Search in the primary bidding document for a section or attachment labeled Evaluation Criteria. Here the contracting officer will tell you what their priorities for awarding this contract are.  

The three most common evaluation factors are as follows: 

• Price: The lower your price the more points you score 

• Look out for any contract labeled as Lowest Price Technically Acceptable (LPTA). These contracts are nearly 100% price-based and are awarded to whoever bids for the lowest dollar amount. 

• Technical: What is the quality of the goods/services you will be providing? How qualified are the personnel who will be doing the job? 

• Past Performance: Does your company have a history of successfully completing prior jobs of a similar size and scope. 

Once you have determined which factor or combination of factors the contracting officer cares about the most you can now refine your proposal to focus on those elements. Use this knowledge to showcase that you are an attentive vendor that can empathize with the government’s priorities and guarantee that they will be your main focus throughout the lifetime of the contract. 

Ghosting the competition is a strategy where business owners will research their competitors to identify what benefits and features they will most likely offer along with any potential weaknesses. By combining their strengths and weaknesses you can accurately predict their win strategies and counter them with your own. Thereby neutralizing that company’s proposal, and making the contracting officer less likely to choose them.

Ghosting the Competition is an effective tactic to give your proposal an advantage over everyone else. If you do not consider how to dismantle their arguments then at best you’re being compared on an even playing field, and at worst you’ll be at a severe disadvantage if your competitors decided to ghost you. 

This is especially vital if there is an incumbent for the contract you are bidding on. The government likes to award contracts to businesses that they have worked with in the past. Which makes taking a contract away from the previous holder even more difficult for companies that are just starting out. By Ghosting the Competition, we can not only make our own bid stronger, by highlighting our  unique strengths, but also weaken their proposal, by highlighting their past failings or lacking services, making them the clearly inferior option. 

Effectively countering your competition requires in depth knowledge and research. Most people will gather this information through various means such as: 

Once you have enough data to have a general understanding of their likely strengths and weaknesses you can begin to delve deeper into their history by researching their past bids. Most government agencies will not let you easily access another company’s previous contracts. Which is why we’ll need to rely on the tools we have discussed in previous training modules.  

The Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) is an official legal request of the government to release any of their records into your hands. FOIAs work for any federal agency and allow citizens to have greater access to and transparency from the government. All you need to submit a FOIA is the proper form, which we have provided below, and the name of the agency or local government you are requesting the information from. Simply search their name + FOIA in your preferred browser, and send the filled out form as an email to that agency’s official FOIA contact. 

Important Note: FOIA’s of a company’s previous contract will likely be somewhat redacted to protect sensitive or proprietary information. 

The Federal Procurement Data System (FPDS) is the single source for US government-wide procurement data. FPDS is the current central repository of information on Federal contracting and provides detailed information on all contract actions. 

Click below to learn more about:

USAspending is a government source for data on federal awards by state, congressional district (CD), county, and zip code. The awards data in USAspending.gov are provided by federal agencies and represent contracts, grants, loans, and other forms of financial assistance. 

Whether working by yourself or with a team you will want to conduct multiple reviews of your proposal to guarantee that it is fully compliant and that your themes and strategy have the highest chance of being awarded. That is why at the minimum we recommend having the following three review sessions. 

Prepare for the meeting by creating the compliance matrix and list all the data/information that you will need to procure to submit this proposal. 

During the meeting you will cover the following: 

These meetings are important to establish baseline expectations, and make sure everyone working on the proposal knows what is expected from them. 

The Midpoint Review is mainly for compliance. The majority of the technical writing and bidding forms should be completed by now. Your business should have a mostly (if not completely) finalized idea for how and when you will be able to perform the tasks outlined in the contract. 

During the meeting you will cover the following: 

The goal of this meeting is to make sure everyone is still moving in the right direction, and that at minimum your bid will not be disqualified upon review. 

The Final Review is to determine if your bid is responsive. At this point all items have been checked off, and pricing has been firmly set in place. Now we get to examine the proposal from an outside perspective to see if it is truly persuasive. 

During the meeting you will cover the following: 

Our Government Procurement Advisor team will work closely with you to identify open solicitations that best align with your capabilities and growth goals. We’ll provide hands-on guidance and practical tools to help you evaluate proposal viability, structure your response effectively, and pursue opportunities with confidence. This ensures each submission meets the highest standards of readiness and competitiveness. 

During meetings with your advisor they can provide the following: