contact sid@sidjaffe.com or 703-855-3160

Archive for month: November, 2014

You are here: Home / 2014 / November
✎

Proposal Graphics: Using Photos in Re-compete Proposals

November 25, 2014/in /by

by Daniel Brown

Don’t underestimate the power of a photograph in a proposal—particularly in an incumbent bid. Here are three examples that can make a difference.

Head shots in the Staffing or Resume Section.  Many proposal evaluators may see your project team members on-site every day or have attended meetings with them, yet cannot remember their names. A photo would help with this recognition, reminding them, for example, who it was that gave that great suggestion at a recent Agency Technology Roundtable or provided that quick-turnaround support. Clients want to deal with people they know.

Project or Work-in-Action Shots. If a team approach is vital to contract operations or if your team recently accomplished something (such as training, the completion of a hardware deliverable, or a quality control check on a product), a photo with an action caption just might capture the message. Showing the team in action or with work products can augment project descriptions in the Past Performance section effectively—evaluators can get your message with just a glance.

Be careful, however, in taking any photos on-site at a government facility or of sensitive work products; many agencies prohibit the activity.

Photos of Corporate Officers in a Teaming Situation.  A renewed prime-sub relationship in a rebid might be an opportunity to use a photo of top corporate officers shaking hands or working together at a table. A caption that pledges renewed commitment and oversight might be appropriate. Typically, space restrictions for this in a proposal cannot accommodate this—but you might be able to use the back cover or title page. Personalize things whenever you can, particularly if one of the team members is a large business.

To learn more about proposal graphics or for assistance in developing them for your proposals, call Daniel Brown at 240-438-2064 or e-mail him at Daniel@sidjaffe.com.

✎

Capturing a Re-compete Contract—Don’t Wing It!

November 24, 2014/in /by

by Bill Hamilton

Even small companies who insist that the re-competition of their current contract is a must-win can fail to make capture activities a priority. They believe that since the client knows them and they are already doing the work, they can just “wing it.”  Discussed below are key reminders of the elements of a good Capture operation—whether it is for a re-compete contract or new business.

Capture is a process. Managing capture activities is similar to managing any program or project. It is not and never can be a casual effort. Good capture requires a well-thought-out plan, clear roles and responsibilities, and a schedule of activities and reviews. Like a project, capture management on a re-compete should begin at initial contract award—not when an RFP drops, and should have the capability for course correction built in.

Good capture requires commitment of the company to bid to the best of its ability. A capture program for a re-compete should have the attention of top corporate management. In a military sense, the project in capture deserves and demands command attention. Ensure that your corporate management is focused on it and not pushing it aside for emerging concerns or “low-hanging fruit.”

Good capture requires authority and accountability—without interfering on current project operations.  The Capture Manager must have authority to carry out the mission with full accountability to management. Most important, it should not interfere with current support. If your Project Manager is not your Capture Manager, activities must be coordinated between them. Established relationships and programmatic issues managed by the Project Manager must be respected and planned.

Good capture requires the full support and resources of the company. The capture team must be staffed and resourced well throughout the process. People assigned to the team should stay with the team for the duration.  Some may have a part-time commitment, but team members must have full commitment for the entire effort; consistency is important—for your call plan, research, and analysis.

Good capture requires evidence. The best evidence available should support all decisions and approaches. “We’ve always done it this way” is a chorus that should not be sounded. There is no place for complacency or guess-work. Don’t neglect your research. Every decision, every conclusion, should be reviewed and challenged until the win. Do not assume anything and be mindful of the technical, political, and funding environment—your customers’, your competition, and your current operations!

Good capture requires sound detail-oriented management and communication. Re-competes have been lost because a capture team overlooked or ignored one small piece of information.  The more team members discuss information, analyze it or challenge it, the better their win chances. Be sure to document the process as you progress. Have regular team meetings and set aside space on your server or web portal to house relevant documents, meeting notes with customers, industry or technology developments, and competitive intelligence.

The capture of re-compete or new work requires more than a wing; it requires the full bird. Want to discuss a capture approach or need assistance in winning work? Contact me at 703-405-8912 or by e-mail at Bill@sidjaffe.com and let’s talk.

✎

Transforming Marginal Performance—Strengthen a Re-compete

November 24, 2014/in /by

by Sheryl Birsky

Facing the re-competition of a current contract is always a challenge—particularly if your performance has not been stellar or if you have had to make course corrections during the period. No contactor is perfect. We have found that addressing these situations head on—both at the time of occurrence and in your re-compete proposal—is best. Do not ignore it: a negative situation can actually be key to your success. Three ways that you can make the most of miss-steps are discussed below.

Own it and hone it. If you receive negative feedback from a client or discover a mistake, do not waste time with blame, but make the necessary changes swiftly. Prove that you are acting in the best interest of the customer and that you are a solutions-oriented company. Accept it, fix it, monitor changes, and document it. In your proposal, these situations can be turned into a section on Lessons Learned or added to a Risk Mitigation Plan—showing that you will not repeat the situation and that you are proactive in the new contracting period. No other contractor in a re-compete proposal can demonstrate a better understanding of potential pitfalls in the exact client environment. Use this to your advantage!

Turn your staff into an empowered project team seeking solutions and everyone wins. Instill an environment of continued process or skills improvement in the staff. Encourage forthright discussions and ownership of performance—not fear of repercussions from corporate management. Provide avenues for both anonymous and face-to-face progress reports from the team. Most important, involve them in finding solutions to problems. It strengthens team cohesiveness, innovation, and personal skills enhancement. In your proposal, cite concrete examples of where the team that you are rebidding is innovative, self-improving, and solutions oriented—a key proposal discriminator.

Use negative feedback as an opportunity to bond with your client and to clarify expectations and goals. This is a prime opportunity to deepen your relationship with a customer. Schedule meetings to discuss problems, issues, progress and goals; know your client management and understand what is valued most. Show your client that you’re mature, cooperative, and flexible. Ask questions and always follow-up. Work at solidifying the partnership. Everyone wants to do business with people they know and trust.

A re-compete can be an opportunity for a new management approach to address client concerns. For example, the new contracting period might see the addition of an Executive Review Board comprised of the prime and subs to oversee coordination activities (with customer attendance and input). However, be mindful of introducing new approaches in the re-compete proposal without first validating it with the customer.

Remember, negative feedback or an error can be transformed into a positive and actually help you win re-compete business if you take the right actions. If you need proposal assistance or would like to discuss ways to maintain your incumbency, contact Sheryl at 202-785-5811 or e-mail her at Sheryl@sidjaffe.com.

✎

Your Re-compete SWOT Analysis

November 22, 2014/in /by

by Sid Jaffe

A SWOT (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats) Analysis is not just for annual corporate strategic planning or to be used at the start of a proposal initiative. Provided below are tips to help you begin accumulating, analyzing, and acting on the data that you need to win!

Begin your re-compete plans at contract award; the first step is announcing, scheduling, and planning for your SWOT throughout the period of performance, including the criteria that you will be using to grade your performance. SWOTs should be used as a performance report card quarterly on each contract.

Gather your project support team at least four times a year; don’t limit the review team to only key personnel—others have information you will want to collect. Document your accomplishments, successes, mistakes, and areas for improvement. Look for add-on work (nibbling), new approaches on your client’s behalf, and what your competition is doing in the marketplace.

Intel should also come from your clients. Where practical and appropriate, have your company executives do a Quality Assurance check with your customers to learn their concerns and what they are thinking and dreaming. Engage them in your SWOT! It is an opportunity for your customer to share their feelings about your firm at the highest level. At the same time, executive visits demonstrate your firm’s commitment to the customer.

SWOTs should be specific and detailed (quantify whenever you can), and most important, be flexible and allow for course correction. There is an old saying: If you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it. Use metrics where possible. When your work on the re-compete proposal begins, you will have the documentation at hand to: (1) chart your progress and to prove that you have provided first-rate performance; (2) are proactive, forward thinking and innovative; and (3) that you have operated the contract in the customer’s best interest.

Start every SWOT with a review of your previous SWOT to see how the landscape has changed and to assess your advancement. Don’t forget, we are not aiming to use this evidence to persuade the customer of how well you have performed, but how well you will perform on the next contract.

To learn more about conducting and using SWOT analyses or implementing the right actions and tactics to win a re-compete, contact Sid at sid@sidjaffe.com or call him at 703-855-3160.

✎

Proposal Graphics: Visually Document Your Performance

November 12, 2014/in , /by

by Daniel Brown

As an incumbent contractor on a re-compete bid, you have the unique capability of documenting your response to your customer’s requirements over time. Prove your successful approach in a new contracting period through carefully compiled statistics and performance measurements. The best way to do this in a proposal is through visual storytelling.

Most evaluators focus on the graphic on the page first; create the impact you desire through charts and graphs while being succinct! Evaluators may gloss over a series of numbers or dense verbiage. Capture their attention with the discriminators that matter most to the customer.

Select what you present carefully and provide visual data to illustrate how you have exceeded customer goals. Make the evaluator study the graphic and learn the content—especially important for evaluators who are skimmers. For example, in a Help Desk operation – a simple bar graph can document the increased speed in which Help Tickets are closed after you had implemented a new Solutions Guide. Further, add an additional bar that illustrates how your time to complete is better than the quoted industry average (look to organizations such as Gartner or the Help Desk Institute for that data).

Do your proposal graphics tell a compelling story and demonstrate your discriminators without long blocks of text? You have the advantage here, make sure that your graphics reflect it! To learn more about proposal graphics or for assistance in developing them for your proposals, call Daniel Brown at 240-438-2064 or email him at daniel@sidjaffe.com.

Read more articles on the topic of Re-Competes >

✎

Maintaining Incumbency: Customer Communication – Plan For It!

November 11, 2014/in , /by

by Bill Hamilton

We all know of cases where a long-standing incumbent contractor found out they were no longer considered relevant when a competitor that they thought offered no competition blew them right out of the saddle—and their contract.

So why did this happen? It would seem that as an incumbent has everything going for them, including the all-important access to the customer, a full understanding of the agency mission, a grasp on the client’s problems and the agency employees and their dreams.

Often, the loss can be attributed to complacency. One company we know lost a contract because its management did not visit the customer often enough to maintain visibility, much less keep abreast of changes in thought or strategies. Other companies have lost because they saw changes in their client management but did not react to those changes. Agency policy changes can be directed from external sources as well as internal ones. It can be easy to ignore changes because you consider them unpleasant or irrelevant. Frequently, politically driven changes can be a significant opportunity to assist your client agency when they need help the most.

Arrogance is an even more tragic cause of loss of a long-standing contract. It is easy for a contractor in place for a long period of time to develop the opinion that they know more about their client than the client does. In those cases, a contractor can attempt solutions based on their opinion alone—devoid of critical client input or support.

Proactivity in customer support and customer communications can and does frequently save a contract that could be on its way out. Good customer service is based on a full knowledge and understanding of missions, concerns, goals objectives and the dreams of highest management, middle management and the agency technologists. Winning a re-compete means that you can state the customer’s mission, goals, dreams, and concerns in their words so that they realize you understand the situation and the requirements.

Keep personal relationships strong and current. This is not new. We learn the importance of building and sustaining relationships very early in our careers. Unfortunately with time, many contractors forget how important that communications link is to business growth and for maintaining the contracts they already have. Develop and implement a Communications Plan for the life of your contract and include all client stakeholders.

Want to discuss ways to improve your customer care and communications? Give me a call at 703-405-8912 or e-mail bill@sidjaffe.com and let’s talk.

Read more articles on the topic of Re-Competes >

✎

Re-competes: Getting the Most From Your Boots on the Ground

November 10, 2014/in , /by

by Sheryl Birsky

When preparing to re-compete your contract, the best intelligence is from your project team. This requires an honest look at activities by the people who do the work and who have everyday access to the customer. We recommend creating a Project Boots-on-the-Ground (BOTG) Questionnaire. Responses to the BOTG survey should be completed by all team members—not just the managers—and should be submitted to corporate management anonymously to allow for forthright information without fear of repercussion.

Only the contract team will know the details of how you have performed; the initiatives you have put in place to deliver improved services; the issues you have overcome; and the details of how the contract and requirements work in practice. On multi-year contracts, even the contract team may have forgotten details and lessons learned. This survey for the contract staff may identify the true temperature of operations, what the customer is thinking, and the value-adds that other bidders will not know.

Remember, do NOT use the government e-mail system or server to discuss or transmit any material related to the re-compete or a proposal; use your corporate or personal e-mail systems.

If you would like a sample of SJ&A’S Boots-on-the-Ground Questionnaire, or to discuss ways that SJ&A can assist in developing your re-compete proposal, contact Sheryl at 202-785-5811 or e-mail her at Sheryl@sidjaffe.com.

Read more articles on the topic of Re-Competes >

✎

Meeting the Unique Challenges of an Incumbent Bid

November 10, 2014/in , /by

by Sid Jaffe

Preparing for an incumbency bid can require more time, energy, and thought than a bid for new work. This may seem contrary since the client and the work are known; writing the proposal should be easy. After preparing hundreds of re-compete proposals and analyzing protests of incumbent contractors who have lost their bid for the re-compete work, we have learned the common pitfalls that bar us from a win—and those activities needed to spur us to an award for the continued business.

Four Common Pitfalls of a Re-compete Bid

  1. They Know Us! Though you are an in incumbent, you will still need to prove your understanding of the work and detail your accomplishments in the proposal. Do not assume that evaluators will fill in the gaps; you can never be positive who the evaluators will be and how familiar they are with your company and your support. Further, in the case of a protest, missing data will not help you. Never let the government assume anything; always document.
  2. Not Knowing Where You Have Been. It’s vital to capture the contract history, your performance data, and the changes that have occurred during your period of performance—both with the customer and with your support. We are not only aiming to use this as evidence to persuade the customer of how well you have performed—but how well you will perform on the next contract. Detail the attributes that they can continue to expect and give examples, such as where you saved the government money, improved quality, showed quick reaction, or were innovative. These will discriminate you from the competition.
  3. The “Business as Usual” Syndrome. It’s important to get that right mix in a proposal—the invigoration of a fresh approach all while emphasizing a low-risk, proven contractor who knows the work. Frequently, incumbents neglect innovation. Customers rarely look for the exact same solution in precisely the same way. What you consider as important on the contract might not be your client’s current pain point. Changes in agency priorities, budgeting, retiring managers, and evolving technology necessitate a fresh look. Before the RFP is released, validate the client’s needs and concerns and your approach for the new contracting period with them. Undoubtedly, things have changed since your last proposal and your customer has formed many opinions; don’t be complacent or stagnant—your competition isn’t!
  4. Underestimating the Competition. We have heard many accounts of companies knocking out the incumbent and the incumbent contractor never saw coming. They may have won on price, technical, management, or a staffing approach. It is vital that you are current on the competitive environment and have a solid understanding of the state of your industry—and to use that information strategically. Do your market and competitive research!

Re-compete Checklist

Don’t wait to implement the following activities—begin re-winning the contract as soon as it is awarded:

  • Upon award, develop a Re-compete Plan with a calendar of activities and reviews, including quarterly SWOT (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats) analyses.
  • Document contract performance throughout the performance period and make course corrections as necessary.
  • Broaden customer relationships and your understanding of current needs as the contract progresses—their dreams, the agency environment, and the competitive environment evolve.
  • Get feedback from all stakeholders; develop a customer Communication Plan.
  • Continue to develop new solutions and validate promising ones with customer stakeholders at all levels. Do not wait until the RFP is upon you before you implement a new approach.
  • Implement or test changes as soon as possible—at least 4-6 months before the RFP drops!
  • Detail the benefits to the customer and prove your worth in the proposal by providing concrete examples and performance statistics.

To learn more about positioning for a re-compete or if you need assistance on your must-win contract, contact Sid at sid@sidjaffe.com or call him at 703-855-3160.

Read more articles on the topic of Re-Competes >

Recent Comments

    © Copyright - Sid Jaffe & Associates, 2019 - Enfold Theme by Kriesi