Jesse Sherr 00:00
My name is Jesse and I work with small businesses and the Government Marketplace. You're listening to FedBiz'5, where you Get Informed, Get Connected, and Get Results on Everything Government Contracting.
Jesse Sherr 00:15
Hello, and welcome to another episode of FedBiz'5! Today we have Darrell Hammond, who is a senior proposal development consultant that handles capture management and proposal management. For over 10 years Darrell has helped companies bind, track, and create federal, state, local and commercial bids. He has worked with a variety of 8(a), small and disadvantaged businesses, businesses transitioning from small to large and large multibillion dollar businesses. Darrell, thank you for joining us.
Darrell Hammond 00:46
Yeah, absolutely!
Jesse Sherr 00:47
All right, let's jump right in. What are the key components of a successful government contract bid? And how do they differ from proposals in the private sector?
Darrell Hammond 00:55
I think that the most important part about proposals in the government space is the compliance, the government is not looking for the same things that you would turn in, in a commercial bid, the government has other things that they have to gather. So, when you submit a government bid, that bid has to follow certain sections of the Federal Acquisition Regulations (the "FAR"). So, the government is compelled to ask for certain things and to make sure that you provide certain things in order to award the contract. So, those are the primary things that are different, it's just a lot of it's going to be compliance, a lot of it's going to be just making sure that you put together an outline that is compliant to the solicitation, right, that means that you pull out all the things that you have to submit, and you put them into a document, and you have a place for them with the directions and the evaluation criteria and that usually helps people get off to a good start and make sure that they don't forget anything during the course of that bid.
Jesse Sherr 01:49
Wonderful, Thank you! So, my next question, what common mistakes do businesses make when submitting bids and how can they avoid them?
Darrell Hammond 01:56
I think that the common mistake that people make is that they don't always have a good understanding of how many people they need. This is especially true of smaller businesses, and people that have not worked in government contracting before. I would say not understanding how many people you need, or the type of skill sets that you need is very common. Then, I would say, having never seen a bid before. So, if you've never seen a bid for a government contract in your sector, it's going to be very hard to deliver something that's on par with that, or that is going to be of the same level of quality. So, I think that people need good examples, and they need qualified people and also, I think good management is important. A lot of what I do with my customers is focused around making sure that they understand what has to be turned in, making sure that there's a calendar that describes when things are due, and that there's a process for reviewing the items that the government has asked for you because you don't put it all together and submit it. You have to review it periodically and if it doesn't hit the mark, you make adjustments to make sure that it's those marks. Once you were able to get a mastery of what people you need and the process for putting together a proposal, it smooths out quite a bit. I'd also say that sometimes people struggle because they're starting from scratch. If you have no content at all, the first four or five are going to be really tough, because you're not recycling anything, you're creating everything from scratch for that bit. So, once you get into a groove, and you start to submit a few bids, especially if those bids are good compliant bids, you can take the content that you develop and reuse and recycle and reshape that content for other bids.
Jesse Sherr 03:32
Great, thank you. How important is it for businesses to understand and address the specific requirements and evaluation criteria outlined in a solicitation? Can you share any examples or best practices?
Darrell Hammond 03:44
Yeah, with government contracts, you are required...like, If it says "the contractor will, the contractor shall, the contractor must", those are things that you HAVE to do if you would like to be considered. So, in some situations, the government is nice, and they'll come back to you and they will ask you to fix something, but they don't usually do that. For instance, once I turned in a proposal, and in the pricing section, I think we had moved a decimal point one space to the right. So instead of saying $70, it was $700. So, the government said, "I think we've identified a few areas where there may be an issue, here are the five or six areas, can you confirm whether your price was significantly higher than the rest of the bidders, can you confirm that your price was actually these at this level and provide us the correct information?” Now, that doesn't happen. Hardly ever, right? They must have a really good reason to do something like that and this was a very, very large bid with a lot of complex things. But typically, if you miss a compliance item, if you miss a couple... if the proposal, let's say, calls for past performance or previous experience that is similar, have a similar size, scope and complexity to the contract you're bidding on, and you can't provide that, it kind of ends your bid. So, you can have a lot of things, but not all of them and can very easily get disqualified. Making sure that you understand what the government is asking for, and making sure that you provide them with everything that they've requested, it's very, very important or you are not usually qualified to receive an award.
Jesse Sherr 05:20
What resources would you recommend for businesses looking to enter into the government contracting marketplace or improve their proposal writing skills?
Darrell Hammond 05:27
Proposal writing is pretty tough. I would say that there are a lot of people inside of the proposal and business development space. On the federal side, I'd say that of every 10 people that you encounter, maybe three of them, or four of them on the highest end would be good writers. So, I think you need to have a really good understanding of what needs to be turned in and I think that a lot of times, it can be done better If you speak it first, and then write it later. The government is asking a series of very, very technical questions. You always have to make sure that you're answering the question. Look at the "shall", look at the "will", look at the "must" and speak your response and record it. It might be easier than to transcribe it into text from there, you can at least get your ideas onto paper. For people who are not good writers, because writing is the hardest part, and I think that one of the techniques that people use in the industry...
Darrell Hammond 06:23
To help engineers, for example, a lot of those guys are incredibly intelligent, but the stuff that they're talking about is very process oriented and it's very detailed. So, helping them to get their ideas from in their heads on paper, a good proposal writer or proposal manager will do that with an interview. If you're writing by yourself, or you don't have someone around who has the skills to interview you properly, and help pull the information out in a way that's going to be compliant, I would say the next best way that you could start to do that would be to speak your answer aloud and then maybe go ahead and edit it from there. Then, go ahead and get some help, whether it's from AI or from something else, to help edit that language and get it into a good format. So, that would be one thing.
Darrell Hammond 07:04
I would say that also for the writing, you need a compliance document. A lot of times when you put together a bid, you create what's called an annotated outline. That annotated outline will have a section that leaves space for every single requirement that you have to respond to, that the government has provided you. So typically, response outline will contain a different header level for every evaluation criteria, and all of the things that come out of the statement of work they need to write too. The annotated part is where you have to look at the instructions and the evaluation criteria and anything from inside of the technical specs, or the statement of work for the PWS, and you have all those things in one place. Once you get those down, and you have a complaint outline, it's much easier to write to what the government needs and understand how they're going to evaluate it all in the same place. I would also say that a compliance matrix is helpful, too. A compliance matrix does the same thing, but it's an evaluation tool, as you read through the review your proposal.
Jesse Sherr 08:04
Fascinating. Can you share a success story for your experience in helping a business win a government contract through a well-crafted proposal?
Darrell Hammond 08:11
So, I worked with a company in Virginia, and it was a pretty complex bid. I think for me, this is a good example, because we use the intelligence that we had about the customer to develop a bid that was very attractive to them. By that I mean that when you understand what the customer needs, it's much easier and you put together much better bids, because everything that they're struggling with the "hot button" issues and the problems that exist within, whatever type of contract you're trying to fulfill, all of that information doesn't exist on the page. Some of that is stuff that you have to reach out to the contracting officer and discuss some of that is information that you have to get from the Government's program management team. You need to understand what's going well, what's not going well, and how they're hurting, so that you can put together a bid that helps them to solve the problems that they have. So, with this specific contract, we were able to speak with the current program manager and we also had people that were in the office, so it's much easier to gather information. The head of this particular organization had a list of 10 goals and objectives that she was trying to put forth and push through her organization in this period. We used that along with some of the other PowerPoint tools and some of the other budgetary information for this entity that had been released to create a proposal that specifically looked at and fed into the things that she was trying to achieve within our organization. And we had information on other people to write we understood that certain people within her organization and leadership, some of them were very process oriented. So, we worked to put in a very detailed process graphs and maps and other things like that, that we knew would specifically appeal to that person and his organization. We put together other things that would be specifically attractive to people that were working on the everyday stuff, and we really designed the entire bid for the customer. It's not just about the compliance, the compliance has to be done, but putting together something that's going to be attractive and help that company in that organization, that group of people to save time and energy and to make their lives better and easier when we won that bid.
Jesse Sherr 10:15
Great, thank you very much for that. In addition to what you've already discussed, what advice would you give to businesses that are new to government contracting, or struggling to win contracts, despite submitting multiple bids?
Darrell Hammond 10:28
I think if you're struggling to win contracts, the best thing you can do is request a debrief. So, once you find out that you haven't won a contract, you can reach out to the government and say, "hey, please provide a debrief". That means the government has to explain why you weren't considered. So, in situations where you lose on compliance, that means that you weren't quite ready to do all the things that the government needed, you didn't clearly describe the processes and other things that they wanted to see, or you may be excluded something that needed to go in entirely. That evaluation will let you know what you missed. So, at a certain point you to look at the notes and the information that you get in the debrief, and then look at what you submitted and find where the problems exist. Also, if you lose on price, that's entirely different. At that point, you're looking at another part of your business, did you really understand the requirements? Or did you miss something in some other way? So, I think the debrief is a good place to start, you know, if you can figure out what inside of your proposal process is broken, it's much easier to fix it than just wondering.
Jesse Sherr 11:30
Alright, so how would a business go about doing that getting a debrief?
Darrell Hammond 11:34
You specifically can request a debrief from the contracting officer or the contracting officers representative. So, whoever submitted and put the solicitation up is usually the person that you would request the debrief from, they'd also be the person that will let you know typically, that your bid has been accepted, once you submit it to them however, they have requested it. They will also let you know, usually, whether you've won or not. So usually, the same person that you've been in communication with throughout the process is the person that you would request that from.
Jesse Sherr 12:03
Got it. Thank you! Umm...
Darrell Hammond 12:04
Yep, absolutely! I'm glad that we could sit down and have this this conversation and I hope that this information will be helpful to people. This is a really complex process. There are probably 10 or 20 different career fields that cater exclusively to this. So, I think that with the right training and the right help getting in, it's much easier than kind of muddling your way through on your own.
Jesse Sherr 12:25
Yeah, I definitely couldn't agree with you more.
Darrell Hammond 12:27
Yeah.
Jesse Sherr 12:27
Well, Darrell, thank you again for all the great information.
Darrell Hammond 12:30
Absolutely!
Jesse Sherr 12:31
I hope we can have you on again sometime.
Darrell Hammond 12:33
Thank you. Appreciate it.
Jesse Sherr 12:34
Take care.
Darrell Hammond 12:35
Bye.
Jesse Sherr 12:36
This concludes this week's episode of FedBiz'5, where you Get Informed, Get Connected, and Get Results.
Today's podcast is sponsored by FedBiz Access. Government contracting made simple. Visit them at www.fedbizaccess.com or contact them at 888-299-4498.