Many people who have evaluated federal proposals have attended our proposal writing seminars. Without exception, they say the following:

Give us exactly what we asked for in the RFP, no more or no less.

Avoid sales pitches without substantiation, e. g., the collective experience of our company exceeds "x" person years.

Keep it short, concise, and to the point.

Present a practical, no nonsense solution that meets our requirements precisely and tell us how your solution will benefit us.

Discuss the risk associated with your solution and how you plan to mitigate it.

Do not over due the Management Plan; write it precisely to the RFP.

Don't throw in management boiler plate for the sake of impressing the evaluators.

Tell us exactly who will staff the contract and provide a pertinent resume for each proposed key staff resume. Don't waffle on whether the proposed staff member is actually available, yes or no and are you committed to providing the person.

Tell us your pertinent corporate qualifications but don't over do it with experience descriptions that repeat themselves.

Tailor everything you write to the RFP. All proposal content should be RFP specific including resumes and corporate experience.

Say it like Newsweek; tightly organized content presented in simple, declarative sentences.

Evaluators state that the two majors sins of proposal writing are over doing it, use of off the shelf boiler plate, and presentation of extraneous, unwanted material.

Make our job easy and write to the evaluation criteria. Focus on solving our problem as stated in the RFP and the risks and benefit of your solution.