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GSA Schedules
- GSA eProposal
Fedmarket has revolutionized GSA Schedule proposal preparation.. - About GSA eProducts
Use GSA eProducts to simplify and streamline GSA Schedule proposals, GSA Schedule modifications and GSA Schedule renewals.. - GSA Compliance System
Implement a compliance system to maintain the integrity of your GSA Schedule contract.
Federal Sales Training
- Federal Sales 101: Winning Government Business
Fedmarket's most popular course, eight-years in the running. Whether you are new to the marketplace or a seasoned veteran this class will jump start your sales endeavors. - Federal Contracting Action Plan
Federal Contracting Action Plan- A Lead Development Workshop . - Writing and Managing Winning Proposals
Write less, win more. If you can't afford to waste another minute or dime writing another losing proposal this class is for you. - Advanced Proposal Development Workshop
Improve your ability to manage proposals, reduce rework, and create proposals the evaluators can use to choose you . - Basic Cost Proposal Workshop
A hands-on event designed to reduce the learning curve of pricing dramatically. . - 2-Day Executive Session on Winning Federal Contracts
12 one-hour segments given by experts from the legal and federal contracting community .
Proposals
- Proposal Writing Services
Fedmarket writes your proposal for you. - Proposal Framework Services
RFP-specific proposal artifacts to give clear direction to your proposal effort. - RFP Templates
Templates for standard RFP responses. - Advanced Proposal Development Workshop
Learn how to manage, structure, and write a winning proposal. - Writing & Managing Winning Proposals
Write fewer proposals; win more . - Basic Cost Proposal Workshop
A hands-on event designed to reduce the learning curve of pricing dramatically. .
Articles
- Data Calls Can Make or Break You
When you are leading a proposal effort where additional companies have joined you in a team, it is crucial to receive the team members' contributions to the proposal in a manner that will help instead of hinder your race to complete the proposal... - Model Your Federal Proposals and Refine, Refine, and Refine (I)
For many companies proposal writing is reinventing the wheel over and over, at great costs within tight deadlines... - Message to Management: Why Should My Proposal Writing Capabilities Concern Me?
Federal proposal writing is inherently chaotic, a drain on billable hours, and crucial to revenue generation... - Eliminate Wasted Billable Time in Proposal Writing
Wasted billable time in writing the technical solution for federal proposals is one of the mortal sins of federal contractors. Why? Subject matter experts don't really want to write in the first place so they circle, procrastinate, and postpone... - The Art of Not Being Eliminated
Imagine that you have a full time job as a professional person in the federal government... - GSA the World's Biggest Customer
The most confusing aspect of a GSA proposal is the requirement to disclose your discounting practices. GSA uses the disclosures to negotiate a discount equal to or better than the best discount you have extended to your commercial customers... - Procrastination and GSA Schedules
Writing a GSA Schedule proposal is an excruciating process for companies. Most people do not like to write and the problem is compounded by indecipherable Requests for Proposals provided by GSA... - Why Vendors Like GSA Schedules
GSA aggressively promotes the use of GSA schedules to buyers across all federal agencies using the war chest accumulated from the industrial funding fee charged to GSA vendors... - Searching for Sales Opportunities
Products, services, and technology-based solutions are sold through relationships in both the commercial and federal sectors... - When the Sale Takes Place
Almost all newcomers to the federal market make the mistake of thinking that a sales opportunity arises when a request for a proposal or bid is published. In reality by the time a bid is published, the sale has probably already been made... - Distinguishing Yourself
You have a great product or service. Your price is where it needs to be. Perhaps you responded to an RFP once or you spent tons of time and money writing a proposal... - Selling Services to Federal Agencies
Our newsletters repeatedly emphasize the need to establish a relationship with end users when selling in the federal market... - Sell the Customer and then Write the Proposal
It is nearly impossible to produce a winning, customer-centric proposal by writing a blind bid in response to a federal Request for Proposal (RFP). The key to writing winning proposals is to sell the customer first, then write the proposal... - The Bid-No Bid Decision Process
The proposal bid/no bid decision is crucial to proposal writing success. Make the bid/no bid decision early and base it on a realistic assessment of your chances to win. The decision should be made before or immediately upon RFP release... - The Bid or No Bid Meeting
The bid/no bid decision should be made before or immediately at the time the RFP released... - The Consequences of Writing Losing Proposals
Previous installments have discussed the need to pre-sell a client prior to the announcement of a public bid and the need to write proposals in the voice of the customer... - Outsourcing Proposal Writing
Many newcomers to the federal marketplace believe that they can hire proposal writers to solve the proposal writing dilemma. You can, but you need to be careful in selecting the writer and realistic in your expectations... - Proposal Evaluation: How It Really Works
Many people new to government proposal writing write their proposals to win, which seems to make sense, right? In the government market, however, you should write your proposals not to lose... - About Proposal Writing
The core of every successful proposal is a technical approach that describes a solution that meets the customer's requirements precisely... - Refining the Proposal Outline
Step one to developing an effective proposal outline begins with the deconstruction of the Request for Proposal (RFP). Step two in the outlining process is to expand/refine the outline... - Improve Your Proposals: First, Deconstruct the RFP
The proposal writing process starts with the Bid/No Bid decision. Ideally, a yes decision will be based on what you know about the customer from sales efforts carried out well before the Request for Proposal (RFP) is published... - Why a Federal Proposal is Different?
Federal Requests for Proposals (RFPs) are unique... - The Do's and Dont's of Proposal Writing
Listing all of the do's and don'ts of proposal writing would fill a small book. Some of the more important do's and don'ts are: Do Write a proposal to solve the customer's problems as THEY perceive them, not how YOU perceive them... - Proposal Boilerplate: A Double-Edged Sword
Using boilerplate -- written material that can be reused in different proposals -- is a double-edged sword. It can save the day from a time and cost viewpoint and can create guffaws (and many lost evaluation points) from the proposal evaluators... - How Proposal Evaluators Think
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... - Proposal: What Wins
In our previous installment we discussed how evaluators think and what they want to see in a federal proposal. They are unanimous in stating that the best solution wins... - Does a Relationship with the Customer Guarantee a Win?
In our previous proposal writing installments we have stated over and over that building a customer relationship is the key to a successful proposal... - What is a Defensive Proposal?
Most authors on federal proposal writing define a defensive proposal as follows: Is written not to be eliminated; to be the last proposal standing Presents a practical solution from a customer perspective Gives the customer what they want; no more ... - Process Versus Content
Proposal writing involves both process and content. Effective proposal writing processes are important but proposal content rules over process... - Writing the Management Plan
An effective Management Plan can be written by an experienced Proposal Manager with little or no expertise in the subject matter of the RFP. Writing one from scratch however, is costly, time consuming, and tedious... - Presenting Corporate Experience
Corporate experience summaries show the core capabilities of a company. Like resumes, in many companies they are not as well documented as they should be... - Think of Proposal Writing As the Last Step in a Sale
Our federal sales seminars stress that your sales efforts and proposal-writing process should be one, highly-structured undertaking... - The Proposal Writing Dilemma, Again
We return to a frequent topic - - the practice of some companies to submit proposals that are both poorly written and not organized well... - Solving the Proposal Writing Dilemma
Our last installment discussed the haphazard and disjointed federal proposal writing efforts that take place in most companies and why they occur. This installment presents concrete steps that can be taken to minimize the problem. 1... - Integration of Sales and Proposal Writing
Our last installment discussed the concrete steps that should be taken to minimize haphazard and disjointed efforts to write federal proposals... - Structure and Automate Your Sales and Proposal Processes
In a recent Fedmarket installment "Integration of Sales and Proposal Writing," we recommended that you integrate the sales and proposal- writing process... - Write the Executive Summary Early
In a recent installment "Solving the Proposal Dilemma", we recommended that you write the Executive Summary before the proposal kickoff meeting... - Implement an Incentive System
In a recent installment "Solving the Proposal Dilemma," we recommended that you use an incentive system to compensate your best technical writers when your company is the successful bidder on a federal opportunity... - Implement Version Control
In a recent installment "Solving the Proposal Dilemma," we recommended that you automate and "version control" your old proposals and Management Plan boilerplate... - Proposal Page Limitations; What's Not to Like?
In a previous installment " The Art of Not Being Eliminated" we discussed the simplicity and clarity that federal evaluators desire in a proposal... - Proposal Gobbledygook Loses and Brevity Wins
Why are proposal page limitations becoming more and more prevalent in federal Requests for Proposals (RFPs)? Proposal evaluators find their task either distasteful or mildly painful... - Proposal Writing Is Not Going to Go Away
Most owners of small and medium-sized federal contracting companies wish that writing proposals was not a requirement of doing business with the federal government... - Cornerstones to Proposal Success: Past Performance Library
A past performance library contains past performance write-ups that summarize your organization's experience on different projects. More often than not, you will be asked to reference past performances in your RFP response... - Wild Cards Can Delude You
An attendee at one of our proposal writing seminars stated that her company calls blind bids on FedBizzOpps solicitations "wild cards". Every once in a while when the stars line up correctly they play a wild card and they won one last year... - Two of the Deadliest Proposal Writing Sins
A service company's two greatest assets are its corporate experience and the background of its staff. Often, both assets are not presented effectively in a company's federal proposals... - Curing the Two Deadly Sins
The previous installment discussed the problems associated with waiting until the last minute to tackle critical issues and providing overblown corporate experience and personnel chapters for federal proposals... - How Evaluators Judge a Proposal
You have been writing proposals for some time. You have become a pro on piecing responses together, writing, reviewing, booking, and delivering them... - Best Practices and Best Avoided
Our seminar staff recently completed one of our monthly seminars on proposal writing. As we do in every class, we discussed how proposals should be written to be the "last proposal standing" or, said in Fedmarket-speak, a defensive proposal... - What is Wrong with the Proposal Review Process?
Many companies have proposal reviews of different colors. The reviews we'll focus on in this installment are the two most common, Pink and Red Team reviews... - Saved by the Modification or Extension
Does this scenario happen in your company? You are writing two or more proposals in parallel or perhaps even just one... - Working with Teaming Partners to Draft Proposals
No one person or corporation is an island. If you are like most successful contractors, you team with other organizations to write winning proposals... - Proposal Planning: What to Do Before Kickoff
Before you undertake any project, what do you put in place? A plan. Writing a proposal is no different. The objective of preparing a proposal plan is to establish direction for the proposal... - Why Does It Take so Long?
Why does proposal writing take so long? Many underestimate the amount of time that must be devoted to such a project. The reality is that it often takes three times longer than you might have expected... - Red Team Review Guidelines
A couple of installments ago, we wrote that the process many companies use for proposal reviews is "broken." We discussed why and how to mitigate the issues that seem to plague proposal reviews (see What is Wrong with the Proposal Review Process?)... - More on Defensive Proposals
In an earlier installment, we defined a defensive proposal as follows: One written not to be eliminated from consideration by the proposal evaluation committee The proposal written with the goal of being the last proposal standing A presentation... - Save Money and Time with Proposal Templates
If a company wants to win a bid opportunity, the proposal it submits in response to a federal Request for Proposal (RFP) must be unique... - Hot Buttons Tell Your Customers You Get It
From last week's post, you probably took away that the proposal theme (see The Proposal Theme: A Rhetorical Infrastructure for Selling) is not just some fluff language... - Storyboards Save Time and Effort
Storyboards are conceptual planning tools used to help writers plan each section before drafting text. In the broadest sense, storyboards use words and graphics to outline a concept... - More on the Difficulty of Proposal Writing
The process of creating a compelling and winning proposal is a difficult one. Proposal writing is different than anything else a company does... - If You Write Nothing Else, Write an Executive Summary
The Executive Summary should drive the proposal writing effort. It should be written before the proposal kick-off meeting so that the selling points made in the draft summary can be stressed throughout the proposal... - Templates and Federal Proposal Writing
Templates can play an important role in federal proposal writing. If a company wants to win a bid opportunity, the proposal it submits in response to a federal Request for Proposal (RFP) must be unique... - The Toughest Job in Federal Contracting
Yes, you guessed it. I believe the toughest discipline in federal contracting is writing winning proposals. This is not because I want to achieve job security or because Fedmarket happens to sell proposal products and services... - Writing Guidelines
Let me use a car analogy for this one... - In Proposal Writing Second is the Same as Last
In many ways, writing a federal proposal is like writing a college term paper. However, the similarities end with the results. In college, you may have been reasonably happy to accept a B... - It's the Outline, Stupid
Effective written material is always the result of a process which began with an outline. Proposal evaluators want concise, easy-to-read information free of fluff and sales pitches... - How to Write Losing or Unsuccessful Proposals
How to write losing proposals is not a particularly positive topic to discuss. However, many federal contractors seem quite adept at preparing such proposals so the discussion is most likely a worthwhile one... - What is in a Capture Plan?
Before you start writing a proposal, be sure to insist on having your business development team prepare a capture plan... - A Renewed Emphasis on Proposals
There is a widespread perception that the preparation of an extensive and exhaustive proposal is a necessary evil inherent to doing work with the federal government... - Model Your Federal Proposals and Refine, Refine, and Refine (II)
For many companies proposal writing is reinventing the wheel over and over, at great costs within tight deadlines... - Don't Put Them to Sleep
Federal proposals, in response to Requests for Proposals, tend to be dry, dry, dry- including the last proposal standing (the winner). Even authors of books on how to write creatively frequently write dry prose. This happens for a number of reasons... - Make Your Proposal File Structure Useful
When writing proposals you generate vast numbers of files, documents, artifacts, and other items that you want store for reuse. Easy retrieval becomes paramount in achieving this objective... - One or Two Pages May Do It
Proposal writing is both an art and a science. The art part is the solution that the customer believes will solve their problem with minimal risk. Often several pages of creative solution content will swing a win... - Technical Writers Crave Structure
Technical (Solutions) writers crave structured outlines for the following reasons: 1. Most don't like to write, and structure increases their confidence. 2... - Do Templates Work for Task Order Proposals?
Use of templates for proposals in response to Indefinite Delivery Indefinite Quantity (IDIQ) Task Orders works well and can reduce proposal writing costs significantly... - You mean I have to read the RFP?
I am always befuddled when I go to a kickoff meeting and it becomes apparent really quickly that half the people in the room have read only the first three pages of the solicitation document... - Proposal Managers can Have a No Win Job
Many proposal managers have a no win job and others are more fortunate. The fortunate ones are blessed with company management that is experienced in the federal sales game... - Templates Rule in Efficient Proposal Writing
Almost everything in a federal proposal can be viewed as a template except the proposed solution itself: resumes, corporate experience descriptions, and management plan sections... - The Three Rs of Proposal Writing
Government end users hate risks and love risk avoidance. So think risks, risks, and risks when preparing the outline of your approach to the customer solution... - Use a Question Format to Assist Solution Writers
Most solution writers (subject matter specialists, engineers, technical specialists) have two things in common. They are expected to stay billable and don't have the time to write. They don't like to write, period... - The Chaos of Proposal Writing
Federal government proposal writing is treated like a mysterious step child by many companies. For these companies, the process of writing a response to a federal Request for Proposal (RFP) is not a process at all... - Could Your Proposal Writing Process Be More Structured?
It is not possible to have too much structure in your proposal writing process and even the largest prime federal contractors do not have enough... - An Approach to Structuring Your Technical Approach
The Proposal Architect, Fedmarket's web-based proposal writing tool, uses a table-driven approach to developing a detailed technical approach outline... - You Can't Learn Proposal Writing from a Book
Crafting a well written and compelling proposal is a complex and difficult task... - Use Model Tasks to Improve Proposal Quality
An example is worth a thousand words and helps to avoid a plethora of meetings. It is not uncommon for corporate management to assign the task of writing individual tasks in the Technical Approach to a number of staff members...
