1. Simply, You Need to Get it Right, First Time Around
   Remember, this is not a passport application; this is a proposal for award of a federal government contract. Fedmarket estimates that about half of all in-house-written GSA Schedule proposals are rejected outright without further consideration upon being reviewed for the first time by GSA. It may take GSA three, four, even six months to undertake this initial review.

   The reality of this is that GSA is overwhelmed by proposals and the quickest way to get a proposal off their desk is to reject it. The reasons for rejection can be trivial ranging from formatting inconsistencies to the misuse of common terms that are adversely interpreted by GSA.

   So, if you do not have the expertise in-house to not only be compliant but also give GSA a product that they will entertain, you run the risk of adding insult to injury and find yourself six months down the road without having achieved your goal of contract award, and needing to start from scratch.

2. Opportunity Cost
   The longer it takes to obtain your GSA Schedule contract award, the more money you are not making. The longer it takes you to be awarded, the more money your competitors that have already been awarded a GSA Schedule contract are winning at your expense.

   The longer it takes your staff to complete the GSA Schedule proposal process, the more dollars you are expending, sometimes with no end in sight. Read more on this topic in the Direct Costs section below.

3. Direct Costs
   Say that over the course of months it takes a single person four man-weeks to research, write, price, compile, print and/or obtain a digital certificate, and finally submit your GSA Schedule proposal. Fedmarket cannot do the math for you, but we can tell you that we are talking of man-weeks. Multiply these by your hourly direct costs for your resource and you are quickly looking at significant labor costs to have an inexperienced person wading through the confusing and sometimes outright nonsense GSA Schedule proposal waters.
4. Proposal Refreshes
   If your in-house proposal writing effort is going to take longer than a few months, you run the risk of hitting the solicitation refresh wall. From time to time, GSA publishes a new version of the solicitation and your half-written proposal is all of a sudden in need of overhaul in order to meet the changed requirements of this new version.
5. Unnecessary Research
   Another time sink is the unnecessary research that many find themselves doing in order to chase down a particular detail of the proposal. For example, some of the GSA Schedule solicitations call for reseller documentation. Well, depending on circumstances you may or not need to fulfill the requirements around this item. The reality is that this type of research is not the best use of your time because it pertains to a domain of expertise that is not yours.
6. The Wear and Tear on Your People
   Pick your superstar and watch him or her fail at the simple but not easy task of compiling a winning GSA Schedule proposal. Is this the best way to motivate the superstar? Fedmarket thinks not. Many a time, we have people calling in saying that after going through months of GSA proposal stasis; they have not only have not moved the ball forward but have alienated their best people resources.

Call 888 661 4094, Ext.2 for more information or to register by telephone.