How to Handle a Short Proposal Deadline
A short proposal deadline is one of the most common emergencies in federal contracting — and one of the most survivable, if you handle it deliberately. A solicitation drops with a 10-day response window, or you discover a great opportunity with only five days left before the due date. Panic is the natural reaction, and […]
Proposal Writing Schedule: How to Plan a 30-Day Response
Thirty days sounds like plenty of time to write a proposal — until day 20 arrives and you are still arguing about the technical approach, the price volume does not match the staffing plan, and nobody has written the management section. Small teams fail proposals less often because they lack talent than because they lack […]
Bid/No-Bid Decision: A Simple Framework
Every small contractor has felt the same pull: a new RFP lands, the dollar value looks big, and the instinct is to bid. But bidding everything is the fastest way to burn out a small team, spend proposal money you never recover, and build a pipeline full of deals you were never going to win. […]
How to Spot a Wired RFP (and What to Do)
You read an RFP and something feels off. The requirements are oddly specific. The timeline is impossibly short. The evaluation factors seem written for one particular company. You may be looking at a wired RFP — a solicitation that has been shaped, deliberately or carelessly, so that only one bidder can realistically win it. Wired […]
Bid Pricing Mistakes That Lose Contracts
Most lost bids are not lost on price alone — they are lost on the bid pricing mistakes hiding inside the price. A bid can be too high, too low, or internally inconsistent, and each of those failures traces back to a small number of repeatable errors. The good news is that these errors are […]
How to Build a Price Proposal
The price proposal — sometimes called the cost volume or business volume — is the part of your bid where the government checks whether your numbers are real. The technical volume says what you will do; the price proposal proves you can do it at the price you quoted. Learning how to build a price […]
What Are Indirect Rates? A Beginner’s Guide
Ask a new federal contractor what their bid price is made of and they will usually talk about salaries and hours. Ask an experienced one and they will talk about rates — because in government contracting, the indirect rates you apply to your direct costs can add half as much again to your price, or […]
Firm-Fixed-Price vs Cost-Plus Contracts Explained
One of the first things you will see in any solicitation is the contract type — and it changes everything about how you bid, how you get paid, and who bears the risk if costs run higher than expected. The two types small contractors meet most often are firm-fixed-price (FFP) and cost-plus (usually cost-plus-fixed-fee, or […]
How to Price a Government Contract Bid
Pricing is where many small contractors lose a contract they were otherwise qualified to win. Price too high and you are out on value; price too low and you either lose money on every hour of the contract or get flagged as unrealistic and lose on technical risk. Learning how to price a government contract […]
Proposal Resumes: How to Write Key Personnel Bios
Key personnel resumes are one of the most-scored parts of a federal proposal — and one of the most mishandled. In many evaluations, the management approach factor is won or lost on the strength of the people you propose. Evaluators read your proposal resumes to answer a single question: does this team have the experience […]