Name: The Evaluator’s Mindset: What Wins and What Loses
Uploaded: 2025-10-15T16:16:03.259Z
Duration: 58 min 17 s
Description: The Evaluator’s Mindset: What Wins and What Loses

Transcript for "The Evaluator’s Mindset: What Wins and What Loses": Okay. I think we are good to jump in. First off, thank you everyone for, for attending today. I know it is a strange time of year with the government shutdown, but I think we have a very great session for you today. I'm super excited to have, Bill Pratt here with us. I've known Bill for for quite some time now. He's been very supportive, of myself and GovDash throughout our journey, and I know as well for many across the industry. Bill is president of GovITWorks. He has tons of experience, when it comes to government acquisition. And today, we're gonna be talking about the evaluator's mindset, what wins and what loses, and how evaluators are actually looking and and looking at and considering, our bids. So, with that, I want to just quickly cover, what we're gonna be going over today. So Bill will be sharing his expertise on how evaluators actually read proposals, why certain proposals win, what things he sees that actually result in them losing, aligning with what agencies value, practical takeaways. And then as always, we will run our q and a at the end here. And And if you have questions as we're going through, feel free to jump in at any point. And if it if it, catches our our, our eyes here as we're going through, we'll we'll actually stop and try to cover them, in the middle of of the webinar. So with that, Bill, I'd love to get us kicked off here. So, we've talked a lot about why seeing, seeing through the the lens of an evaluator when you're actually preparing a proposal is very important. You're gonna be able to speak about this much better than me, though. So I'd love to get your take on why that is the right approach when you're preparing your bids. Well, first of all, hi, Sean. Great to see you, and thanks for having me. Really excited to talk about this because I have, evaluated tons of proposals, and, and and you sort of do see some of the same things popping up time and time again. So I I hope to today, you know, talk about not just writing better proposals, but to engineer higher scores on the proposals that you submit. What's important to evaluators? What isn't as much important? And and a lot of times, what I see is folks are spending extra time on gloss and not so much time on easily found content. So looking forward to getting into it and talking about all of that. I've I've led, several tactical evaluation teams, when I was a director at Homeland Security. And, really, what folks need to take the one thing I'll ask you to take away from this to to folks listening is that these folks are so busy and think about now. Yeah. Of course, with the shutdown even, they're they're at a absolute skeleton force. But when I was in, there weren't enough folks. And even now, after kind of some of the Doge efforts and other things like that and some of the realignments, there are even fewer folks. So you've gotta get it right you gotta hit them over the head with it. You have to put them right in the target of what you're trying to talk about. And if they're searching for stuff, they just don't have the time. So, by by doing yourself a favor, by making it absolutely crystal clear how you're aligning to the to the proposal. That's that's the way to get, through to a very overworked evaluation team. Mhmm. And so so, Billy, as I think you know, I like to get into the weeds, especially as we're kinda framing, things for the rest of the discussion. So I think it would be it'd be super, helpful if you can just start by actually sharing how evaluators read proposals, how they think about judging them, maybe maybe starting with, like, specifically the evaluation process step by step. Got it. Absolutely. Well, you know, just I guess, just to to go back a little bit, it starts from when you're putting it together. And so you've got your program managers. You got the folks who actually need to get the job done, the folks who are being paid to do this thing that you're putting the the the opportunity out for. Right? But and we really, that's all they really care about. They they submit a budget. They get some degree of a budget, and then they write the proposal for what they want to acquire, alright, and what they're trying to accomplish. Now their partner, the the contracting officer, also wants to do the very best job that they are hired to do, which is to get the very best and to actually buy it because you must have a CEO in order to buy the the service you want. So their job is to get the very best price, you know, the best, and it and it alters sometimes. No one really does I mean, some may do. We really at DHS and the outstanding procurement team there, they really went away from lowest cost technical, you know, compliant a long time ago. They really go value based. Nonetheless, you know, the con the CEOs are looking for their specific checklist of things they need to see, which are small business set asides, for instance, although that's kind of going away these days to a large extent. And and, really, a lot of the compliance things. So they're looking at that. They're there's always a negotiation back and forth between the PMs and the and the COs before this thing even hits the street. And if they've done enough of that back and forth, it goes out, and it's good to go. But how many times have we seen five, six, seven, nine mods on a on an opportunity that goes out there? And, man, that's a challenge to kinda keep up with those things as as these things are being modded. So keep that in mind if you, you know, if you are pursuing an opportunity and it's out there, always make sure you're looking at the latest and greatest version of it before you submit your thing. But, it's really going back to it's a it's a disciplined checklist driven process. Right? It's not a creative writing, contest. So, really, the old memory of you're in school, I don't know if you guys all heard this, you know, RTFQ read the questions. In this case, read the the requirements of the proposal and answer them. And if you have to so we we sit down with our, team. We say, okay, guys and gals. What is the most important thing to us? What are we trying to do with this? You know, from a technical perspective, to do our jobs best. What how do we need to write this so that we're getting the best responses so that the folks who are responding give us the the best feeling, the best, like, less least feeling of risk that they can actually do this work? So past performance is important, but, and we'll talk about some of those in detail perhaps. But, really, the first thing is setting down and figuring out how are we going to score these things. And, of course, we've already done a negotiation with the CEO to get this thing out. But now among our team, among the technical evaluation team, how are we going to, score this? And the one, you know, one tidbit I'll say, we're not you're not you're not sending this to the CIO, for instance, for IT or the director of the agency. You're sending it probably to a director perhaps. Often I when I ran the t the the technical evaluation team evaluation teams, I was a director. I had two of my really strongest PMs. Oh, let's see. Excuse me. They all say you're about to sneeze. It happened anyway. Pardon me. Bless you. Live live radio, guys. So, so I always had two of my most, you know, strongest PMs who actually had some of the biggest parts of that proposal so that they were expert. And then we we would figure out what which questions of the proposal were the most important to us, and we would kind of rank them internally. Here's how we're going to score this. Now, of course, their the CO will put out a number of of those scoring mechanisms themselves, but that's for the overall proposal. For us, you know, the bottom line is can these folks proposing to us do the job? And and and can they make us feel like they can do the job and give us that, you know, that reduce our risk, reduce our nervousness? And the other thing is, and then don't make me look for it. Right? The we one of the things that I hope folks can take away from this as well is if I'm you know, these folks have so few folks and even more now. We didn't ever have enough staff ever that I have enough staff, at least at headquarters, to do what we needed to do? Everybody's wearing three hats. And so when I have to sit down and do this, it's very important, but it's not the only thing I've got. So if you're making me search for stuff, then that's that's a lose right there. So but we'll get in maybe some of those some of those specific, tips and tricks. But getting the team together, understanding what we need to do to accomplish our mission, and and then reading the proposals through that lens, that's what, that's what we plan for before they come in. Got it. And and, yeah, even before we jump into maybe some of the the the characteristics of, like, successful proposals, I think it's a useful exercise to try to reverse engineer, the training, of these evaluators. Right? Like, how were they trained to think, and then let's work backwards from there in terms of how we prepare our response. So, I'd love to know, like, how are these evaluators actually trained to to review and score, the proposals that they receive? Well, we you know, it's really well, the CEO is gonna set us down and and and walk each technical evaluation team from the PM side. They're they're gonna walk you through. Here's the things that we really, really need to keep in mind as we're scoring all these various companies, and it could be dozens, right, depending on the opportunity. And so, you know, one of the challenge one of the things they train and the long story short is there's not a lot of strict training, certainly not on the PM team. We basically just know what we want. We try to communicate it as best we can through the opportunity and and get that through the CO to get it on the street in time, before the budget gets swept. You know? And so our our job is to make sure that we're reading these things critically. We're not taking anything for granted. We're not filling in the gaps in our in our minds on what we're reading. And that's one of the things the CEOs will say very, very clearly as they train us. They say, look. You may know these folks. You may know this company. You may as we you know, especially think about incumbents, you may know them and their strengths. Right? One of the biggest well, let me just finish that thought. You've got still have to say it in your proposal. And this even goes for I mean, this even goes for resume. I'll go off the reservation for a minute. I've known folks who have been incumbents either in positions in the government or incumbents on contracts who have not won because they assumed that the evaluators knew the stuff they were doing, knew how good they were. They were already in the role, so we must be doing it right. That's the wrong answer. And the CO will be very, very strict about that, and we're not authorized as the technical evaluation team to take into account our personal knowledge of how good you are because if you're not stating it right there, because that is actually you know, the prejudice thing at a bit to you know, because everybody needs to be looked at in a full and open competition. Everybody needs to be looked at for what they bring to the table right now and not what you may or may not know about them. And that's for things good or bad. You may you may have heard some bad things about a vendor, and we're humans. Right? People do carry that stuff in the background, but you have to score things. And they were trained on scoring exactly what the response is, exactly how tightly it's tied to what we put out, and and coming up with a really objective score. And, there are nuances there too because it's quite, you know, scoring is quite challenging sometimes because you it's a lot of times high confidence, medium confidence, low confidence, no confidence, and then across a number of you know, a number of evaluation criteria. But then, you know, okay. So I have pretty high confidence for both these companies, but there's there's more nuance there. Like, I know these guys. They they looks like they're better, but they both sort of have high confidence. So you're restricted to several bands of rating. Right? And then the challenge is you might get to companies that rate the same, although there's one you really, really felt the proposal was better. But I but here's the thing. That's why you have to be so clear, folks, on when you when you write exactly to what they're saying and you because at the end of the day, if if you guys come out the same score from the technical evaluation team, now it's over to this contracting officer, and now it typically goes for price right there if everything else is equal. So, but that but, anyway, the the the bottom line on the training is that we need to look at each proposal as it comes in and that we're not authorized really to use our other knowledge of this company for good or bad in order to, to determine if they go forward. Got it. And and I I will have some questions for you around, pricing and and sort sort of the strategy and how to defend against that, because I am I am interested in that as well. But, yeah, before we move on, I'd love to know just because a lot of, companies, generally, a lot of the customers that we work with at GovDash are, preparing oral presentations. And, I know this is a topic that that you know a lot about. Do you mind just giving me a quick overview of, sort of how those are being evaluated and if there are any, differences there, or nuances to to the evaluation of these orals? Oh, sure. On that and I love this I know this, conversation because when I was a and much to my the chagrin sometimes of of my CEOs, I always insisted on them. And in fact, I was a I actually insisted on doing orals first because, you know, one of the things that I was proud to do there is run the, program health assessment process at DHS, which basically went to each of the major IT investments and measured them on cost, schedule performance, technical maturity, and a number of other factors. These were folks who and and we had a very objective, in our opinion, a very objective measurement, technique. But, you know, sometimes you had to tell a really powerful person that their baby was a little ugly. Right? And that there were things that they had to work on. So these folks that we hired had to have gravitas. They had to present well. They needed to be just that right amount of deferential to, you know, authority without, you know, without, like, being cowed over by it. So you can't read that in a proposal. I hate to say it at this point in time. I wanted to look these folks in the in the eye and hear what they had to say, and I wanted to hear it in their voice. And so some of the so and, again, it just the it's between the c the CEO will run the session. They will set all the parameters. They will and they they have already worked with the PM team and advanced the technical evaluation team. With, with my team there, we and this is not just mine. This is how it works. Right? We come up with specific questions. We wanna ask these, these, folks to come in. We, we have to ask the same questions of every single team that comes in to present. We need to ask them the same order. There's a little bit of wiggle room for follow-up, but, typically, they all have to answer those questions. And the way we did it, we did same day proposal. I absolutely loved it. We would get together and quick we would quickly score, each of each members of the technical evaluation team, typically three. We would score each each company as they came in, and we would, you know, we bring the next one in. Typically, it's, like, hour after hour after hour. And but, you know, I found something interesting is sometimes we once once had two different days set up back to back with full days packed with companies coming in, and a lot of the companies dropped. They just didn't wanna do it. And so that helped down select right there. But, one of the other things that was really interesting is and I've even seen, like, USCIS, they were I actually participated in an oral presentation on the industry side last year, and they stated very clearly, I want to hear from every member of the technical eval of the presenting team. Because in the past, here's a couple things I've seen that you should stick away from. Right? I've I've I've had one comp for one particular opportunity, I had a team come in. And after the introductions, we had three folks sitting on bar stools that didn't say a thing, or and and then one person did the the majority of it, and he was fabulous. But what did that tell me? It told me that guy was great, and in six months or what I however long it's gonna take for the paperwork, there's always an agreement where you can swap folks out after a time. You can't keep people in their jobs. And so and the other folks were not had no idea where they were coming from. I had other other ones where they were and here's the thing. They were really, really good. In in this case, it was that program health assessment process. So we got all kinds of bids from folks who were quality assurance testers, who did IV and V, who did a bunch of great things, who are awesome in what they did, but they weren't quite a fit. And there was no you know, you can pair it back to some extent what someone's written in a in a proposal, and it might even sound really good. But when you get someone in the room and you understand, you know, they're you know, human human touch is important and, and you understand truly what they're asking, then it's going to be, you know, it's gonna be clear. The other thing is very much like written proposals. You gotta answer the question. Right? So, you know, if you just like I mean, but you're doing it live, which is a lot more, you know, a lot of more pressure. A lot of people don't like speaking in public, but you but you do it live. And in some cases, they'll make you gosh. They make you do, like, the the one I did at USCIS. I'll share that, you know, we went in there with three or four people. We had a piece of paper, a pen, a set of instructions, a whiteboard behind us with some markers, and they said you got an hour. Here's what you get. Read the paper and then send them present to us. So, you know, a lot of times what what, what the government is doing is they wanna see how you work together as team. They wanna see Yeah. How you work through processes. And and and now you add coding challenges and stuff and other USCIS, you know, requirement for many of these technical teams, and you can see it. But I think that the bottom line is you still gotta answer the question. You still gotta show that you really, really know what you're doing. And if you get a little extra time, get that done first, and this goes for both written and orals, get the detailed things out of the way that that truly answer what they're asking. And then you might have a little if the time permits, you got a little extra time for icing. Right? You can say, well, you can say, well, I realize, you know, that you are, you know, world class among agencies and and even among industry or whatever the case may be with that particular company. But you can't go in don't be vague, and don't be trying to snow them upfront. Mhmm. And the other thing is just I don't know. This will come up again, but I'll say it right now. Nobody cares what year your company was founded. Everybody's so proud of their companies, and they should be. You have amazing companies out there that you roll in with, you know, half your story is, well, you know, well, we started in our garage in Burbank, California. Right? Nobody cares. The problem you know, I've got a little bit of time. I got stuff to do. You know, you'll they'll be pleasant. They'll be, you know, they'll be accommodating to to saying hello. But after that, you gotta get going. You gotta show what you're doing for them. I like the, I like the idea of of the meet the the presentations being stacked, one after another. It's almost like a test of endurance, right, which you're gonna need on the on the contract anyways. That's a good way to good way to screen people out. Awesome. Thanks thanks for the the the overview there. I I found that to be really helpful. Mhmm. I know the topic that I think, make maybe a lot of the people that signed up for this are are interested in is, why proposals win. So I do wanna ask you some questions about that. It's something we think about a lot, on our end at GovDash even though we're not submitting proposals. Right? We don't we don't work with the government directly. But it's critical to to, like, how we think about every product we build and, obviously, incredibly important to Mhmm. Our customers and into the government contracting, landscape generally. So I'd love to start with just what are the characteristics of strong proposals? And I'll kinda keep it I'll keep it high level there, and we'll see which, which direction we go in. No. Sounds great, Sean. So, really, it's don't make me search for what I wanna find. Right? I even love it when when I'm talking to somebody. You know, if you're I was used to say, you know, someone's, like, going on and on and on. I'm like, dude, I'm not a minor. Don't make me dig through that sentence to get the gold nugget I need. You know? Tell me tell me what, you need to tell me. So clarity, compliance, structure, and get hit them over the head with it really. Hey. You you know, it doesn't even if it's not pretty, you know, sometimes the graphics company or the graphics departments of some of these companies seem to override the folks who were doing the technical work. Clarity, compliance, and structure. If you lose somebody in the first five pages, you're probably not gonna recover because this person only has x amount of time. Remember we were you were just mentioning stacking up all the all the, the, the orals. Right? Well, we have to do the same thing with with with these, presentations that come in. Right? Think about a stack of these things. There could be 30 of them. Now, you know, in some somebody you know, it's typically a pretty small team has to go through them. So we have a, you know, a pretty strong evaluator checklist that we stick with. Readability, risk articulation, traceability, and staffing clarity, basically. You know? And you and folks should be able to pick up your your proposal and find your strength and find what you know, get a sense of what you wanna do within, like, thirty seconds. Right? I mean, just don't just don't make people search for the stuff. And so evaluator is gonna reward, like, clear traceable alignment to each evaluation factor. Right? Nothing you know, we've already fought with the CEO about what goes in or what doesn't go into the to the proposal. Right? Or what or the RFP. So that's the stuff the companies ask for. And here's the other thing. We might be wrong. Right? We might be asking for something that just doesn't see it's just not the way we do things anymore in the industry. Well, great. You still have to answer it. You still have to say how you would address that. And then there's your opportunity to differentiate by saying, you know, absolutely, we can definitely do this day one. We're gonna make you look good there, but we've got some great ideas about how to take you into the future. And, of course, that's what the government really wants from industry too. But be very specific, very verifiable with your strengths. Tell people how, not what. So a lot of people just say, oh, yeah. Cool. We're gonna do agile. We're gonna do DevOps. We're gonna do cloud. We're gonna do this. We've done cyber. We're absolutely awesome at it. Well, that's just parroting the stuff back. For each one of the factors that are that are in the RFP, tell me how you would do that. You know? And, again, I get that we all have, space limitations, right, and and and margins and thing and font sizes. Don't get me started on that stuff. It drives me crazy because I do not care about that stuff. But others do now. So there's a you know, you'll see on LinkedIn every now and then, a chat will pop up or both sides of that argument come up. But but the bottom line here is how are you going to do this stuff? I did cyber and and, oh my god. I did zero trust by doing x y z at x y z place. Right? You know, you gotta show them because the evaluator doesn't know you. You know, there's tons of these things coming in potentially. And what is really gonna separate? You know, the bottom line is, can you do everything the ARFI said? Do you have it all covered one to one? And then, okay, how well do they do it? And the one other really thing that you, to to get into everybody's mind is how risky it is for the government to hire somebody. You know, we don't know all these folks. Right? And and and let's think about a dirty little secret right now. You know, even your past performance. Yeah. Company x y z, we did a past performance over here at the air force, and we did all this stuff. We got great CPARS, and that was fantastic. So am I gonna get those same people, that same team on my thing? No. You're going to as a company, you're gonna go a fight you're gonna go higher. You're gonna get partner with some of these great staffing firms, or perhaps you have a really strong HR team yourself. You're probably gonna bring some of those PMs, some of those experts over and at least seed them for a while to get things going. But, really, what we're buying all the time, what we're really buying is the company's ability to gather these resources to meet our needs. So past performance, you really I you it's very important, and don't get me wrong, and CPARS are very important, although it's a pain not a pain on how you have to do them. But, you know, you're really buying what you've what you're gambling on is the company's ability to pull together the folks to do this job with their expert, with their kind of their leadership. And nobody just keeps all these folks on the bench, all these experts, and moves them around as as as things come in. So that's something for everybody to really keep in mind. You have to be very clear about how you're going to do it. And so bringing bringing folks to the table that have done it is important. And if you can do key personnel, yeah, these people who have done all this stuff are gonna be there. The KPs or k purse key personnel, I think, are very important. But keep them, you know, keep in mind how risky it is, and and and the PMs are just like, man, it you know, here's the thing about incumbents versus new folks. You you have to not only be better than the incumbent, you have to be so much better, and you have to you have to demonstrate it through your proposal that it's worth the risk of going a different way. You know, unless the incumbents were really messing up and you come in and and people are generally happy with them, your proposal has to say, yep. We can do all this stuff, but we can even do this. But but first of all, you have to you have to match the the requirements, and it's awfully challenging with the with the space limitations. But not just empty empty optimism. Oh, yeah. We're gonna do this and, you know, and we're gonna do that. But you have to really think about how risky it is. And in consistent formatting and labeling, I hate to say it, but but but but it's important. I'm not as worried about the gloss, but make it so easy to score. You know? Let tie me one to one with what my proposal says. If you can do it basically in chronological order, that's that's, that's better. Because if if if you only got x amount of time and one one proposal is, like, sending you all over the place and you're zigzagging all over just to try to find where they are, and another one's just putting it right in front of you, that is gonna be a big win, for the to the folks reading. And, yeah. So, you know and if you can add a story you know? So adding a story here and there, it's good. You know? But it but get the get the basics, the one to one answered first. And, even if it's not as pretty, I get that. You know? It doesn't look as good sometimes to do it that way. But it but that's not what we're really measuring. We're measuring on, did you hit every factor? You know? And and that's the first thing out of the door. Okay. Yep. They hit every factor or they hit 98% of them. But, you know, don't here's the thing. You may not have to have every last factor, but, man, with depending on some of these some of these proposals, I wouldn't leave any I wouldn't leave anything on the table, you know, right to everything, have an answer for everything. And, ideally, you've had that experience or you've pulled it in a teaming partner that does, and then you can answer those. Teaming is a whole that's a whole thing in in in and of itself. You know? At the end of the day, you should have enough folks to answer everything on the proposal with some expertise. But I don't know. Where did we go? Did we did we answer your question? No. You're I think you did I think you answered a bunch of my questions. So that is, that was great. I, I I know I mentioned it before. I do have a question for you, and and you've shared some some thoughts on this with me prior. Just related to, like, we we can do all this this work and and have a phenomenal proposal. Right? But if somebody comes in and they're positioning themselves as a loss leader, or, like, maybe maybe they're not even gonna they're not even gonna, they're gonna have negative margins on on the on this contract. Right? But they're they're trying to, like, position themselves for the future. Is there a way to position against loss leaders? And and and do you have any advice on on, like, the best ways to do that? Yeah. You know, that's a that's a great question, Sean. And it it is a and I feel like if I could answer that, then, you know, I could retire because we could it's, you know Fair. The certainly not, to me, not ethical. Right? I think that we have in the past, we have marked down and this is, like, more of a this is really on the CO because it comes into the costing part. So in the government, we do an independent government cost estimate. It's basically based on what we know about the work. And if we had to staff it in advance, you know, without knowing the LCAT cost, the labor categories, and anything, and what what industry is paying. We would sort of put well, I would guess you do know the LCATs. But, anyway, we would put together we we always do this. Government always does this. Puts together an IGCE, independent government cost estimate that says, here's what we think high level it's it would take to do this job. Now this might be based on your incumbent, maybe based on the incumbent plus, you know, some some lessons learned you have. It may be based on additional requirements you're adding or that you may be deleting from from the proposal. But it is but it's always a that's how you get your money in the government. You're gonna put together an IGCE. You're gonna send it to the fight the CFO folks, and they're gonna say, okay. We we can afford this out of the budget or we can't. You know, the budget's a whole another thing. There's so many little pieces working together here. But a lot of times, just to keep on on track with the procurement acquisition timeline, you'll you can go in with a $0 purchase request. They call it $0 PR and put in your your request to CEO based on that, and they start pulling together your, you know, the proposal or the the request, you know, the opportunity. And then but, eventually, that money has to show up. Anyway, that's just some background on it. So you high level have a target area where you know where you can imagine what this thing is gonna cost. So in the past, we have had in negotiations with the CEOs, I'm like, man, this is crazy. No way they can do this job for that amount because what that's telling me as a PM is they're not they're not clever enough to understand or prepared enough. Give it whatever name you want. They don't understand the work well enough to think that they're gonna come in and do all this work at that price. They just are not bringing enough people. It just doesn't make sense. And that is, you know, that is a low confidence, area. Now it depends on the CEO you're working with and whether or not and I don't know how all the other agencies do it, but the CEO may have they may have variances where, no, they're you know, we're not gonna accept x percent below like what we assume it would be because of that. The the concept that they mean doesn't look like they really understand the work. Now, you know, of course, artificial intelligence is here. So that kinda throws, you know, that throws a, you know, whatever the acronym you wanna do or the you know, it throws a a wrench in the works. Right? Because there are some things that you likely can do, that it may not take as many folks before. But but high level, just coming in and and loss leading this thing because you've got a you're a big company perhaps, and you got some really good things, and you just wanna win this thing. It's it's, you know, I mean, I can't I guess there's no law against it, but it's it's awfully, difficult. And it really depends on the CO. The CO the CO's job is to get the best value for, the federal government, for the American taxpayer. And if Yep. The technical evaluation team has said, yeah, man. These guys look good. They're rated at least as well as the other folks there, and it comes down to price. They may they may take it. I had another thought on that, but it just popped out of my head. But that is, but that is oh, like, loss I guess, with the regard to the lost leaders. Yeah. The other thing, one more thought about this is I've seen in the past where if a company is going to be sold or they're trying to be acquired by another company, they will try to get wins by any means necessary. Right? So they'll, like, they'll, like, take their cost way down to the very, very bottom to try to get that award because they're about to be acquired, and they're not going to be really dealing with the the efforts there, but, you know, the effects of that after the after the sale. But the thing that I would I don't know, I and I don't know how the how the PMs on the government side can guard against this. But, you know, it is like, you know, two, three years in the out years when that money dries up and they may have bid those folks so low. Now they can't find, the best people in the business to do that work even though their technical proposal was really great. Couple years later, you're bringing in folks that are just not of the same caliber, don't have the same you know, they're they're just not gonna be able to hire them at the rate that their, you know, their their adversary or their competimates out there are paying other people. Right? And you're you know, nobody's gonna bring folks in and keep losing money. So they're just gonna take it right down to the to the rock bottom. It's a I'd love to you know, maybe I'll call our friends at GSA now and maybe see if we can get some some word some rules in there as they redo things. But, but that that is a it's a constant constant challenge, Sean, for sure. Yeah. Bill, I do, I do wanna make sure we have time. I wanna ask you a few questions around kind of negatives and proposals that we wanna avoid, but there were a couple great questions in the chat here that I I think it it makes sense to ask these now. So Cynthia had a question around where do you find the IGCE? Is that something that is is publicly available? Oh, thanks, Cynthia. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I was you know, at at DHS, it was available. It was something that the chief financial officer, may have had or maybe even the procurement office. There is, it should be it should be readily available or something like it. There are I would say if you you know, I I could probably share some points of contact, but I'd wanna get approval first. I mean, if you don't have one where you are, I think the d here's what I would recommend. You can find this online. So the DHS had their procurement shop is unbelievably good. And, and and they they have something called the PIL, the Procurement Innovation Lab. You can look that up online, and I'm sure it will as of, like, today depending on which which out of office, notice you're gonna get on the front page of some websites. You may not be able to see it today, until the shutdown's done. But the PIL, the pill, will will be able to help with that because not only do they they got so good where at DHS where we kinda built them side by side with my team as we're doing agile and dev ops and things like that to try to transition the IT industry. They were working right with us to try to make contracting much faster, right, so that it align with the new agile techniques. And so that's when the pillow stood up. It's been there for about ten years now, and it's really it's really among agencies, it's leading the way. And they love helping other agencies, and they also help internally at DHS. A lot of times, I would just send the program manager right to them, and they would tell them exactly what to do, the best way to to, to do in a a proposal. So that's my I mean, I'm pretty I mean, it was it was common at DHS. I really can't speak for other agencies, but I'll bet the pill can send you one if you if you reach out. And hit me on LinkedIn if, and, Fee, and that's for everybody. I'm I'm I love being on LinkedIn. I love answering whatever questions I can. So and connecting people. So if if you can't find one or if the pill website is down, I don't have one probably in my possession. I, you know, left a lot of stuff at DHS when I left in 2024 and didn't copy things. But, but I know those exist, and it's really not fancy. And this one was like a a an Excel sheet with a couple of formulas and a and a standard format, But it really helps you, you know, figure out what, you know, a realistic amount of what you think this thing needs to to get done. We appreciate Yeah. And on top of, Bill's efforts there too, we can work with our, in house analyst, Britney, at GovDash to see if there's anything we can uncover there also. Bill, Bob also had a great comment here that, I'm curious to get your thoughts on. So, just to kinda summarize this, his adviser, what he's seen work is, being hyper transparent in the pricing and staffing volumes, can help overcome, challenges from from a loss leader. So actually being upfront around, the compensation for those qualified folks that that you were just talking about there and, like, what it actually is going to take to fulfill this and provide them the value. Yeah. So so we'd like to get your thoughts on if if that strategy has worked. No. I I totally agree with that. And I have to come I have to confess that I'm not really the the the pricing guy either on this side or when I was in. I mean, to me and and there's you know, one of the things the PMs just want to get the best job done. Right? If we got the budget for it, I really care. You know, that's the CEO's job to figure out pricing and who comes in based on the price. I want the best value for the for the taxpayer and the best value that's gonna help me meet the mission that I've been assigned to meet. Yeah. And every PM in the government, I'm pretty confident it's gonna feel that way. It's a you know, it's cats and dogs, but we got you gotta have both. And so so the CEOs are looking out for that dollar. But I think from a can we do it for this price perspective? I think it's it that would to the extent your costing can be transparent. I think that makes a lot of sense because that, you know, that goes to you know, as people reading these and you're reading each that's another thing they do train you. They read each proposal on its own. Don't, like, compare them. But, of course, you're gonna compare them because you're writing notes, but you're not taking two two or three of them going back and forth. You're not doing that. You're doing each one on its on its merits, but then you're writing down what you like and what you didn't. But as people over you know, look, we're humans. Here's how our brains were. If if it's gonna look a little off. If you're reading 10 or 20 of these things and they're all within a certain kind of range and they all sort of say how they're going to meet the pricing and how they're gonna bring talent in and and manage talent, Then and then someone comes in and says, oh, yeah, man. I got this. It's like, you know, a buck $2.50, and we got this knocked out. It's it's gonna it's gonna stand out. And you wanna stand out, but you wanna stand out for that reason. Yeah. Well, that's a great question. So, Bill, you you've touched on what's important when putting together a successful proposal. Mhmm. There's a great comment in the chat earlier about, in the the classic quote that proposals, are written to be evaluated rather than read. Yeah. So I'd love to like, half the battle, right, is just making sure that you don't do things that are that are gonna get your proposal thrown out. Right? Right. Or just immediately sort of disqualified here. So I'd love to know what are the common mistakes that you see people making that are either gonna cost them points or or or just gonna result in them basically being completely disqualified, from the jump? No. Got it. Great question, Sean. I love that comment because, you know. And it's it's let me just let me just get to it because I I wanna make sure we're good on time. But but some of the things are ignoring the structure and compliance. Right? Nonresponsive, and that's what'll be considered as an auto loss. Now, again, on my soapbox, I don't care personally about margins. I don't care about font size. Obviously, I'm got a couple years on me. It's unreadable. But, but the CEOs do. Right? And and so and a lot of people, like I said, there's a back and forth in the in the chats these days about, does that mean that if they can't even follow this rule, then they won't follow the other rules? I find that a little bit on the ludicrous side personally. None nonetheless, if it's in there, you gotta do it. And so what you never wanna be is nonresponsive for goofy stuff like that. If they said, I want, you know, 10 fonts and I want one inch more, whatever that stuff is, you got to absolutely do that. So don't hear and here's the other thing, a little dirty secret, right, that CEOs are looking for and PMs are like, man, I got if I got 30 of these things, how can I chuck 15 of these things out right now? I mean, they're actually looking for stuff like that to narrow the the playing field. So why would you narrow you know, let yourself be narrow that way? Just just don't do it. You gotta you gotta do structure and compliance. So don't don't don't kill yourself there, guys. We all those people, all that money, all those people working hard. Make sure that your stuff gets in front of the right eyes. And so other things that are big are vague, unsubstantiated claims. Right? Industry leading. You know, what's that mean? Really? Are you really industry leading? Do you did you get an award for the things you did? I mean, people like to fluff this stuff up. And, you know, and I'm a writer myself. Right? I've done I've won things way, way back in the days, but but, you know, but it's it's mostly on can you do the thing? Tell me the thing we absolutely asked for, can you do it? And a lot of times, they're not asking it the right way. And if you haven't had a time ideally, if you have a really good capture team or or others in the industry will have good capture during the industry as in South Africa, ask those questions. Wait a minute. You're saying this? You're saying modular IT development. Do you mean agile? What are you saying there? Right? And if you can get that clarity, great. If not, you gotta go with what they have. Right? So in the RFP. So nail down exactly what they're asking. Tell them exactly what they're saying. Yes. We do module IT development. We've been doing an Agile IT for twenty years now. Well, nobody's doing it back on, but but see what I'm saying, get it in there. Ask the question. Answer the question that they're asking. And do not, you know, no vague claims. You know, industry leading or world class or none of that stuff means anything. Answer exactly what you did when you did it. Overly generic content is bad. Evaluators can spot boilerplate instantly. Right? You know, we have seen some things where I'm basically reading the same thing. I'm like, holy cow. These cats went to the same place and and and wrote the same stuff. And so, you know, you do have to, you know, tell them how and, again, it's gonna look similar to the RFP. Right? Because you're answering the RFP. But but just make sure you're not you know? And, again, like, tools like GovDash. Right? It's gonna come up with a really solid pink team draft. Now the humans need to get in the loop and really go in there and and, and knock it out. And then the other thing, as I mentioned a little bit about risk earlier, if you're not talking about risk, that's higher perceived risk. Right? If you're not talking about, hey. I get how this can be risky. Here's how we're gonna come in here. And, actually, when I did orals last year at CIS, one of the things I said at the end is like, look. We're new, but here's here's why it's not risky because x y z. And and and you have to get that across because it's it's you know, this is a this is three, four, five years and a whole bunch of money, and and they have to meet their requirements. They have to meet the mission. So talking about risk and telling how you're going to, you know, mitigate that, at even perceived risk is gonna be really huge. And and one thing I'd I'd just leave you with, they they don't ding you for not being perfect, in some case. They ding you for making them guess. Right? Don't don't not answer the question. It's one of the great things for every young person, every every old person to know. Answer the question before it's asked in some cases. Right? If it's if if you're reading something and it's still kind of floating out there, you're really not answering this thing. You're really not I I have to if I have to ask you follow-up questions just to understand, you know, what you're talking about, then that's a that's a miss, especially if you're doing it in a written manner where there's no follow-up, no opportunity to maybe follow-up on orals. But just the thing, you know, in in hard to score content erodes confidence. Right? If you're making me dig for stuff, that's that's gonna lose to somebody else who may not have as nice looking a presentation, but they've met all the requirements and they are, like, literally walking me to each section of where that stuff is, based on my RFP. That's super helpful. And, Bill, I wanna make sure that we have, time for q and a. There's been there have been some great questions thus far. I do have one kind of final question before we jump into that. So I've I've heard you, speak before about, on the on the industry side, like, how industry teams can actually think like evaluators. Mhmm. I'd like to know, in practice, what does that what does that look like? Is there a certain person that is sort of role playing as the evaluator? Is there a way that you're gonna structure, these reviews? So if you don't mind sharing a little bit about what you've seen work there for industry teams, that'd be super helpful. No. That's a really great question. And gosh, I mean, we did we have covered so much, and there's a lot more I wanted to talk about. But this is very important. Right? One of the last things I would really wanted to talk about is that get somebody that is not part of your team and is not part of doing this stuff in there to read it. Have a fresh set of eyes, like build like building a website. Site. You think your website works? Probably, yeah, it's perfect. All that stuff works just like it is. Bring in somebody who's never seen it. Bring in somebody who didn't build it, and then give them the tasks and say, okay. Go find this stuff. That you're it's gonna be so enlightening. Right? So bring in your you know, of course, you're gonna have some grizzled veterans who do this and very great your proposal teams, you got a proposal manager. Those folks are all great. You have each you have each, expert, each SME that kinda knows a specific aspect of the proposal. They're gonna come in and either red team review or, you know, even right there, what gold or white glove review, they're gonna say, yeah. This looks really great. But and your and your your senior leaders are often the ones doing the the white glove review. Right? But they're not they're not the guys. Right? They're not the evaluators. They're not the people. You need to bring in someone kind of, you know, not quite a layperson, but someone that can honor to read the proposal, read the RFP, and then compare your proposal and say, yeah. That's that's that's that looks good. That makes sense. And, and and there might be some now in that now this is not a way to you know, you have to answer the proposal as it's written, right, the RFP as it's written. But if you can find some people who may have this is this is what your capture team. If you can find some background where you kinda know what the agency is doing, what the agency wants to do, and and by the way, grab your grab your tactical plans, you know, the three to five year plans that people put out their forecasts for what they're trying to do. Make sure that you're embedding some of that language into your proposal. You need to understand who your customer is, what they're trying to do. And then, you know, you don't just sprinkle it in as keywords, but, you know, kind of put that in the back of your mind. This is what this agency is trying to do. This is their this is their five year strategic plan. Now how do I write to this where I'm actually meeting exactly what the RP says, but in the back of my mind, I'm aligning with that strategic plan? And that's gonna help you fill in some of the blanks between what you're, you know, some of the blanks between what you're absolutely answering step by step, but also some of the some of the icing on the cake. But you have to as obviously, it has to be tied in naturally. And but but I would really recommend getting somebody who just isn't your company. Look. You're you may not be, you know, nobody wants to say their own baby's a little bit ugly. Right? Especially, you know, there's pride of ownership, pride of authorship. Right? You need to bring someone in that's really strict, a really strong quality assurance or IV and V sort of person. I don't mean within the within the the folks who are SMEs in that. I mean, folks who look at your proposal, your from that perspective and say, yeah. This this just ain't answering it. Oh, no. Wait a minute. You got, like, five spaces between this sentence and that. Somebody hit a tab instead of a instead of a, you know, a space. That is not you know, that's in and of itself not a huge thing, but you really want this thing to look amazing. You want it to represent you very well without getting too much of the gloss. You know? Once once once you get the basics answered, now go ahead and make it prettier so long as you're not hiding things. But, yeah, getting a getting a a really strict set of eyes that and and a person that just doesn't care if you're unhappy or not about it, but wants to tell you really straight whether you're meeting this or not or whether something is well, think about an editor or the newspaper. Right? You know, you know, even Woodward and Bernstein had to go back several times to Jason Robarts there or whoever played them. Ben was the guy's name, Ben. And, at the Washington Post, and he said, hey. Get out of here. This isn't strong enough. So that is you need that kind of person on the inside to make sure that your stuff is ready to go. Yeah. It's a to your last point there, on the details, like, those little details, if they're positive ones, they will compound into, like, a very positive result. If you've got a bunch of mistakes across the board, that's also gonna compound into, just a sloppy bid. So I I fully agree there, and we try to apply that everywhere, on our side as well. Alright. So I'd love to jump over to q and a. Bill, this has been tremendously useful, thus far. Bob Burnett had a a great question here. This is time where we actually I come to ask, we're we're, excited this week. One of our customers had, actually unseated a fifteen year incumbent. Wow. And so on the topic of, on the topic of unseated incumbents, Bob asked, when you know the incumbent is not viewed favorably, how direct should you be in your response, in terms of reminding, reminding the buyer of their dissatisfaction? I would stay away from it. I mean, just to be honest, I mean, I know that better than you do if I'm the PM on that contract. And so that just that just I I don't I won't say it cheapens it. Right? But I mean but, I mean but here's only at let me even amend that a bit. If you know what aspect of the incumbent was having issues, whether it was couldn't stop it right, whether the management you know, what whatever it was, whether they were weak in a particular area, if I would if I were you, then I would make sure I was absolutely strong in that area in my response, but wouldn't call it out in in comparison necessarily. Right? That that's my advice on on that. Because then it gives me, like, a I don't know. I I don't know. I I may change my mind in ten minutes, but that was my initial thought on that. I just I think you stay away from that because it because, you know, again, it depends on where you found that information. Right? Because it you know, if you have a great capture team, that's awesome. But, really, from a my CO training or hurt them training me is like, look. Every everything has to be, ranked exactly as it's in the RFP. Right? And that is you know, it's I'd I'd be I'd just be careful with that. I think, but I would if you knew what the challenge was, then I would make sure yours was super strong in that regard. So the the takeaway there is, like, if if you've done if you've got good intel, you can essentially ghost the competition by writing super well and having a very strong case in the areas that you know that, they are dissatisfied with and and let that kind of do the the talking. Yeah. No. I think that's that's that's stated perfectly, Sean. That's exactly right. Awesome. When it comes to, there's another question from from Bob here, and and this is something that people are always debating. I've been to a PMP sessions where, they're exclusively focused on the, executive summary, page. We actually have, one of the companies we work with, one of the proposal folks there did a whole session on this. And so I'll ask them if I can and send send the link out maybe afterwards. But, when it comes to the executive summary, like, what is your suggestion on how to approach that as it relates to the rest of the bid and, some of the topics you've talked on, talked talked to you here? Yeah. So I I love that question, and I'm I'm ashamed to say that I didn't think about mentioning upfront. So that I think that's that's the place where you catch their their catch their eye. Right? And and I've spent on some of the ones I've worked with, I spent more time on that than you know, obviously, it wasn't just me, but that's that's the place that I was assigned for certain opportunities. And it's really because I had some you know, I was had done some capture there. So that's where you that's where like, to the last point, actually, that's where you if you know there's some has been some weakness in the incumbent or whatever the case may be or if you're looking in certainly, if you wanna have a strategic plan and you wanna make sure you're aligning with what is in the in the, proposal to their strategic plan and where they're trying to go as an agency or as an organization. And then, of course, answering exactly within the proposal what you're trying to do. So you're gonna say and it's like, think about a TED talk. You're gonna tell them what you're gonna tell them. You're gonna tell them, and then at the end, you're gonna tell them what you told them, right, to keep it to keep it all buttoned up. So this is your opportunity. This is your first, you know, five seconds of a TED talk. You're saying, hey. Here's what we're gonna do, and here's where here's our understanding of what your challenges are here. You know, you have to kind of determine I don't have the actual I can't I won't go through the entire structure right here. But this is an opportunity. This is the one place I'd say that you can you can kind of really jazz it up and and and show what you're going to bring to this thing that's gonna differentiate you from the other competitors. Because because they're all gonna come out and say, yep. Yep. Yep. Yep. Yep. Do all this. It's all down to you know, after that's met, it's it's gonna be how. And so what you wanna highlight, you don't wanna highlight it at the beginning, the executive summary. You're gonna say, here's our past experience in doing x y z has made, you know, I won't say industry leader, but has has won us awards. We we've done it. It's similar sized organizations, with great success. We look forward to, you know, doing it here. I I I that is a place where you really wanna sort of tie the whole thing together. Right? Kind of like the again, the TED Talk thing. You wanna tell them what you're gonna tell them, and you wanna get them excited reading this. Like, oh, yeah. These guys get it. They understand what our challenges are, what we're doing. I can't wait to read this proposal. And that's what you hope to have. And and here's where you don't want just boilerplate. Right? You really want this thing to to stand out, and that's the place to do it. Awesome. Well, I know we're coming up on time right now, and it's gonna kick us all out of here. So I just wanted to say, first of all, to the audience, thank you all for the great questions. You asked a bunch that I did not have on my list here and, I think, really helped steer steer the discussion. Hi, Bill. Thanks to you. This was awesome. I know you have a a you you've got a a lot of great knowledge. If anyone wants to connect with Bill, he's he's very, he's very on top of his LinkedIn, and you'll you'll probably see him around events in the the the DMV area. But, yeah, I hope everyone has a great rest of the week, and I hope to see you on our next webinar. And, Bill, thank you again. Thank you,.