Government Contract Proposal Writing Guide: Federal RFP Process Explained

[00:00:00]people want to know what does a winning proposal look like what does it take to win something in Staffing and to what you just said yeah it wasn't perfect nobody here is perfect but you still ended up Victorious yep so this one wasn't Staffing this one was just service based it's selling HR Services which you know is really just the same thing and so then again since it's purchased order like each each order that I would get from them would be different so I figured I'd start with the proposal and how I work through it really quick just to kind of walk people through a lot of it comes from KY Park's mentality right of I first read it end to end right and then I the the biggest thing I do is I go through and I highlight out like what is the end result for me right so in this case they made it really easy right pick a minimum of three of these and then down at the bottom they say a maximum of five so I highlighted everything that I feel like I could have offered right and then I ended up narrowing it down to just five when I did my proposal then this is I was just saying that they included this thing that says all proposals at a minimum should address the following now address and include this chart I guess is kind of subjective I did not include this chart but I did address in more than 250 Words which is what I'll show everybody but usually when they put things in a different color it means like pay extra attention to it so these are the kind of things that like I cut and paste and again I have super Adobe or whatever you want to call it right but I cut and paste and edit and I can do all those things directly in Adobe so I cut all of this out and then I put it over into chat GPT and I'll say here are the minimum things that this proposal must include just wait right and then chat TPT will just hold that data and so then what since I call it like these are the minimum things to address then later when I'm using chat GPT to build what the proposal order will be I'll say like please pull in from the scope of work from the minimum requirements and so then it knows all the data that I already loaded into it it knows what I'm asking at pull um so that kind of is helpful for later too is as you pull big chunks of data like this over to give it a name and chat GPT like here is the minimum address or whatever you want to call it right then I go down I highlight really anything that applies so like this had a pre- proposal conference which question iend did you attend it I think you're answering that already but did you attend the pre-proposal conference so this one um I did I did attend so it was virtual and it was easy every pre-proposal conference I'll say is also very different and so I don't remember this fun exactly but I think this is the one where like they literally just read verbatim from The Proposal um so and then they said you have to submit all your questions so I printed out he like I have here too this is the result of it if everybody had to submit their questions they didn't take any questions live oh so it wasn't it was wow it was I think this one I'm pretty sure that was this one um but they start to all run together I so in the last year I've bid 73 proposals just put that number out there I was goinging through you know they start to run together but anyway then I'll take things like this the the instructions some you know whatever it is and I'll copy this over again into chat TPT and I'll say just hold on to this for later and so I'll copy all of this now I do have this small business designation in Virginia so um that's always a plus point when you have that and then a lot of places put this about proprietary information this one didn't have pricing so I didn't put any I didn't pull anything out because nothing's really proprietary they only ask for like projects that were completed uh oral presentation I wasn't asked I copy always this into chat GPT of how it's going to be weed um and I tell chat GPT to just hold that too and then it says here this it's going to go to multiple offers and so uh it's just what it is right um and also just go back to it it says selection shall be made of two or more which is encouraging because that means you have a higher likelihood of actually winning right and so then also it it makes it nice because like when you're quoting past performance sometimes you can just word Smith to say that like I have an active Award with the state of Virginia right like maybe I haven't completed the work for them yet but I have an active contract with them right so a lot of times that'll help that kind of helps a little bit too but when you're when you're starting out on the newer end of things these are just all things that I've acquired throughout the last year so share whatever I can and then they you know everybody has all these things they insurance requirements they're you know you have to have all these different policies in place so this is all like the whole second half of it almost everybody is not really negotiable on the payment terms what is what I have found um if pretty much you have to be okay with net 30 so that's that's just what I found anyway but I did a lot of stuff in Virginia and Florida so um for those two I haven't yet found and so the rest of this is just kind of you know all the the whats right so then this is the addendum that came out right so they changed when the due date was and then they went through all of the different questions I feel like a lot of the questions that were that people submitted were already answered in the in the proposal so again reading the proposal like for the the solicitation from beginning to end I think is super important and then pulling out to be able to hide light things so I wish I I wish my chat GPT would see like I could have pulled that up to show everybody but I can't so I show the final product so I'll show you I'll show everybody kind of what what my proposal looks like right so this is my cover letter it's super basic right but I have here who it's for I have here um the name of the contract and then the number this is all me and my contact information and this is all the fancy stuff that I have right so um I highlighted because there was was a designation for the set aside for uh small women and minority businesses which is what Virginia calls swamp so I highlighted that there for them to be able to see but I have my cage code all my nakes codes I'm SBA certified uh woman owned business and then um this was handed to me this verbiage here that just says like hey this is intended for you and don't give it to anybody outside so it's not saying it's proprietary it's just saying like don't don't share it with you know anybody else even though if you win it become public record anyway um in Virginia so uh that's what it is another question for you do they at all exchange the proposals like when once we've been on a on an RFP in the city of Clearwater Florida and we all got copies of each other's PDFs do they do that or have you found I didn't I didn't for this one and so um this is for you know the Virginia far motor vehicle it's pretty big right it's pretty big agency uh but they didn't distribute everybody's out um I had two other purchase orders I didn't receive copies of of any of those either one of them is in Texas and one of them's in Florida I didn't I didn't receive for either of those I never got copies of anybody else's I'm sure you could Foy it and request it if you wanted it to but I didn't so I was just wondering I love this yeah so um anyway then uh Small Things always make sure that you number your pages right that's something that's super easy to forget and then the table of contents I just use the one that is built in word I don't don't do anything fancy there there is nothing uh super extravagant about it right it just um I use the headings in word and then it just autogenerator me because it's just easier that way then i' also make sure like this one didn't have a word page count but that's something that a lot of them do so like it said uh the only thing it did have a word count on um was saying that like my intro area can exceed five pages so I just made sure that that one doesn't exceed five pages but everything else everything else just kind of fit with what it is so then I had my my transmittal letter is what it said it said that it required a signature again this is all done in PDF right so this is like my PDF signature I created a word and then I make it a PDF and then I put all my signatures in that I need to so this is just me saying that I I can do it right here's a cover letter which goes through a little bit about me and like the company and whatever here's our executive summary that again talks very specifically about the company and how how I operate and this lot I align to um what they talked about the expectation was in the solicitation right so when they say you know that they like quality assurance was something that kept they kept talking about in The Proposal so it's something that I included I'll see if I can find it but it it talks about that oh you have to be able to respond they they wanted you specifically to call out like how quickly you can respond if they send you a purchase order um how quickly you'll get back to them and then this in the contract though they told told me that I have uh I put two to four business days but when they send me the contract to sign the contract says uh that I have 48 hours wow I guess in the end it didn't matter what you put in right but um that was that was one of the pieces uh it wasn't really negotiated it just was I put that and then when they sent it to me it was 48 hours so but here's kind of the things where I go into like keeping things confidential was big to them and quality insurance so I just put little blips in there to to kind of just reinforce I guess of the company um what I believe in keeping things like data secure and whatever and then I I really just kind of walk through I took again I so what what I tell chat GPT to do after I load everything in is I ask it to please build me an outline I don't have chat GPT necessarily type everything for me but when you tell it to build you an outline and then you paste it into word it already puts everything as a heading for the sections so again it makes the it makes the table content really easy to build and then it already has it sectioned out and a lot of times chat GPT will say things like this is a great time to talk about what your business can offer to dnv whatever blah blah blah right and so I then will take that some of it I'll have chat GPT help me with but a lot of it I just I will either pull from an old proposal that I did that was really similar which um as we get down here so like these are these are the five wickets from their proposal that I chose that I could I could do for them and then down here I get a little bit more into it because they wanted specific um examples of each contract like or prior work that had been done so let me find that again all that that I just scrolled through was really like the quality sh and stuff like how are you going to do it what is your like how are you going to deliberate so this is where like in the let me see if I can pull them up together so another quick question yeah the quality assurance did you pull that did you use chat upt is it existing or no I wrote that most I mostly wrote it based on like see they have all these points here like got it and so mine mine almost lines up the same thing right uh to their general terms and conditions where I just kind of talk and you saw like none of them are long right it's like one to two sentences right but I get through all the same things that they that they call out as important to that and so where's the little chart thing the little red chart so this is where it asks specifically did it say but it said you have to include these things right here it is so the business need the project name and then a brief 250w project description so I ended up doing each one like this because it said that it couldn't exceed one page so I just bullet pointed it and then I talked about what I did right so this was a training that I ran for a company in Virginia because again if you could have done work in that state they like to see that you've already done work in that state right um and so I just kind of broke down what I did what was the scope of the work and I I bullet pointed it out versus paragraph and then what were the outcomes of it and so I I kind of did that for each of them so this one I have I have a certification to do this LPI 360 thing so I had done that for a different company so I wrote about that a little bit then HRS implementation this is another one that there's a lot of proposals for right now and this is the one that I'm pending an award for one of them that I'm pending an award for and so these I think are really cool um because it's it is exactly a middleman because all I'm doing is Project managing someone else's software um and so this has been a lot of fun for me but um I anyway I kind of just again shortened it and both pointed it out right of the things that really matter and then so veteran uh military spouse hiring is a big thing that I'm into and so I had done that for a couple different places so I wrote about it here and then this wasn't called for but they were like hey what else can you provide to us that isn't in this proposal but aligned with the same services so I stuck it in there right executive plac in recruiting Because it's what I like to do and I'm really I'm kind of good at it so I put it in there right maybe I'll get maybe I'll get to play somebody who knows but that's that's pretty much what it is so Chad CPT buil me out the the template like a you know the outline and then I really just kind of fill it in I had this is this is the end right cuz this is all now their forms I can show you when I built it when I built it in Word here's the word one so when I build it in word again this is just the regular TP contents but in order to make sure that the pages line up all the way at the end I put headings onto these blank pages so that on the table of contents it still comes out to match up the right way so this is all the required forms that they have and then when when I print it to PDF I then just Sub in each page that I'm required to at the end so again this one doesn't have pricing but this is what a proposal that one looks like and this is beautiful too I mean it's at the end of the day it's leveraging what you know what you have in leveraging technology you didn't have to bring in some fancy graphic designer you have all your information and I also want to point out you're in Melbourne Florida so you're in Melbourne Florida bidding and winning work Virginia Texas like so those watching you don't have to just bid on work in your state and it was also really Savvy of you to include the past performance for Virginia because it shows oh you have a touch point with us so this is this is beautiful I love what you have here thank you thank you so this is this one's pretty um pretty basic because again it doesn't go into pricing and so with Services it's kind of the pricing is always tricky right because it depending on what it is you know so yeah I don't I don't have that knowledge base to to delve into to share but this anyway is is what it looks like if you do decide to start bitting in Virginia I'll tell you that 90% of their proposals are male um and so they require like five to seven full copies of your proposal and so I've literally in the last two weeks shipped out four boxes of full rings of paper proposals to the state of Virginia whoa so wait hold on like I'm in I'm in shock okay so do you print these at home do you use a FedEx UPS how do you manage all of that I have space at a co-working space okay and so they have a printer that I'm able to use uh which is just kind of included in my mail goes there I can go and use the printer and so that's what I do like you have to you have to delineate when when it's printed they give really clear instructions right of of what it has to be and so they like I'll put up here at the top it'll say like original I'll just put a little header here and then PR one original set and that's where I attach all my original signature stuff then I'll come back to word edit this here to say copy and then as I print it I'll put the packets together and I'll title it like copy one copy two copy three copy four um and then I paper clip it clip it on alternating sides because again like when it's seven copies like that's a lot of paper if each proposal let's just say it was this size right so this was 26 pages that it it it a lot of paper adds up really quick it really does and then you have to pay to get it there right so then you're paying like 20 or 30 bucks so if you can do all of your things in house my logo is from canva I did it for free right this is stolen off the SBA site they just send it to you once you get your designation and then everything else is just word and Adobe so I try to keep what I spend on proposals as low as possible now this proposal probably still took me like two or three days to put together not two or three eight hour days but like I'd work on it a little bit and then I'd put it away and then I'd come back to it and so I try to move through it in sections which is why I had chat GPT buil me an outline because that automatically sets up for me and then I keep everything chat GPT moves it over and it automatically bolds in word so I just keep it bold and as I do them I unbold them so it's easy for me to keep track of what I finished with and what I'm not finished with so these are just little little tricks of the oneman show you know I have I have two part-time employees that work with me but just as a little a little one person shop uh this is what I'm doing and again I've turned out over 70 proposals in a year so which is phenomenal and and you included resumes how did you go about getting the resumés for this one so for this one I didn't really I didn't really have to and it I kind of include mine now I I'm not really a big fan of like my actual like resume like as if I was submitting to a job so I inste when when like you come all the way way down here here it is I have a profile for myself right so this is just a summary right of kind of everything that I have done through my career I have my education here so I have my masters my bachelors um any of my professional trainings that apply right so the shm certifications that I fold and then you know like I I have whoops I have the LPI 360 thing I'm I have a certificate from the University of South Florida so really like anything that I have here that applies to the kind of work that I'm bidding on and then I also think it's important to put the things that you volunteer in just because right it's I think it's important to people as as they develop and grow right that's one of the reasons why uh when we were talking kidy right I was like I'll I'll share what I have right because I think that that nobody should hoard all the knowledge right and that's why I just love the Goon winners group because it's not about gatekeeping right it's more about like there's room for everybody to table so um even if this did have pricing I still would have been happy to share it but again like I just I don't have a good one with pricing to be able to share right now so no but this is beautiful because the question is always asked and because of the nature of this work the pricing will come up when they decide when they to issue the purchase order so it makes complete sense and this isn't just unique to the state of Virginia there are also Federal contracts like that too where even if you give them pricing it doesn't mean that you want anything it just they know that's your pricing like a GSA schedule is a perfect example that's the pricing and if you win something on the schedule you're going to base it on the pricing so there's some similarities and I also want to highlight I love that you included your volunteer work I think it just shows them that you're human and it shows them more about you especially because of the nature of this work right and so you know if you were bidding on like something with fire fighters I mean of course you would have a completely different tone to this so I love that you tailored it specifically to this particular client so also the state of Virginia um every single state agency has a veteran hiring initiative which is another reason that I highlighted out all of the involvement that I do have in the veteran Community because it already speaks to something that's a high priority for the state as a whole right so every state agency has a program for it for hiring for integrating uh veterans postmilitary career so that's another reason I kind of St those things in there but it's just playing to your audience is just what it is yes I love that I absolutely love that and I'm just so grateful that you took the opportunity to share this cuz you're in the Facebook group and I know a ton of people uh communicate with you they asked for this and I was like well let's make a video then we can post this online and and it'll reach way more people so that they can see and it removes the veil no one's hoarding information they can see oh wow like this is beyond doable there's nothing in here especially because you took the initiative to add the resume there's nothing here where it's like oh I can't do this right yep it's true so I did for three years I worked for a much larger government contractor and so uh when it comes to sourcing rums and things like that like there is an art to it and I mean like recruiting again is a big thing that I do but just being aware if you start to get into that field where you have to provide resumes like I know you do this on on like the bigger professional level but when it's like one person it can be really scary to think about like you're providing three rums for people that you don't know you know and so I think if you're going to provide the resumés for a person that you're pitching for it I'd say it's really important to just make sure from an HR perspective so that's literally what I do uh is to make sure that you have a contingent offer signed by that person before you start pitching a resume right just an HR best practice for you and it's e get that too the reality too is that like so let's say that I was bidding something that that you KY were the perfect candidate for the reality is I could be bidding you but you could have contingent offer letters with five other people so the same resume could literally be going forward and then it's they're going to be like well then this just comes down to price cu the same resume was given to us there clearly this is the person that can do the work in this area right so I think that that it's important to know and understand that aspect of it too because you could also have five contingent offers one for k $1 one for $25 one for $6 one for $45 it doesn't mean that that the offers are all asane it just could mean that you're smart and you want to sign with who's going to win the work so you sign with everybody one's got to hit one's got to hit right and it's also helpful because you then have at least the framework of your team because some things could happen and the person may say oh I've changed my mind or I got a job or what may have you so it's great that you have the framework you provide it to agency so they see that you're legit and I think it also is reinforcing to them if everybody's providing the same resume like okay you all are on the same path yep I think so cuz some of them are very specific right some some of the some of the things are super specific and I think on the on the federal level one of the things I learned is that sometimes it's really specific for a reason and it's because they want somebody specific right they want a certain person without writing the contract to say we want KY parks only right but when that's the resume that comes in with every single proposal it's pretty clear it is very clear so now I love this and so Katie how can people get in contact with you because a lot of people are going to get in contact with you they're going to hunt you down how so I'm pretty easy to find uh I'm all over LinkedIn so Katie Garcia uh is my name I'm on the Facebook group I'm pretty active in there too my company is kdg support So kdg support.com uh you'll find me at my email is not hidden it's ky@ kdg support.com awesome well I can't thank you enough and I want to remind people pick up winners way book.com winners wb.com don't forget to pick it up pick that up like subscribe hit the notification button follow all of this because now you have you have a blueprint you have a blueprint and I'm just so grateful to you for your generosity for your abundance mindset for you sharing this because so many people would never do this and I am I am so grateful and indebted to you you you hopefully you already know like however I from be of help you ping me and I'm here all right and I have so my cover letter and the the um the page that's set up for the table of contents I have those two pages and I'm happy to share it with whoever you want like whoever if anybody emails me and asks I will send it to you so you can see all of my things right you don't have to screenshot from the tiny little thing on the screen right I'm happy to just share those two things and just re use the same format for yourself or whatever but I'll also put out there that I bid this December 18th um and this one awarded January 26 um the other one that I'm awaiting an award on I bid on November 28th and it still has out so also have patience because they're not all fast and most of the 70 that I've submitted I haven't even ever heard back on so well I commend you because you keep going with the 70 you haven't given up the fact that she's offering for free this information contact her show email please take full Advantage there's there's literally so much abundance so many opportunities so many tools techniques strategies for you to find bit and win profitable contracts this is amazing we get after it everybody well thank you so much for being here and as always don't forget everything is possible