The goal for every solicitation is to clearly understand the requirements for the solicitation and effectively demonstrate that to your potential customer that (1) your company understands the requirements, and (2) your company can successfully deliver on the requirement listed in the solicitation.
Here are a few suggestions to help you effectively prepare and respond to a solicitation:
1. Begin with extensive research, to understand the client, their business, their stakeholders, etc.
2. Closely review your findings from your market research and determine if your company has the capabilities is deliver on the requirements
3. Before beginning the proposal writing process do the following:
A. List all the requirements in an RTM.
B. Confirm all the requirements are clear, eg there are no vague requirements that need to be clarified
C. If there are any vague requirements, mark them and reach out to the points of contact listed in the solicitation for further information. Based on the time listed in the solicitation if time remaining for the solicitation is looming, you can attempt asking for an extension based on outstanding or missing information required to effectively respond to the solicitation
D. For each of the requirements, write how your company will satisfy the requirement and a justification for your response
4. Do the following to write your proposal:
- Be very specific – clearly explain your solution in your proposal.
- Ensure your solution considers the users and the business organization in the solicitation
- Demonstrate how your solution supports the users’ business process
- Demonstrate how your solution will enable the users’ better serve their customers’ and stakeholders
- Ensure your solution completely addresses all the defined requirements
- What helps is creating a requirements traceability matrix to help you ensure your proposal addresses all the requirements in the solicitation. in the section of your proposal where you call out exactly how your solution addresses each challenge listed in the proposal.
- Detail your solution, how it addresses the requirement and advantages your solution offers
- What helps is creating a requirements traceability matrix to help you ensure your proposal addresses all the requirements in the solicitation. in the section of your proposal where you call out exactly how your solution addresses each challenge listed in the proposal.
5. Here are a few things to avoid doing as you write your proposal:
- Avoid discussions unrelated to the current solicitation
- Don’t offer solutions that don’t address all the requirements
- If there are vague requirements in the solicitation, don’t make assumptions about those requirements. Follow up through the contract officer or points on contacts listed in the solicitation and get clarity.