Helping Executives Accelerate Government Business Growth | Celerity Works

Five government proposal past performance guidelines

lisagor — Wed, 22 Feb 2012 17:28:45 +0000

Agencies are increasingly relying on past performance as a key evaluation criteria to select contractors as a way to lower their acquisition costs. Here are a few guidelines to help raise your evaluation score.

Select projects that are relevant to the current request for proposal.
Verify that the former client is willing to provide a positive performance review, and that you haven’t recently over-burdened them with similar requests.
If the past performance was negative and you want to include it anyway, you should indicate the corrective action that was taken to fix the problem.
It is a good idea to notify former clients that you have included them as past performances references.
Obtain current contact information for the contracting officer or other point of contact to include in your project summary write-up. Also, verify the accuracy of the information being presented. Don’t indicate Oracle DB experience when it was SAP.

- Mike Lisagor, Celerity Works founder and Centurion Research Solutions Government Business Development Subject Matter Expert

Eight questions to ask business development job candidates

lisagor — Wed, 15 Feb 2012 03:14:09 +0000

From the number of inquiries I receive, there is an ever-increasing demand for qualified government contractor business developers. Unfortunately, predicting which candidate will succeed at your company is extremely difficult. Here are eight interview questions that might help.

Describe a standard business development process including the key roles.
Give a specific example of how you successfully identified, qualified and then supported a bid through contract award.
What is the key information you need to gather to develop a viable, qualified opportunity?
Which government agencies have you had success selling to?
How much time do you spend at your desk versus meeting with prospects and teaming partners?
How you would spend your first 90 days in your new job?
What factors do you believe should drive a bid versus no bid decision?
What is the optimal way for business development to work with operations?

Even if you find someone who nails all eight questions, there is still the matter of whether your company has the BD focus, process and resources necessary to enable BD success. But, that’s a topic for another time.

Mike Lisagor, founder of Celerity Works and Centurion Research Solution’s BD subject matter expert

Ten winning proposal themes

lisagor — Tue, 07 Feb 2012 22:26:18 +0000

A proposal theme or thematic sentence (see diagram for ten winning theme topic examples) is a substantiated sales message — a point of emphasis, advantage, uniqueness, or benefit to the prospective client. It should be woven throughout the proposal including the cover letter and cover graphic to unify and focus the entire presentation. The more direct, the better. It might address program issues or customer concerns and should be substantiated with concrete evidence. Proposal themes should incorporate your strengths and the competition’s weaknesses. Finally, themes should be responsive to the statement of work, proposal requirements, and evaluation criteria.

Mike Lisagor is the founder of Celerity Works and the Centurion Research Solutions business development subject matter expert.

Why small businesses don’t graduate

lisagor — Wed, 01 Feb 2012 04:45:43 +0000

There are many reasons so many small businesses in the 8(a), HUB zone, SDVOB and similar programs fail to successfully graduate to the full and open procurement environment. Put another way, there are several steps small businesses should take to transition to a larger competitive company. In my earlier career, I experienced two effective graduations and, since then, several others with consulting clients. Among the challenges were:

An inadequate strategic planning process
The absence of a mature business development, capture and proposal process and resources necessary to compete in the full and open marketplace
A lack of well defined core competencies or technical discriminators
Poorly defined value proposition
Insufficient support organization infrastructure
Not enough experience bidding on full and open bids
Over reliance on just a few agencies
Too few strategic partnerships including with new emerging small businesses able to compete on future set-asides and re-competes
Unwillingness or inability of the founder(s) to either become a more effective leader and/or to delegate responsibility and authority

Putting stress in its place

lisagor — Tue, 24 Jan 2012 22:44:24 +0000

A complete lack of exertion or stress may seem desirable, but in fact it results in boredom and stagnation. It is essential that we keep making continuous efforts amid challenging circumstances, pushing forward with dynamic creativity and breaking through all obstacles. That is the way to develop new strength and achieve fresh growth, whether it be in the case of an individual or an organization (Daisaku Ikeda).

Eight reasons contractors team

lisagor — Tue, 24 Jan 2012 22:42:14 +0000

There are many reasons companies team for a specific competition. Some of these strategies are:

Because your company does not have the size or past performance to be credible as a prime contractor.
To fill a service or solution gap.
To round out the team with the necessary technical or management key personnel.
To take a strong competitor off the street.
To satisfy a client’s stated or unstated preference for the involvement of an incumbent company or local presence.
As part of a broader strategic teaming arrangement.
As a joint venture – a contractual relationship that allows two or more companies to form a peer-to-peer business arrangement.
To fulfill a socio-economic status requirement for the prime contractor or as a percentage of the contract.

Mike Lisagor is the founder of Celerity Works and the Centurion Research Solutions business development subject matter expert.

Five critical subcontractor guidelines

lisagor — Wed, 18 Jan 2012 15:20:47 +0000

Demonstrate the importance of your service or product to the prime contractor. Subcontractors with hard to replace subject matter experts, like electricians or database programmers, are in a stronger negotiating position than general staffing or call center providers.
Establish strong relationships with the government buyer and the prime contractor. It is usually easier to negotiate when you have an established relationship with the government’s key manager. Now is also the when it makes a real difference during tense negotiations for your company executive to have a pre-existing relationship with the prime contractor’s responsible executive.
Try to team with ethical, fair and trustworthy companies. For instance, some companies have very principled contracting practices but have a few rotten management apples. Or, you might have a well-intentioned prime contractor manager who is being pressured by senior management to put the squeeze on or squeeze you out. While I’ve seen many mutually beneficial teaming relationships, I’ve also had too many clients who were left at the negotiating altar because the only reason the prime selected them for the team was to win the contract with no intention of following through.
Document teaming discussions. Is it the individual you negotiated the teaming agreement with or someone else in the prime contractor’s material department? I strongly recommend documenting any teaming discussions and agreements in formal emails that you send after the fact to your prime contractor counterpart. These become very valuable sources of information when there are disagreements about the meaning of teaming agreement language.
Avoid shotgun weddings. Which is to say, buyer beware! For many years, I assumed that other people I did business with took their commitments as seriously as I did. Unfortunately, this wasn’t always the case. So, the success of the subcontract negotiation process often reflects the specificity and honesty of the teaming process. Basically, there is no reason to believe that a company that refuses to be definitive in a teaming agreement will be any fairer when negotiating a subcontract. My hard learned rule of thumb is that in the case of reluctant suitors, the sooner you walk away, the better!

Mike Lisagor is the founder of Celerity Works and the Centurion Research Solutions business development subject matter expert.

Ten Critical Teaming Guidelines

lisagor — Wed, 11 Jan 2012 22:24:10 +0000

Here are ten guidelines to successful teaming on competitive procurements.

Your company’s technical role and work percentage should be clearly defined in a written teaming agreement. Avoid terms like “best efforts” or “goals.” These rarely pan out.
While established relationships often influence teaming decisions, business associates can be re-assigned or leave their company. Having a definitive teaming agreement is one of the few ways you can mitigate this risk.
It is a good practice to request a Dun & Bradstreet credit report on a potential small business prime contractor to assess whether they will be deemed financially credible in the eyes of the client and have the ability to pay their bills after contract award.
Ask the client what they think of potential teammates – the worst that can happen is they’ll decline to comment.
Most acquisitions require either the prime contractor or the entire team to provide a certain number of project citations. Confirm that the prime has the necessary past performance and relevant projects to cite in the proposal.
Look for companies that have subject matter experts who can be key personnel in the proposal.
Many government acquisitions assume the winning team will hire some or all of the incumbent contractor’s staff. This will need to be taken into account as part of your teaming and win strategy.
Make sure a potential prime contractor can develop a professional winning proposal.
Discuss pricing strategy up front so you know whether the prices you will have to bid will fit within your company’s pricing model.
Avoid companies that have a reputation for treating their subcontractors unfairly.

Mike Lisagor is the founder of Celerity Works and the Centurion Research Solutions business development subject matter expert.

Fifteen important proposal kick-off meeting agenda items

lisagor — Wed, 04 Jan 2012 16:46:09 +0000

Too many companies begin proposal writing without first having a solid kick-off meeting. Depending on the complexity and type of proposal, here are some important meeting topics:

Key procurement details and marketing intelligence
Competition strengths and weaknesses
Your company strengths and weaknesses
Major themes and discriminators
Win strategy (technical, management and price)
Unexpected changes in the actual solicitation
Solicitation clarifications to submit to the client
Proposal milestone schedule including price reviews
Teaming partner roles and responsibilities
Writing assignments
Writing guidelines
Key personnel and past performance citations
Staffing plan (if relevant)
Proposal delivery requirements
Actions items

Mike Lisagor is the founder of Celerity Works and the Centurion Research Solutions business development subject-matter-expert.

Seven factors that influence winning

lisagor — Wed, 21 Dec 2011 04:14:59 +0000

Here are seven key factors that usually make the difference between winning and attending a loser’s debrief. These steps are:

Make sure the key customer requirements can be identified, verified and related to a successful solution as well as the likely Evaluation Criteria.
Perform sufficient marketing to ensure that your proposed solution is consistent with the client’s perspective.
More than ever, develop the ability to identify the competition and quantify the probable evaluation score of your team vs. theirs.
Avoid teaming just with friends or previous partners. Instead, carefully analyze the acquisition requirements and competitive landscape.
Select teaming partners, prime or subcontractor, who will increase your evaluation score.
Make sure that your management and technical proposal approach meets or exceeds the SOW and Evaluation Criteria and that your Past Performance and Key Personnel demonstrate relevance and credibility.
Identify competitive pricing and client award history along with a Price-to-Win that is substantiated by a quantifiable data.

Mike Lisagor, Celerity Works founder and Centurion Research Solutions Government Business Development Subject Matter Expert