Common Content Required for Responding


Ready to respond to a request for a proposal? You will be after reading this blog post! These requests from government entities are called a few different things: Requests for Proposal (RFP), Request for Qualifications (RFQ), Invitation For Bid (IFB), and/or Request For Pricing – Commodities (RFP-C), but all have common content that is required for responding.

They are all essentially the same thing: all the reasons your company is the best fit for a government contract. And the great news is that you already have much of this information. It’s just a matter of organizing and sometimes reframing it to fit the proposal’s needs.

Here are a few things to consider as you work on your next government contracting opportunity and gather common content that is required for responding:

Organize your documents

Before you even take on your first proposal, organizing your business documents is helpful so they’re easily accessible when creating RFPs. To do this, create a proposal library which should include critical documents about what your business does. It may also be helpful to create email aliases for every role in your company, such as marketing or accounting. Creating a proposal library will help organize your emails by topics and keep your inbox from being flooded with everything.

Getting the thoughts out of your head & start writing

The secret to writing is starting somewhere. It is very easy to get overwhelmed by how much information you think you need for an RFP, but often getting started is the hardest part. Pick a section and go. You don’t have to write everything for a proposal in order, and once you get started with one item, you’ll find that the others come more easily.

Your content does not have to come out perfect the first time. You can edit blank space, so create a draft and tweak it. As you do this over and over, you’ll find it comes to you easier. Make sure to save your past proposals in your library to reuse and repurpose the content again.

There are many tools that can help you get the content out of your head and into a document that you can use to win your next contract. You can grab a notepad and start handwriting, grab a stack of post-it notes, and/or just open up Microsoft Word or Google Docs and start typing.

How to win points

Different entities will have different point values. Some are numbered systems, like how you were graded in school. Others use a percentage system. No two submissions score the same. Each agency has its own scoring system.

A few things you can do to make the most of any point system are:

  • Be clear about the services you provide and your commitment to doing good work
  • Demonstrate your understanding of the project
  • Give examples of your civic activities, which can be important to some organizations.

These can all be documents in your proposal library, so they’re easy to pull.

Show & prove your numbers

A few things you can do to make the most of any point system are:

  • Be clear about the services you provide and your commitment to doing good work
  • Demonstrate your understanding of the project
  • Give examples of your civic activities, which can be important to some organizations.

These numbers communicate your firm’s capacity and capabilities. Your numbers give government entities a quick snapshot of your company and allow them to quickly assign you maximum points for the specific evaluation criteria.

Leverage your past performance & lessons learned

As you do more work with the government, your experience will grow, and you want to ensure you’re documenting that accurately for future proposals. Think outside the box when documenting this. For example, an architectural and engineering firm’s vice president and the principal may hold that title, but that may not be their role in every project. Sometimes they may act as a subcontractor, sometimes the prime. If the project is civil, they are likely the project manager, but if it’s structural, they might be the civil engineer. That’s a lot of experience and expertise that could be relevant to future projects.

Review the scope of work on a proposal and consider how your experience matches the entities’ needs. Not every project will apply, but including this information will round out your RFP and allow you to share how you’ve overcome challenges when things don’t go according to plan.

Need help putting together your first proposal?

Need assistance winning your next big contract or creating common content required for responding? Contact B2G Victory for support and strategy! Get on-demand assistance by joining the B2G Victory Portal!