Capture teams in the government contracting world spend a lot of time trying to determine the right balance of solutions and strategies that will differentiate them from their competitors and make them more attractive to their customers. Deciding how best to position your company, understanding what your competitors know about you, and analyzing how that [...]

A big part of winning a deal in the federal marketplace depends on how effective your PTW (Price-to-Win) strategy, or position, is. Keep in mind that a winning PTW position starts with a bottom-up analysis based on the requirements spelled out in the solicitation documents, but it doesn’t stop there. In order to arrive at [...]

Winning government contracts requires a lot of preparation. Would-be contractors spend hundreds of hours developing capture strategies and crafting compelling proposals, as well as (hopefully) assessing the competition. A successful competitive intelligence effort will identify the overall approach, as well as the strengths and weaknesses of each credible competitor, but this requires early identification of [...]

It goes without saying that winning government contracts requires a thorough and intimate understanding of the customer’s wants and needs. In positioning to win, however, it is equally important to understand how other companies (competitors) will attempt to meet those needs. In attempting to study and evaluate your competitors, one of the most fundamental questions [...]

The goal of every business is to remain in business. In order to do that, the business has to make a profit. True, that may be a long term goal. It’s entirely possible that a business may make money one year and lose money the next — but at the end of the day, profit [...]

Let me start by acknowledging that when people say the federal contracting arena is complicated, it’s because of concepts like Total Evaluated Price (TEP).  After 30 years in the telecommunications and Federal industries, I’ve figured it out—and our team’s understanding of this and other federal-specific words and phrases has helped our clients win more than [...]

Time was when incumbents nearly always won the day in the federal marketplace. Typically, service contracts repeat themselves at the end of a 3–5 year contract period, and, despite the incumbent’s inherent advantage, federal agencies allow these contractors to bid on the repeat contract.

One of the most important and valuable elements of an effective competitive assessment—as well as a solid capture strategy—is assessing who is the “team to beat,”  the competitor in the strongest position to win. This process highlights the areas where you need to strengthen your capture and proposal efforts so that you can outmaneuver the [...]

In a perfect world, the government customer would always know exactly what they want, would always publish clear and thorough solicitation documents in a timely manner, and would explicitly and clearly explain how they plan to evaluate you and your competitors to make an award decision. Unfortunately, we do not live in a perfect world. [...]

It may seem rather obvious that the first step in competing for a federal contract would be to try to understand what the customer is actually asking for. Isn’t that just common sense? And yet a surprising number of companies make the mistake—consciously or subconsciously—of underemphasizing this fundamental principle. Consequently, the resultant proposals are either [...]