Learn from my proposal mistake ... one tip you should consider ASAP

September 21, 2021 - We're in the final weeks of FY21; we hope you've had a successful year end closeout! 

You may have heard the outcome of a recent proposal submission. Or, you may have a few outstanding proposals awaiting decision. Request a proposal debrief ... win or lose. 

I learned this the hard way. Early on in my career, I led an organization’s proposal and capture team as we pursued a significant opportunity that we’d been tracking for more than two years. When the RFP dropped, we were ready. We developed a compelling response and a month later we received notice of the award. We celebrated - we thought it was a done deal.

Plot twist: it wasn’t.

A competitor protested the award, the contracting officer decided to pull it, and each finalist was asked to resubmit a proposal. So we did, and we didn’t change a thing.

And we lost.

As part of that debrief, we learned that our proposal was deficient in a number of key areas. We had no idea. How could we? I later learned that the winning firm’s initial proposal had far more deficiencies than ours. They requested a debrief, rewrote the proposal based on the feedback they got, and turned in a winning bid. 

Losing hurts, but losing after you already won...don’t let it happen to you.

Request a debrief after every proposal submission, regardless of the outcome. You might not like it, but that feedback will show you and your team where to improve and teach you how certain contracting offices evaluate proposals. Sometimes, you don’t realize how valuable that information is until you just don’t have it.