A Shared Process

One of the most-asked questions we get from prospective clients is who does what in the proposal process. The short answer is: you give us the information we need and we craft and refine the proposal to make it fully responsive to GSA's requirements.

Creating a GSA proposal is a shared process. You know all about your company and we know how to create proposals acceptable to GSA. Therefore, neither of us can do this process successfully alone. And, there's no such thing as a GSA proposal company that can can build a process on its own, with absolutely no involvement on your part. If a company tells you that you won't have to get involved at all, they are not telling you the complete story, nor are they really doing you any favors.

Indeed, you should not remove yourself completely from the proposal creation process. Your goal is to sell your goods and services to the federal government, a client whose rules and culture may be completely foreign to you. The time to begin learning about that culture and its rules is when you first begin working with us to create your proposal. That way, when you have your GSA contract and it's time to begin selling to this new customer, you will be prepared to sell to it instead of just starting to try to understand it.

So, who does what? You hire us to prepare and format the proposal documentation, but we rely on you for the information that forms the core of the documentation. Here's an overview of the process:
1. We ensure that you have the requisite qualifications for GSA to grant a schedule to you.
2. We answer your questions about the process and how we work with you.
3. We send you a welcome pack to get you started. If there are additional questions, we answer them fully.
4. Once you sign the agreement and make payment, we send you proposal documentation, described below.
5. We work the documentation until it's completed. For the most part, you give us the information we require to create a proposal that is fully responsive to the RFP (request for proposal) issued by GSA. There is a lot of back-and-forth here, with the required fine-tuning and tweaking that we do for you.
A. For admin proposals, we send you the admin file, you look for yellow highlight areas and complete them. This normally takes under an hour.
B. For tech proposals, we give you a sample and guideline set and you write the first draft of the tech proposal. We do the serious editing that creates the kind of tech proposal that fully, but succinctly, discusses your experience and capabilities.
C. For price proposals, we give you a sample and guideline set and, often, a spreadsheet sample. The sample is just that, a sample. Your information will be different and will have to be worked for the specific solicitation, but the sample will provide a guideline for what GSA expects. You work with all of that to create the preliminary data required and we work with you to fine-tune it.
6. When the proposal is ready, we print, assemble and send (or upload) it to GSA.
7. Once the GSA PCO gets in touch with you to begin negotiations and fine-tune your proposal, we work with you throughout that process.
8. Once the GSA PCO is satisfied that we've taken care of all outstanding comments and issues, the PCO issues your GSA contract number.
9. At that point, we upload your contract data to GSA's Web site, gsaadvantage.gov.
10. When the PCO is happy with the upload, you're ready to market your GSA contract.

Let's look at that critical fifth bullet point. This is where you need to understand your role and our role in the process.

Each GSA proposal has at least two documents, an administrative proposal and a price proposal. Some GSA proposals require an additional document called a technical proposal, where you describe, in a detailed narrative, your company's capabilities and past performance. Let's see who does what with each proposal:
The Administrative Proposal This document is quite lengthy, almost 100 pages (sometimes more), but only some of the pages require input, most of it fairly straightforward. Where GSA requires input, we highlight the input area in yellow. Where you see yellow, you enter information. To assist you right out of the box, we fill in some of the yellow areas for you with information that we already have from your CCR entry. One section of the admin proposal, the part where you describe how you establish fair and reasonable pricing, we work together closely.
The Price Proposal This document requires financial input, usually in the form of invoices you created from past sales and Excel spreadsheets which you build with our close assistance, using an Excel sample that we give to you. We work back and forth with you to create the price proposal. You give us the raw data and we refine this proposal volume and the spreadsheets that go with it. So, your role is to give us information and some documentation that only you have; our role is to refine it into a document acceptable to GSA. We need you for the information; you need us to create a document with which GSA will find favor.
The Technical Proposal This document, for many people, is probably the most involved, but most GSA proposals don't need it. This document describes your company and its capabilities, and includes descriptions of past work so that GSA feels comfortable that your company has the technical savvy to do sophisticated work under your own prime contracts once you have your GSA schedule. This is information that only you have, especially at the level of detail required by the RFP. We give you a technical proposal sample and you write a basic narrative that includes an Executive Summary (that gives an overview of your skills along with some information about quality control and financial responsibility) and several pages that describe your company's past performance, focusing on the kind of work to which you are proposing. Your role is as preliminary author; you write the basic information. Our role is to refine, edit and rewrite the information so that it passes GSA muster. We need you for the information; you need us to edit and polish your narratives so they are acceptable to the GSA technical reviewers.

Open Ratings and GSA Form 527
GSA checks your past performance by contacting some of your former clients. They get those client names from you in a process called the Open Ratings review. This is something you do (and for which you pay $175 to Open Ratings) but we explain the entire procedure for you.

The GSA Form 527 is a financial disclosure form that GSA now requires for many of its schedule proposals. You complete it, but, again, we provide it to you and help you if you have any questions. It also accompanies your proposal.

Final Steps
Once GSA receives and reviews your proposal, they will contact you via e-mail with a list of additional requirements or explanations. As soon as you receive this communication, notify us by e-mail immediately and we will swing into action to help you answer GSA as quickly as possible. Be aware that this phase of the process is usually very frustrating. GSA has a habit of asking for information that's already in the proposal or for additional information that the RFP did not request. Once GSA is happy, we complete a "final proposal revision" for you.

Once GSA awards your schedule number, we input information to GSAAdvantage, a process for which some of our competitors charge extra but is included in our fee. Once GSA okays what they see there, you're off and running!

We hope this page helps you understand the shared nature of creating a successful proposal. We do the heavy lifting of compiling and refining information with the information that only you have and that you provide to us.

As always, if you have any questions about this, please write to jamey@gsaproposal.com or call (937) 602-8930.

Thank you!

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