Increase Your Proposal Win Rate

Learn how to fortify your proposal prowess with Lori Revely from Cavalry Consulting. Dive deep into the essential prework strategies that companies can implement to soar above the competition. Learn how to construct a robust content library, harness downtime effectively, and optimize resources between bidding cycles. From interviewing Subject Matter Experts (SMEs) to refining resumes and streamlining file management, every detail counts. Uncover the significance of CPAR ratings and debrief accessibility in ensuring a competitive edge. Tune in to equip yourself with the tools to triumph in the world of government proposals!

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Mike: [00:00:00] Hey, everybody. Michael June here with game changers for government contractors. I've got Lori here with me today, and we're going to be talking about the pre work that you need to do in order to have a successful proposal. I know that's a topic that not a lot of people talk about, so I'm glad to be talking to Lori about that one today. But before we hop in Lori, for those that don't know you, why don't you take a minute, tell everybody a little bit about yourself and your company.

Lori: Thank you. Good morning. I'm Lori Revely and CEO managing partner of Cavalry Consulting. So we've been in business about eight years. I live in Los Angeles and I just love running this business. I like educating our clients about how to best prepare for proposals and the ramp up process because we like having educated clients so that we can turn in the best possible proposal. And I do a lot of industry government engagement we really believe that a good, relationship with government is also going to be bringing you the best results. So we work on that a lot. I do a lot of that with our company.

Mike: Awesome. So the topic today, we're going to be talking about the [00:01:00] pre work that you should be doing, and we'll get into some proposal specific stuff like that, but I think a lot of people are usually under the gun when it comes to a proposal where they reach out for help because something is dropped. And maybe they're a week or two into writing it and realize they're in over their head or whatever it may be. And it's the last minute stuff. And I know that's very difficult on proposal writing companies. It's difficult on the team when you're not prepared for that kind of thing. And so we want to talk about some of the proactive things they could be doing.

So why don't we kind of kick off that with a question around, like, what are some suggestions that you have for Proactive preparation they need to be doing. a handful of things that you recommend to people well before proposal drops?

Lori: Absolutely. Well, we believe in tracking well out, you know, in forecasting capture management so that you don't run into that situation. And I know that's easier said than done in a lot of cases, because you'll inevitably find that one that just came out and you didn't see it. But, it's important to [00:02:00] track and forecast out work, and you can learn how to do that on SAM.gov and then you can click follow, and then you'll get the email updates so that you know that opportunities are coming and when sources sought changes into a pre solicitation, which changes into a solicitation so that you know that it's coming out. And then to prepare yourself, have your project sheets ready and know that you're who's going to be your key personnel so that your resumes are kind of lined up. There's so many things that you can do to have your content library ready and we can get into that, but knowing which ones you're going to go after so that you have your pre work done in advance and forecast out so that your team isn't going to be overwhelmed when it comes. Because everybody's out like doing work, especially with small businesses, you're outperforming the work and you're doing the work. And if you don't have a proposal team at the ready to have that time set aside, the more you can have completed before the proposal drops, the better.

So having your content library with your project sheets ready, [00:03:00] resumes up to date. If you have those always ready, then every time a project is completed, just updating those resumes is a simple little update, versus figuring it out and rewriting every time. And, I feel like forecasting, or I really truly believe that forecasting and knowing what you're going to go after well in advance is so helpful. That's key.

?Mike: Yeah. So if you are looking at, say, government forecast, you're looking at SAM. And you don't find something that you're going to chase. Maybe it's not in the agency you want to chase or it's a little bit out of scope, but it is the kind of work that you do. Do you ever recommend someone taking something that they're not going to respond to and using that to prep all these components and things that you're talking about?

Lori: I wouldn't say to take an RFP in particular, but you could just create your content. We have a list, current resumes, all of your branding guidelines, which is like your logos and all of your fonts and colors, company bio project data, your [00:04:00] CPAR OSHA logs, EMR, all your current projects, past performance, your financials, contact info for your subject matter experts, your estimators, proposal team. All this stuff you're going to have to just have at the ready. List of office locations, all your narratives, sources sought responses. Because you can always use the information in those because it's all going to be about your past performance. A lot of times your sources sought responses have your past performance and a lot of data in there. Your capability statements and keeping those up to date.

If you have a lot of information on your cape statements, have those just like have this content library just beefed up all the time. Your SOQ's, your dynamic small business profile from Sam. Have all that in the same place and up to date. And that's the hardest part, but having that already so that when something comes out, you can go into that folder and pull from it and compile your proposal or give it to somebody who's going to help you. Because if you do call a firm like ours or any other proposal firm, or you bring in a proposal writer, coordinator, [00:05:00] manager, they're going to need something like that.

?When you keep it up to date, if you do it once a year, once a quarter, or when a project's finished, whatever the case may be. I know I'm probably maybe rolling their eyes like, yeah, right. You're going to do that often. You're so busy, but when you can keep it up to date, it's so much more manageable and you'll be thanking yourself.

Mike: Do you have any recommendations since you're talking about the content library? Do you have any recommendations on, whether it's software to use or tools to use? Because that is a very common question that I get is like, how do I manage it? Or a better question is, where do I manage it? Do I use Dropbox? Do I do SharePoint? Do I have some other tool? Do you have something that you prefer on your team? And I'm sure you work with anybody, whatever they're using. But there something that you've seen that's like, man, this really just streamlines the whole process.

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Lori: We really like Microsoft and SharePoint. It's secure. We like working in Word, all the Microsoft tools. I'm not a fan of Google. I know a lot of people have gone to Google Drive, but I like the old school, Word and Excel and [00:07:00] SharePoint. You can use you can set up a teams channels and have clients drop all their stuff securely into teams. And you're not emailing things around. We're a big fan of the Microsoft suite and then we can work with it in clients can work in it. We can work in it and have everything secure and everybody has their own files. That way you can work seamlessly inside of a SharePoint files and it's a secure place to work.

Mike: Do you have any recommendations for, in order to just be organizational efficient, right? Do you have any suggestions for, this is another issue, when you get into revisions or document names, things like that. Are there some little tips or tricks? I've seen people where they're like, I don't know which one's the current one. We're naming it current, but is that the right one? And you know, some people use dates and different things. Do you have any tips or tricks for like managing those documents that are going to be in there?

?Lori: Well, when we're working in SharePoint, we work in live documents, so we don't do revisions and dates, and we are working in the live insight on live documents. And then we [00:08:00] give access to clients to the live site, and we use track changes and so that everyone knows what's going on. That they can work in the document, we don't ever pull anything down onto a desktop or save as, that just gets scary and messy. Because then what if somebody has it open over here and somebody has it open over there and then there's so many different versions and then it's so much wasted time and money if you're trying to pull in changes that way.

So we always work in a live document. Sometimes you need to work in a client's SharePoint site or in their site, but otherwise we like to work in ours because we can always be in a live document. The clients can be in our live document. But if we have to work in theirs, that's fine. We figure that out.

Mike: That's a great suggestion. Cause I think most people are really focused on like you said, downloading it, save as whatever it is. So they don't touch the original and they're making their changes, but that's where the chaos comes in. And now there's 15 documents named similarly, but you don't really know which one's the right one or what, the last person did cause they're not [00:09:00] tracking changes, but I like using the live document there.

How important are the visual elements in the proposal in your mind? Cause I see some people that have pictures and graphs and things, and some people that just have text and we know there's some importance. In your mind, how important is it and how much of it should be in there? Because I think people can overdo it with too many graphics and things like that. Talk to me a little bit about those visual elements of the proposal.

Lori: Yeah, absolutely. And it depends on the client. If we're working in the federal space, which we do a lot, the government doesn't care as much as the commercial space. So if you are turning in a proposal to a car dealership, you need it to be flashy and it needs to be in probably an InDesign and it needs to have a ton of graphics and just be this gorgeous, beautiful document.

But if we're turning in something to the core or NAVFAC, they've said many times they don't want all of that. And that's why we do work in Word. And, we've had a little bit of back and forth [00:10:00] sometimes about that, but we make beautiful documents in Word and use styles and, themes, and you can incorporate all of your, colors and logos and then use infographics, which like, you can make beautiful infographics.

And if you're trying to cut down on page count, I think that graphics are incredibly important for that to tell a story with a graphic. Always, incorporate that unless it's said specifically not to. There are some times where they say they just want black and white, no graphics and like, oh, okay, well, that's going to look really boring. We want to make it look beautiful. But there are times when we've seen that, which is always a little disappointing because we want to put out a really beautiful piece, So it is client dependent, but we've shied away from multiple graphics, because we've heard so much feedback from the government on that, feedback that says that they don't really want all of that. We do, we talk to the government clients continuously because we're always asking their biggest pet peeves, what they like, what they don't like. They'll talk to us since we're not [00:11:00] their client.

Mike: That's really good feedback. Cause I think there's a lot of things in business that become a trend and if you talk 10, 15 years ago, before people were really including a lot of graphics and things like that, if you included just one or two graphics or three graphics, like all of a sudden your proposal just pops out of everything. And then all of a sudden you see everybody's doing it and everybody's overloading it. And then it becomes annoying. And then the trend sort of reverses and people are like, I want it cleaner and simpler and stuff like that. But it's interesting to hear that feedback because I hadn't heard that from anyone else. That's an interesting one. I don't do a lot of stuff in the proposal side of things. We talked to people about some of the sections and different things they need to do to prep and that kind of stuff. We'll even review some of the content, but as far as actually writing proposals, that's something, you know, we have folks like you out there that do that. So we'd much rather, you know, you stay in your sweet spot and I'll stay in ours.

So, when it [00:12:00] gets into things like subject matter, experts, resumes, stuff like that, how important is that to having a really good proposal? Like the, you know, the continuity between them. And so like you kind of touched on that earlier. I just want to give you another minute to talk about that side of things.

Lori: Subject matter experts are imperative to a good resume, or not a good resume, a good proposal because we need to know how you're going to build it or how you're going to design it or how you're going to do whatever the thing is. Right? There have been times where we've been asked, just do it. Just write it. It's your company. These are millions and millions of dollars and we need at least a dirty draft, you know, scratch it out on a notepad and send it to us, take a picture, something, and then we can make it beautiful. But we need to know, we need to interview you at least, because we can do a really good job and any good writer can do a really good job. But we need to know how you're going to do it. And we can do the research and we can find out whatever the thing is. We know a lot about wet and dry utilities and dirt work and [00:13:00] buildings. And, you know, we have a ton of historical data in our brains of all these things that we've written about and done, but we need to know exactly how the company we're writing about is going to do it and tell the story. So subject matter experts are incredibly important. They know about their past performance. They know what they've done and we want to weave in the best narrative that we can about the company so that they can win.

Mike: You talk about telling a story. Maybe you can talk a little bit more about that because I think a lot of people, when they sit down to do a proposal, I know this is a pet peeve of the government, they look at the RFP and they copy the question and they put it in their proposal and then they answer it and they copied the next one and they put it in there and they answer, and they kind of go through that.

But what do you feel like is key or some of the keys to actually telling a story that's compelling for somebody that proves, Hey, we can do this. What are some of those elements that help you?

Lori: You know, what's going to set you apart from the crowd? Because just like you said, you're, everyone's going to answer the [00:14:00] question. Everybody's going to take the RFP and answer the question and copy, paste, copy, paste, and change, the question into an answer. And that's what everybody can do. But what sets your company apart from everyone who's going to do that? Built the building on time and under budget. Okay. So did everybody else. What did you do? I built the hospital. Okay. So were there any people in the hospital while you were building the wing? Was anyone there? And I love this example. I'm going to take Michelle’s example because I remember it so clearly because it was very compelling to me. Years ago we were writing a proposal for client and she was just interviewing one of, it was a project manager in a truck, you know, And she had to interview him and he was like, yeah, well, we built this wing and it was on time and under budget. And she was like, okay, well, was there anyone in the hospital or was it just like an empty hospital?

Well, it was in a wing and there was a floor and there were a bunch of kids over there. Oh, there were kids on that floor when you were building the wings? Well, yeah, it was a bunch of cancer patients. There were these kids and they were cancer patients. [00:15:00] And it's on the same floor where you were building the wing? And she gets in and she's asking him these questions and drawing this stuff out. And it's like, the power never went out. I mean, can you imagine like a floor full of cancer patients and their children? And they not only on time under budget, that's okay. Wow. But, they kept everything going and completed this project. You can't just say on time and under budget, when you do this amazing project in a hospital, when there's kids on this floor that you're working and kept everyone safe, kept the electricity on, nothing went wrong.

And there's stories like this all over the place, but people don't know to tell this story. They're just like, yeah, we did it on time, under budget, went on to the next one. Okay. This is the kind of stuff you have to pull out when you're interviewing subject matter experts. So you can weave this into the narrative and tell the story, set them apart, from, from the crowd. So that is how I believe you win. You have to level up, you have to tell a good story, weave it in, and then also have be a good writer.

You also have to get everything else done. You have to do your reviews. You have to get everything done in time. The [00:16:00] resumes we were just, that was the next thing we were going to touch on. I mean, but telling a story. I think that's the kind of thing, when companies are behind and they come out, they're like, Oh, we have two weeks left, this is the kind of stuff you can't do. You don't have time for that. And that goes back to the forecasting and doing the pre work because then you have time to do things like write that story and talk to your proposal writer. You have time to build a really good proposal, with resumes, especially with three thirties, when you have all these different companies, maybe that you're pulling in, it's incredibly important.

And this is something I've heard from government multiple times to make them all the same. When you don't have the time, because you're, if you ever starting late and you're just pulling in, say three or four or five companies, and you're just like sticking in all these resumes. It's the flow, right? Because they're reading all these, or if you've been downselected or whatever, and you are in the final however many companies that they're looking at and their eyes are tired. And they have to look at all of these proposals and they get to the resumes and they get used to seeing like company a right. And they're getting through and they're like, okay, their eyes are looking here, [00:17:00] here, here, here. And they get used to it. And then they turn the page to the next company and it's a different flow. That's a really big pet peeve. And then they get used to that company and they're like, Oh, they turn the page and it's even another new one, you know, for the next company.

That's something that they really don't like. So make sure that all of your resumes are exactly the same for all the companies. And that's a really heavy lift. Resumes are a pain. Nobody likes them. So if you can get those taken care of and have them all the same. That's a big key for resumes.

Mike: I like that.

Lori: They have to be in maybe their own color or whatever, if you're going to make them your company color. Otherwise make sure they're all the same.

Mike: Yeah. At least formatted similar. Hey, here's our template for how we do this so that people can read and your box or however you've got, it looks the same on each one versus, you know, I've seen some where they're not formatted at all. I've seen some where they have specific pieces that are in little boxes and things like that, or like the experience is up top on one and on the next one, it's not, there's something else at [00:18:00] the top, different things like that. Or they actually have it as their actual resume where it says my objective is. And you're like, why is this in here? Right. There's some of those kinds of things.

Back to your point about the story piece for a minute. I think a lot of people don't realize that even a simple story is memorable versus they're like, this is not important. It's not important that we did this or that. ?I always tell people, but your story is the only thing unique. Just kind of like you were saying is like, well, everybody was on time and under budget. We're the only people that worked in a cancer ward with children and did whatever we did. Even though I don't know the name of that company, I'll remember that story from this podcast, that one of your clients did that.

Even if it's just one or two sentences, I think that jumps out versus on time, under budget. Or yes, we did that or yes, we can do this. I've seen that but the how and what story is like Josh is always talking about, the example of being able to say, we did a similar project for this organization and this were some of the results. [00:19:00] So that they know, Oh, you've done that before. And you did it for a big brand name or whatever it may be. I've got this one client that we did this value mapping exercise for them one time. And I'm going through and I said, who do you work for? And they were like, Walmart. Okay, that's a brand name.

Or, who else do you work with? Tractor Supply. Coca Cola. And they just start rattling off. I'm like, so you're basically working for like the top 50 companies in the world. And this is nowhere in your stuff. This is nowhere anywhere in your stuff. There's no logos. There's no mention of it. There's no nothing. Now that I know that, we're going to weave this into your stuff, cause it's just amazing, like in their capability statements and corporate overviews and all those kinds of good places.

What recommendations do you have for folks that have tried and failed, didn't get a debrief? How do people learn from past proposals like that? Do they do a kind of like a dissection with your team on that? Or do you have some other [00:20:00] recommendations you have from learning from the mistakes? Cause I know even when they win, people make a lot of mistakes through this. What are some of your suggestions from learning from the past?

Lori: I would suggest, I mean, whether it be us or another proposal expert in the proposal field to get an evaluation done of something that they thought. And always ask for a debrief. I mean, win or lose every single proposal you turn in, ask for a debrief because they need to give you that. Even if it's a written one. If you get one in person, that's just a golden gift. It's not common you get that anymore, but you'll at least get a breakdown. But you have to ask for it in that window. It's usually three days. So when you get that email or notice, you know, just ask for a debrief: thank you, please provide a debrief. It's as easy as just asking the question. And you'll get that back so that you can learn. Win or lose you're always going to learn something.

And then, yeah, we provide those. We'll do an evaluation, a full evaluation of any proposal for someone, for anyone. And we can do a mock source selection review. ?We've been trained on those by, we have a couple of people on staff that used to work for, one for [00:21:00] the core, one for NABFAC, that do reviews for us and, we know how to do mock source selection committee reviews. And so we'll do them during proposals if they're ever done early enough, or, you know, we can do it post and give a total breakdown too, and then teach people how to do things better.

But also just getting their content libraries complete and ready. Fiscal year end’s a good time when after, you know, everybody's kind of taking a nap or taking a vacation. October one, a lot of times, if they're not ramping up new projects, that's a great time. It's never going to be done in a week or a month but, it's a really great time to just create or update your content library. And every time that you have a project completed is a great time to update all those things. Because once you get a robust content library completed, it's a huge overhaul, if you don't have that up to date. But then every single time you complete a project, you're just tweaking your Cape statement, tweaking your resumes, everybody that was on that project, their resume gets tweaked every time it's complete, your website, all that stuff. Keep that in mind too, that every time you update those things, [00:22:00] you can reach out to all of your small business liaisons, deputies that you have a contact with too, and say, Oh, here's our updated Cape statement.

Great time to reach back out. Best advice is just to get that updated.

Mike: It's one thing to try and do all this once a year, but man, it's a lot of heavy lifting to go back and think, it's October and we did a project in January. What did we do on that? Who was working on that? What did we accomplish on that? Where was that project? Like there's so many things that you forget, especially if you're busy. I talked to a guy yesterday in the construction space. Last year for the whole year, he did about 1.8 million. This year alone, so we're recording this in early April, he's already done 3 million. You have massive growth going on in your business. If you're in a position like that to try and go back a month, two months, six months. There's just so many things, so many projects, so many contacts and conversations. It's so much easier to just make those little updates.

Even if it's just notes, in my opinion, of [00:23:00] Hey, we need to update this document. I'm going to take some detailed notes on it of what we did. Some projects are months long and for me, I recommend like, don't wait till the end of the project to take all your notes. If you're working on a 12 month project, you should probably be taking notes every single month. Or if something happens in between that, it's maybe it's every other week you're taking notes on critical things that are happening, incidents that were, that could have been, but you avoided whatever. Because again, you wait till the end of the contract, you're not going to remember any of that stuff. There may be one person who put out a fire that remembers that fire, but they're not going to remember all the details and, all that kind of good stuff. So that's a good utilization of the downtime and in between.

I think this was good just kind of talking about some of that prep work and things that need people need to do. I think part of the concern for a lot of people is time. And the other part is resources. And I think third is money. Right. It's like the time and the resources that we have to commit to all this is kind of scary. And if we could just pay somebody to do it for us, [00:24:00] that would be one thing. But a lot of people don't have full time people doing all these things for them. And so that's where outsourcing comes in. It's where, at least having somebody who's spearheading this and running it, comes in.

All really good suggestions for folks. As always your contact information will be on the website if anybody wants to reach out. Lori's one of the first people we reach out to anytime somebody drops the word proposal on us. We like your team and working with your folks. I referred somebody to you earlier today in the construction space. So it's kind of timely. And when I was talking to him, I was like, I'm talking to her later about the same things you're asking about. So it was really good.

Thanks for coming on and talking about all this. I really appreciate it.

Narrator: I really hope you enjoyed the podcast today. If you did, I'd really appreciate it if you would like and subscribe to the podcast and screenshot it and tag me on LinkedIn or whatever social media you use.

So thank you again for joining us today and we'll see you next [00:25:00] time.