"They're So Slow Getting Back" - How to Handle Evaluation Delays

There was an article circulating - not too long ago - about a public agency having to close temporarily because their only admin employee quit, affecting dozens of resident services and connected resources.

Articles like this, this, and this are appearing every few days as well.

Headlines like "Mandatory Overtime" (seen here) gets the attention of people concerned with needless overspending, but what about all of those minor or micro- consequences? Purchasing delays, for instance?

The vast majority of evaluations in the GovCon world occur via non-federal employees, who represent more than 87% of the GOV workforce. These are state-managed and local workers who have chosen to represent their corners of the world, fighting for their municipality, jurisdiction, or district. They are (widely) proud of their servicing areas, missions, and team members - many of whom may also live down the street and have children who attend the same schools, etc.

Hiring pools (and hiring managers) are naturally constrained given the above, where a local jurisdiction is the only place to find one's replacement or relief. These regional bubbles have an engineered slowness or viscosity - like honey pouring from a container - due to historical circumstance, internal speed bumps, transparency laws, and so forth.

Vendors and suppliers on the GOV side are much different. The best ones understand and work around the viscosity mentioned above, but are generally tidal and free flowing in their natural states.

This difference is actually positive, as public agencies and their workers love to "feed off" volunteer energy and vendor passion. All things being equal, passion has the ability to tip the scales over toward the one displaying the most.

Passion and slowness are not opposites, just like how technical advances are not guarantees of speed or ease of use, so the problem remains nonetheless.

In some respects, the slowness is understood. This is because there's a lot to consider outside of strictly qualified/unqualified: launch or production schedules, limited availabilities, supply chain bottlenecks, inflation, budgets, windows of opportunity, cycles of interest, or the natural decay of excitement surrounding a particular project, to name a few.

In certain other cases, the slowness could be intentional or purposeful. Delays could be used to do the following:

1. Capture ideas from the marketplace to spur internal debate/creativity.
2. Determine the most optimal use of the service delivery, or most minimal spend required.
3. Be used to open up alternatives or be leveraged in talks with current vendors.
4. Depending on the phase, the delay could be used to peel away at the vendor's true understanding of the procurement, pricing, and get BAFOs.
5. Or, the procurement is delayed because a cancellation is already in effect, just not announced yet. The terms of the cancellation are getting figured out: "Will there be a reissue, if so, will the SOW be the same?"

These all form the context of your proposal's evaluation and where it lands in the mix, even whether it's looked at by committee or via one specialist.

Preparing for this speed and orienting toward the win in the face of these frustrations can be achieved by:

1. Using clear and concise language, always.
2. Rather than going against the grain, provide an Option A and Option B.
3. Only one Authorized Individual should be provided to speak about the proposal and the submitted pricing. No other names and contacts should be provided unless absolutely necessary.
4. Speak to the intention of the procurement, not to the industry's zeitgeist or the bleeding edge of innovation in your niche.
5. Exclaim (with excitement) your company's intent to bid and confirm the sourcing urgency via phone call, prior to the Q&A deadline.
6. Lastly, and perhaps most importantly, don't ignore the Sample Agreement! Curating a specific response in advance of the ask will speed the DocuSign along. Happy to expand on this point as needed (just send a DM).

And there you have it... Dancing instructions for how to dance to this somewhat different tempo within GovCon.

Happy Bidding!