Welcome to Proposal Advantage

Capture Planning is the process of identifying the opportunities, assessing the environment, and devising and implementing winning strategies oriented toward capturing a specific business opportunity. 

Capture Planning is an opportunity-specific process following the pursuit decision gate milestone that continues in parallel with proposal planning and preparation.

What we offer:

• Daily Beta.SAM.gov Monitoring
• Qualify/Criteria Establishment & Management
• Pipeline Monitoring & Daily Emailing of Targeted Opportunities

Dissecting an RFP in a short amount of time to start the GO/NO GO evaluation process ideally should be done within 24 hours of RFP release. 

What we do:

• Quick RFP reviews of RFPs issued from a myriad of Government Agencies. We’ve repeatedly broken down RFPs so we are familiar with how they differ from district to district. We are talking about high-level understanding of the RFPs.
• Create easy to read “Statement of Requirements” key points that will facilitate your decision to pursue or pass.

(Matrix of a Formulated Layout with Task Assignment and Schedule) 

What we do:

• Marry the RFP requirements to the Evaluation criteria; making decisions of how to present the answer to the often-contrasting requirements.
• Questions - We often require clarification when sifting through an RFP, in which case appropriate questions are generated 
• Conceptualize proposal order, determining paragraph headlines, anticipating team’s contributions
• Assignment of SMEs and team members to tasks and establishing due dates

When your Matrix is perfectly prepared it is easily transformed into starter volumes in Word or InDesign, based on the client’s systems.

What we do:

• Determine style based on client’s brand or recommend/make improvements
• Include all evaluation criteria and points necessary to “answer the mail” to advise/remind team contributors of the absolute “musts” of the proposal
• Format proposal including all RFP font and page constraint considerations
• Prepare all constract forms including reformating of the PPQs into an easy-to-fill-in form for your clients to encourage timely and favorable return.

Your proposal will only be as good as your data. Our proposal oversight stitches together the proposed teaming partners/subcontractors, as their company information is as equally important as the client’s

What we do:

• Lead kick off and milestone meetings
• Determine which projects and staff will be utilized (from all Teaming entities). We work direct with the Teaming Subcontractors, Designers and Architects.
• Gather data, format and create project narratives, resumes, organization charts, and equipment/resources lists in a manner to depict a cohesive team.
• Address PPQs and facilitate easy to answer pdf files for the client’s customers

The beautiful thing about demonstrative graphics is their ability to communicate your message. It is impossible to imagine modern sales and marketing without visual elements - and proposals are no different. Graphics serve as one of the most important proposal persuasion elements.

What we do:

• Conceptualize and design custom graphics as a way of replacing copy, to lighten up text heavy pages because about 65% of people are visual learners and our brains process visual information up to 600,000 times better, it seems. It is generally easier to understand visuals than to read entire blocks of text.
• Create merged logos for Joint Ventures
• Format projects and resumes of all stakeholders for a cohesive package. 

More and more you see RFPs that have been copied, recopied, cut and pasted until the page/font constraints and the amount of information being sought by the Agency is woefully imbalanced. 

What we do:

• We can anticipate and recommend how much detail may be required. 
• We expertly cut copy and can easily identify the fluff that can be eliminated
• We utilize space to its maximum, make sections and tables conclude at the end of a page, use all allowed large page sizes and are creative with all pages that are not counted toward limits.

Reviewing a proposal involves a lot more than assessing compliance, style, and checking for typos.

What we do:

• Schedule and lead the review teams and maintain control of master files while including multiple revisions. 
• Per the client’s preference and resources, use formal color team reviews and prepare assigned reviewers with necessary tools and guidelines.
• We ask the questions: Will it work? Does it fall within risk tolerances? Is it price-competitive? Is it best-in-class/best-value? Have all the benefits of the solution or approach been pointed out. Have all the features been sufficiently tied to the evaluation criteria in order to ensure credit?

The “out the door” date has arrived. This is, hands down, the most stressful day of the process.

What we can do:

• Have pre-prepared all covers, tabs, cds and labels ready. They can be sent to the customer, based on the assembly plan. Email submissions are sized and formatted per the RFP.
• Coordinate with Estimating and A/E teams for last minute pricing or Design elements
• Finalize all remaining revisions and exhibits. Obtain signatures and bonds. 
• Print, assemble and carry proposal to ship to Agency or Client, based on delivery plan.