Doing business with the federal government? If you’re willing to dig, you can find a wealth of “insider” information through the Freedom Of Information Act (FOIA) process.

Simply put, FOIA lets individuals or companies obtain records from Federal agencies. You can use these documents to both assess upcoming opportunities and evaluate potential competitors.

Here are some samples …

A couple of years ago, a client of mine asked for a checklist for a good proposal section. Because a lot of people have asked me for one since, I figured I might as well publish it. So, here it is.

Note: This is a pretty generic list. It cannot address whether the content of the …

Many firms claim they keep proposal costs down by preparing proposals during off hours — after work and during weekends. After all, you need to have your staff be as billable as possible, don’t you?

On the other hand, are you really saving money by doing this? How productive is your staff going to be on …

The single most important element of a winning proposal is a clear set of direct benefits the customer will receive by selecting you. Nothing is more important than that. Your proposal will win or lose on that alone.

You must remember this crucial fact: From the customer’s perspective, most firms in a given competitive procurement are …

Here’s something we can all agree on: There’s almost always a time-crunch when it comes to writing proposals. Maybe the client doesn’t give us much lead time (two weeks; a week; three days). Or maybe the RFP sits on someone’s desk for too long before a decision is made to go for it. Whatever the …

In the past couple of months, I’ve received an unusual number of responses that say, essentially, “How can I write a proposal that the client can distinguish from all the others?” Well, here’s my answer.

The only way to do this is to make sure you give the client more of what he needs than anyone else …

Here’s something we can all agree on: There’s almost always a time-crunch when it comes to writing proposals. Maybe the client doesn’t give us much lead time (two weeks; a week; three days). Or maybe the RFP sits on someone’s desk for too long before a decision is made to go for it. Whatever the …

Here’s a pop quiz. A proposal is:

A. A technical document

B. A marketing document

C. A sales document

D. All of the above

When I ask this question in the proposal classes I teach, I get a variety of answers. The technical people sometimes select A; after all, to them the purpose of a proposal is to explain a …

The best way to find out what your customers hot buttons are is to ask him. You don’t exactly put it that way; you can say, “What are your biggest concerns about this project?” Or, “What are you most worried about that might go wrong?” I’m always surprised at how reluctant people are to ask …

In a recent article we talked about how a chaotic approach to writing a proposal can erode the quality. We also told you we’d show you how to impose some order on the chaos.

Here’s a run-down on the basic steps.

Determine the client’s proposal preparation requirements.Regardless of how small your proposal effort is or how little time …