After a solicitation has been released, the opportunity team reviews the documents and focuses on everything that is wrong. The solution lead develops a massive list of questions that includes every last piece of information they feel is needed to execute the contract properly. The capture lead tries to make up for a lack of client intimacy and opportunity information by asking a long list of probing questions. Everyone has at the top of their list to ask for an extension. What is the overwhelmed proposal manager going to do?
The ability to ask questions is a great resource for both industry and Government. When used properly, it can resolve ambiguities and misconceptions, thereby improving the solicitation and the resulting responses. However, when used incorrectly, questions can lead to contradictions and annoyance on both sides.
So what is a good question? In this post I address some of the misconceptions about solicitation questions and how we, as industry, can help the Government through our process.
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At this year’s Bid and Proposal Conference, APMP hosted a workshop for chapter leaders for collectively solving issues that run across our local organizations. I took part in a discussion concerning how we can increase the number of people interested in speaking at our events, including conferences. As we discussed some great ideas to cast a wider net, in my mind I kept coming back to a central issue I’ve heard from many people. Often, potential contributors keep quiet and don’t submit ideas because they don’t feel they have the knowledge, experience, or gravitas to speak. They feel that, since they aren’t an expert, they don’t have anything to contribute that others would find valuable.