How Do You Find Revenue Your Competitors Never See? ✹ Four Pipelines, One Person, with Iris Young

Christina Carter (00:08) Hey Stargazers, today we are speaking with Iris Young, who works on proposals responding to RFPs in the SLED environment, which we all know can be so tricky: from finding the right RFPs and using the right keywords and key phrases, all the way to using what you learn about wins and losses to find even more streams of revenue. She gives us so many great insights. Let's go in.

Christina Carter (00:31) Iris, thank you so much for speaking with me today. I think a lot of what really trips us up in SLED is that there are so many different places to find RFPs. So can you walk us through what you're doing and what you're watching? What does an opportunity have to have for you to say, this is something I need to pay attention to, something I need to get leadership in front of the owner for? What does that look like in general for you?

Iris Young (00:54) The easiest way to describe this is that, first of all, we have four different pipelines that we are going after in the RFP world, and they're all related to SLED, of course. So the first thing is I'm connected to all of the sources that provide me with opportunities in all four of those spaces. We're talking staffing and staff augmentation, hardware acquisition or procurement, consultations and designs for computer networks, and cybersecurity and AI.

We're plugged into different pipelines that provide us with RFPs for that. I can't even count; I don't even remember how many pipelines there actually are. A typical day for me is, first of all, going through the ones in the push category that send their information to us. I'm going through and weeding through the basic descriptions to determine if it falls into our category or not. Then I'm going after the ones that are pushes.

Where GovSignals comes into play is that they are very, very good at capturing information in all four of those pipelines for me and presenting it to me as a high, medium or low fit. I'm able to easily go through all the high ones to determine whether or not we're going to push them through to the next phase, the project, and prepare the proposal. Otherwise I can just discard it. So GovSignals is a very major part of that, because it's giving me information from all over the country. We provide services across the country, but we also have a great focus on the Midwest right now. So I'm able to organize GovSignals to produce information for me exactly the way that I need it.

Christina Carter (03:08) You'll notice in this interview that Iris talks about GovSignals a lot, because she is a GovSignals user and customer and she genuinely loves it. GovSignals is an Orbits partner of stargazy, and it's their support that makes channels like The stargazy Brief actually exist. So go check them out, and we'll see you over there.

Christina Carter (03:27) Okay, so for SLED specifically, this is huge, because in my decade of working in SLED, you would sign up to every single portal or referral source you possibly could, and you just got inundated with possibilities.

I'm also curious, because being really good at this and knowing what's worthwhile is a lot about understanding things in advance of an RFP: your target accounts' budget cycles, their agendas, expiring contracts, things like that. What is knowable before the RFP in SLED? And what did you just have to wait for the RFP to appear to fully understand?

Iris Young (04:06) What we're finding first and foremost is that in SLED there's very little advance information about budgets or quotation totals. I very seldom find any that say, okay, we want to buy this equipment or we want to do this consultation, and we want to keep our numbers under a certain amount. That just doesn't happen. You go into it knowing what the market normally is, and clearly we have to understand our own operations and our own cost of doing business in order to determine that. So we put it together based on what we know. Sometimes we're in the ballpark for them, sometimes we're not. And we don't apologize for that, of course, because we know the value that we provide is worth what we put on that paper.

But yes, it can be very overwhelming at times. With SLED there are so many small metropolises, little bitty townships, all over the place. Sometimes they have their own platforms, and you have to be plugged into the city or the governance, the people running the procurement department, to even know that that's where they are. So we still have quite a bit of that. It's not overwhelming anymore, because we've been able to streamline so much with applications like GovSignals, but it is definitely a lot.

When we go in, it's never really about price. It's always about the opportunity itself and whether or not it gives us the ability to improve our reach in the target cities or states we're working with. We try to stay away from all of the other smaller decision points, because you just don't know. There's not enough information provided at the time the RFP is requested to determine whether or not you should step away from it.

Christina Carter (06:25) Then are you basically setting up keyword alerts? What can you automate, and what are you not able to automate, where it has to be a human to figure it out?

Iris Young (06:34) Yep, we do. We set up keywords. Actually, we set up key phrases; I think that's a better term, because it's not just a word. I'll give you an example. If we're talking about uninterrupted power supply, you can't just put "UPS" or "uninterrupted power supply." You have to qualify it. It's "UPS for data centers," or something like that. You have to make it a little bit more clear inside of that search tool. Then when it comes forward, everything is presented based on those key phrases.

At that point, it's going into each one of them. If the description of the RFP doesn't tell you enough, it's going in, taking a look at it, understanding the statement of work part. And then if it even comes moderately close to something I'm interested in pursuing, we move it along manually to the project level.

Christina Carter (07:41) Gotcha. There are so many people I talk to who say, just automate all of it. You can't literally know. It's not perfect in that way.

Iris Young (07:49) No, you can't. And I feel like in some cases, and I might be off base, but I don't think so, the people, department or agency producing the RFP intentionally put things into the submission requirements that can't be automated. Nothing comes to mind right at this second, but you have to go through those with a fresh eye to make sure you're capturing every single piece. It might be something as simple as numbering the pages in a certain spot, at the top or the bottom, or including a certain phrase in your header pages, or even submitting it through a portal or having to send it in a sealed envelope overnight, something like that.

So there's no getting around human eyes taking a look at it. It can't be completely automated, not at this stage. But I think it's getting closer. There are a lot of new enhancements GovSignals just released that are making it even better and faster to produce a response, and that's good. But I don't think it'll ever take away a human eye looking at it.

Christina Carter (09:17) Yeah. I think a lot of the advancements that have happened have made it much faster, so you can focus on the ones that are a maybe and really need you. That's the difference, and it's something I wish we'd had when I was doing SLED. I didn't have time. Our team just didn't have time. You had to do the best you could with what you had.

Iris Young (09:40) Yes. And the medium and low fits are important, because you might discover that something is in the medium or low fit because you don't have a keyword or phrase in your profile that would have captured it as a high fit. So I always browse through those. I've even gone as far as downloading a snapshot of what's there and dumping it into an AI program to go through and find the common traits, so I can determine if that's something I need to add to our profile or not. So yes, it still takes the human eye, that's for sure.

Christina Carter (10:27) So then do you find that keyword or phrase and just add it in to what you're looking for?

Iris Young (10:33) Just update it. Yep. And what happens is you might be at 24 high fit today, and then tomorrow, after you make that adjustment, you're at 157. Just that quick.

Christina Carter (10:49) I feel stressed out just thinking about that. So do you make updating your key phrases part of your process? You're intentional about it?

Iris Young (10:55) Absolutely, absolutely. And even if I win an opportunity and we finish the project, whatever that might be, if there is any single small thing about that project that was a first for us, I translate that and put it into our profile. For example, maybe we're providing a new product we just got certified in, and this is our first client we're providing it for. I don't put it in beforehand to say, okay, we're professionals at this product. I wait until we're done. As long as it was a successful implementation, I go back, take the keyword specific to that product, whatever that phrase might be, and put it in. Now I feel comfortable, because I have at least one past experience to draw on when creating the responses for those that may be coming. So it's not a one and done. Not at all.

Christina Carter (12:11) No. I think for so many people, it's that extra thing they don't do at either end: when they're searching for RFPs and finding new key phrases, or at the end, like we just said, with a new product or service that's successful. That means they just aren't open to as many opportunities, because they're not updating what they're looking for in upcoming RFPs. That's huge. Just by doing that one simple part of your process, you are opening up revenue streams your company didn't have before.

Iris Young (12:45) And not just the streams, but also the places in which we're providing those. The opposite could happen. We could have that same product I'm talking about, but because we've updated the keywords, now there's this little tiny opportunity 600 miles away that has posted for the first time ever. They put out what their requirements are, and lo and behold, it's a high match for us. We would never have been in that location otherwise; we would not have known about it. So it's good both ways: it increases the revenue within the pipeline, and it also increases the locations in which we do business.

Christina Carter (13:34) Yeah, that's so true, especially for SLED. That's such a big thing.

Then let's say you've found your RFP and you're going to go for it. One thing everyone really struggles with in proposals is getting good information from subject matter experts to put into the proposals.

Iris Young (13:56) I go into conversations like that with just enough knowledge to be dangerous. I understand a lot about different components of technology, but an engineer I am not. When it comes down to certain things, I'm not there. But I'm also one of those people who has the complete confidence to say, "I have no idea what you're talking about," and be very comfortable saying that to a person, so they know where I'm coming from.

It's better to be open and honest and say, you know what, this is way over my head. Either let me get somebody who can speak the same language, or let's modify this conversation, this requirements meeting, and do it a little differently than we're doing right now. I'm not afraid to say that. So to answer your question, I really don't know. Maybe it's just the gift of gab.

Christina Carter (14:54) You just do it. Well, I think that's a big part of it, though. A lot of people are a little stressed out, so they just give subject matter experts a few questions and say, "Hey, just answer these for me. Thanks, bye." That's how they do it. But it sounds like you're actually having those conversations and clarifying with them.

Iris Young (15:14) Yes, to the degree we're able to, absolutely. There are some SLED relationships where you really don't have that opportunity, by the rules. You can't have contact with those producing the RFP, because it could give you a strategic advantage, an unfair advantage over the rest of the responders. So some of those you just don't have the opportunity to do. But on a win, or in a situation where they're contacting us wanting more details or clarity about our response, that's a great time to be able to do that.

Christina Carter (15:59) Yeah, that's what I wanted to know. The other thing that gets people, at least me, and I used to have nightmares about it, is compliance. How are you making sure your submission is fully airtight on compliance, no matter what?

Iris Young (16:14) Honestly, that's the one thing that keeps me up late at night before a submission deadline: did I get every part? One of the things GovSignals is very good at, in one of their recent enhancements, is the agents they use to help create the playbooks in the proposals. You can ask it questions that have nothing to do with the specifics of the response. So I can go in and say, summarize all of the submission criteria for me. Create a checklist, point by point by point, that tells me if I've got everything I'm supposed to turn in when I send that submission.

Recently I used it just to try this out. I was working on a big proposal, and I asked it to take every single point in the statement of work and put it on a matrix. So if we win it, I'm not wasting time with my engineers saying, okay, you've got to go back and read the whole SOW, start all over again, and come up with a list to make sure every single thing is accounted for in the project deliverables. This time I have a matrix built specifically off the RFP that we can follow through and say, here's everything that's in there, and everything we do from this point on has to match or capture all of those items. Wonderful. If we win, it's going to make for a wonderful and smooth implementation for everybody involved.

Christina Carter (18:10) I used to do everything in an Excel document. I don't know about you. I would highlight things and color code them, and I would look at it so many different times because I was so nervous I would miss something. So even if it's just a first pass, having something like GovSignals is a big deal. That saves hours and hours of work.

Iris Young (18:36) Yes, absolutely. And it puts it in a spreadsheet format. I'm big on color coding as well. I didn't try that, but especially if it's a multifaceted response, where the statement of work relates to hardware, or to a design, or to post-implementation support, you could very easily go through and color code those so my subject matter experts can go back and pick up the ones relevant to them without having to go through the whole document themselves. So it's a very good enhancement, and I'm excited to try it out as we continue.

Christina Carter (19:25) Whenever I talk with SLED or federal GovCon people who aren't using some sort of AI tool for their compliance matrices, I'm like, what are you doing? You probably should. Why are you doing that to yourself?

And on the topic of AI, you obviously use AI quite a bit in your processes. So I'm wondering, what do you think needs to stay human?

Iris Young (19:51) I'm definitely going to say what we just talked about, the submission requirements. I think that's always going to require somebody to go through and look at it. And when you have proposals that require you to describe how you intend to meet the objectives of the recipient, usually more in consultations, you have to go back in, because there's no way at this point that AI is so in tune with all the nuances and intricacies of your business that you can confidently use an agent to interpret that for the needs of every single customer you're touching. It's not there yet. It's getting there fast. The more you feed it, the easier it is to produce results that are more human-like. But today, no.

I have to look at it and say, okay, this is a great proposal, but from our business perspective, can we truly deliver all the things we just said we can do? It takes a human eye to go back over it as a sanity check. Those are the kinds of things I feel a human still has to take responsibility for. But it won't be long before that's not a problem.

Christina Carter (21:28) I don't have exactly the same background as you, but I've been in proposals for a long time, and writing is my favorite part of proposals, along with the strategy behind the processes. So to me it's so interesting to look at what AI can do now to support the processes that get us to a win. I think we can do more now, and do it faster. Good faster, not just more for the sake of more.

That leads me to my next question. What do you really like AI doing within your proposal and capture process?

Iris Young (22:07) It's the strategy. My favorite part is the way the AI agents analyze a document and then summarize it in the manner in which you should respond. It's not just repeating back to me, in a shorter way, here's what this RFP is about, and giving me a paragraph. I love that it says, okay, here's what the RFP says, in a short paragraph, and based on everything you've fed me in the past, here are not one but two strategies you could use to create the response.

As I said earlier, what it doesn't do yet is know enough about my internal processes and our business operating model to say, you already do XYZ, so this fits easily into your business model. It can go back and say, you've responded to a similar project in the past, here's what you did, and assuming it was successful, you could repeat that process. I do like that. But it's not smart enough yet to go to the next level.

Christina Carter (23:33) Someday, someday.

Iris Young (23:36) But that is a genuine time saver right there, looking at it and coming up with strategy opportunities. Sometimes it's off base, completely off base, because it's using information about things we didn't actually do. When we won it, we might have proposed it, but operationally we might have found out something in discovery that says we've got to change course a little bit. So we tell the customer, we've got to make these two or three changes. We don't go back and modify everything in the proposal to match that, so it's not always clean enough for an AI agent to make an adjustment like that. But I definitely love the strategy. Absolutely.

Christina Carter (24:27) Are you using GovSignals for that, or is that an LLM that does that?

Iris Young (24:33) No, it's GovSignals. Some of their new stuff. I love it.

Christina Carter (24:35) Good job, GovSignals.

Iris Young (24:40) Yeah, the playbooks. Have you had a chance to play with the playbooks yet?

Christina Carter (24:46) No, I haven't.

Iris Young (24:47) That's where it is. It's nice. You've got to check it out.

Christina Carter (24:54) Yeah, because that's huge, especially to not have it in your LLM. Okay, sorry, let me come back to this list. I'm thinking about my own ways of doing things.

Okay. So at the end of an RFP, you've submitted it, and you've won or lost. Do you do any debriefs or feedback? And if so, how do you make sure that information goes back into the next process or the next piece of content so it improves?

Iris Young (25:22) Yes, we do, to the degree we can actually get useful information out of a process like that. If it's something as simple as equipment acquisition, the bottom line is that the value of your proposal was too high, if it was based on the lowest successful bid. If you didn't even make it, if you forgot something in the submission process that disqualified you and you didn't even get a chance to be evaluated on the actual proposal, that's one thing. I definitely keep track of that. And if I get through that first gate and I'm not the lowest bidder, I keep track of that too.

Anything beyond that, going back to figure out why my numbers weren't more competitive, just depends on whether the effort is worth it, and whether there are similar projects coming up that the information could be valuable for. Because sometimes you're just not going to be low. You're just not going to make it. So we accept those and keep moving.

The other example would be a consultation, where the RFP is "can you come in and tell us what we need to do?" It's a little more important for me to know the details there. If we didn't get it, I want to know who did win. Since these are usually public entities, eventually the response, or some components of it, are going to be made public. So I'll go out and do the research to find out what happened to that bid, who won it, and what the nature of it was. I also keep track of when it's over, because sometimes they're one-year contracts with the ability to renew for four years after that, as a yearly renewal. At the end of the year, I might use that to follow up and say, hey, how's it going? We've still got our proposal.

Christina Carter (27:50) Yeah, exactly. Are you happy with who you chose?

Iris Young (27:57) So there are certain things I do keep track of. But a lot of times with SLED business, it's just a loss. You chalk it up as a loss and move on.

Christina Carter (28:07) I'm with you. But a lot of people don't mention that last part, so I'm glad you said it. I think they get really focused on their one piece, and then there's a renewal.

One thing I'm finding interesting about this is that you're constantly finding ways within your process to find new revenue streams, or ones you wouldn't find otherwise. And I think that's one of them.

My last question: so many people in SLED proposals and capture are being asked to do more with less. They're getting more RFPs than before, but they're not getting headcount. What would you say to them? What would be most useful for them to know? Because you are a one-person team doing a lot.

Iris Young (28:54) That's our scenario to a T. The applications are an expense. Having a person to manage the application is an expense. So I can't go and ask for two, three, four or five of those when we're not winning to be able to pay for that. So we have chosen, by design, to keep the team small until the number of proposals we want to put out, or the win rate, requires us to add to the team.

So my advice, first and foremost, would be to recognize that. It's not just the action of finding the proposals. You have to think about the whole cycle: the win, the profit, the return rate, and the length of time it takes from responding to an RFP to knowing whether you've won it. All of that should be factored in when you're deciding whether it's time to add to your team to make this more successful.

And inside of that, if you're going to run a one-person show, absolutely prioritize. I have a habit, and it's kind of an inside joke with my team: I see opportunities we could easily pivot to. I look at them and go, we could do that, because I'm the eternal optimist in that regard. I see it because I know a lot about our operations, so I know what we could and could not do. However, is it smarter to go after that, versus making one you already have the operations for a lower priority? You have a higher potential of winning that one than the ones you could pivot to, where you maybe get a 50% chance of winning.

So make sure you prioritize by quarter. At the end of every quarter, you can go back and review and say, dang, I saw 10 of those ones we could pivot to; maybe we need to make that a higher priority next quarter. But this quarter, stay in the lane you decided you're going to stay in. Because it's so easy, at least for me, to see these things and go, I could do that one, that's a no-brainer. But it really isn't. If you win it, you've now added operational stress to a team that wasn't ready to pivot to that in the first place. So I think it's very important that every quarter, as an executive team, you review what kind of RFP opportunities you want to go after, and just stay there. Unless it's one that is just so big and so beautiful that you can't pass it up. Otherwise, it moves into the next quarter.

Christina Carter (32:15) I like that. And don't feel pressure either way, but does using a proposal automation tool like GovSignals help with responding to all the RFPs you need to respond to? Would you suggest people use a proposal management tool? What are your thoughts on that?

Iris Young (32:32) It 100% helps. A hundred percent. Maybe even 150, I'll give it that. Before using GovSignals, I did this for this company, and I had a little process for reviewing proposals pushed to me versus ones I hunted for. But no matter what, I could maybe get ten, maybe twelve across the four pipelines. I could maybe do that in a month. Now with this, I can probably do that in a week, depending on the complexity. I could probably do all of what I would do in a month, in a week. So yes, absolutely.

Christina Carter (33:24) That's insane, Iris. I wasn't expecting that big of a leap. Golly. I don't know how people do it without a proposal automation tool like GovSignals, with the amount of RFPs we have to respond to nowadays.

Iris Young (33:41) It was a lot to be able to do that, not to mention the storage space on your local hard drive and in your cloud, just keeping all of that data organized. That was at least three or four hours saved, cataloging all of the stuff you use to create a response, and then the response itself and all the materials that went with it. Cataloging that on your hard drive, or wherever you're going to put it, was a nightmare. Having a tool like that now, 100%. I don't have a problem with it.

Christina Carter (34:22) I agree. I will never show you my SharePoint from the past; that'd be embarrassing. I think of myself as an organized person, but it was just too much. It took too much time. So I'm with you a hundred percent. Iris, this has been amazing. I love this conversation. Thank you so, so much.

Iris Young (34:39) Well, thank you.

Christina Carter (34:40) Let's say people want to ask you questions. Where can they find you and reach out to you?

Iris Young (34:44) I'm on LinkedIn as Emerging Technology Integrators, and on Facebook as Emerging Technology Integrators. We're in Columbus, Ohio, so there's no confusion on which one that is; I think we're the only ones here. We're all very good about responding if you hit us up in a chat or a message, so either of those will be just fine.

Christina Carter (35:16) Very cool. Thank you so much, Iris.

Christina Carter (35:19) Hey Stargazers, I hope you were able to learn as much from Iris as I did. If you want to find Iris, you can find her details below, along with her favorite proposal automation tool, GovSignals. All right, I'll see you next week.