Philip makes a case that unsettles most people who came up writing: good writing is necessary but it does not win. What wins is a response built for scoring. That starts with reading the solicitation before anyone drafts a word, then shredding it into an outline that maps every scored requirement to where it will be answered.
The conversation gets specific. Philip explains why not every SOW or PWS requirement deserves a response, and how a 20-page technical limit sitting on a 40-page statement of work tells you the agency wants a focused subset, often around 30 of 150 items. He walks through his compliant, responsive, compelling sequence, where compliance is the first gate and a single unacknowledged amendment can remove you from consideration. He shares real run-in headings that mirror the evaluation language so an evaluator can find and score a Strength in seconds. And he covers where contractors lose points on self-scoring vehicles like CIO-SP4 and Alliant 3, where a missed administrative box can cost five years of access.
For proposal managers, capture leads, solution architects, and revenue leaders in government contracting, this is a practical blueprint for building bids that score well and win.
Guest: Philip De-Bodene, Proposal Development Specialist (The PDS)
Host: Christina Carter
Christina Carter (00:08): Hey Stargazers, welcome to another episode of the Stargazy Brief. Today we have a very special guest who is a specialist in federal and SLED government contracting proposals.
Philip has led federal contracting campaigns. He's been doing this for over 15 years, with a win rate that I think most of us would be pretty jealous of. When you think of large enterprises who are hiring proposal consultants to win their most important government contracts, Philip is the person they hire.
So come and join me as I learn from him on his very specific steps. These are not high-level steps, these are really specific, in-depth steps with examples on how you can write and win GovCon proposals. I can't wait for you to meet and learn from Philip. Let's get into it.
Christina Carter (00:55): Philip, thank you so much for being on the Stargazy Brief. I'm so grateful to have you here.
Philip De-Bodene (00:59): Happy to be here, Christina. I've seen some of your interviews and some of your briefs and I always find them fascinating.
Christina Carter (01:07): For the people who don't know you very well, you have a really rich background in the federal GovCon space and winning contracts with the federal government. You have seen so many companies make mistakes within their proposals.
So I'm wondering, what mistakes have you seen over and over again that we can learn from so that we don't have to make those mistakes?
Philip De-Bodene (01:33): Sure, so you're right, I do work predominantly in the federal space. I also support quite a few SLED proposals, but in general they have very similar requirements structure. A lot of specific nuances for SLED, but overall they have the same things. They have a set of requirements, they tell you how they want to look at them, and they tell you typically how they're going to evaluate you.
But one of the things I see over and over again, and I put this down to enthusiasm and sheer energy for responding to an opportunity, especially if they're big or must-win opportunities, is that often the solutions team wants to get right in and start writing technical responses. They jump straight past all of the instructions and go straight to the SOW or the PWS.
Statement of work and performance work statements are great because they tell you what the government's looking for from a technical solution perspective. But a good colleague of mine and I use this term: not all SOW or PWS sections are created equal. Some are created more equal than others.
And often the government will advise you of that in its instructions. The mistake I see over and over again is not stopping to actually read what the government is asking of you in a solicitation.
Christina Carter (03:07): So do you think a lot of people, when they jump in and start responding without reading it, make really specific mistakes because they didn't read it? Is it a qualification decision? Do they just not hit all the points they need to?
Philip De-Bodene (03:25): So in the federal world, typically the government gives you the instructions in Sections L and M of their solicitations. L is the instruction manual. They are saying, this is what we want you to respond to, these are the things we want you to focus on, and these are the things that are important to us. And then Section M is further definition of that. They're going to tell you how they're going to evaluate you on those Section L items.
So Section L may say, we want to know your approach to delivering a transition for this one agency, moving from an on-premises based architecture to a cloud-based environment. That's a very typical scenario. It's in the instructions. That's what the government is interested in, because in a scenario like that, it's fraught with risk.
So they may ask you for your approach, how you reduce risk, how you ensure performance, and all of that's provided in L. And then in M they're going to tell you how they will evaluate your responses. And then that brings me to Section C, which is what most solution architects and SMEs want to jump to, all the technical requirements often found in the SOW or the PWS.
So the mistakes I see are folks rushing to answer all of those items without identifying whether the government wants you to answer all of them. In fact, I often see the government give you the instructions, talk about the approaches they want to see, and then give you a very specific set of SOW or PWS requirements to address, which may be 30 of 150 items.
Now, if I'm the proposal manager on a deal, I'll try and guide the team to look at the things I need them to look at. Here's how the government is asking us to present our solution, and here's what matters most to them.
Christina Carter (06:07): Can you imagine, and I'm sure you've witnessed this, you respond to all 150 requirements only to find out that you only needed to talk about a certain subsection. That would be devastating.
Philip De-Bodene (06:22): Yeah, and it happens more than that, Christina. I find this even in mature companies. But if the government's given you a 20-page technical response limitation, and the SOW they appended is 40 pages, there's no way they're expecting you to write to all of those things.
So it becomes pretty obvious, especially when you triangulate the data the government is providing, that there are certain key things they want to know. And they're normally centered around approaches, reducing risk, and offering high likelihoods of success in your solution.
Christina Carter (07:08): I would say that people who are probably moving from the commercial B2B space into B2G would never run into that in B2B. That'd be such a jarring thing. You have to make sure you read the content you get from the people who are going to be buying it, end to end. So, yeah, just read it.
Philip De-Bodene (07:40): Yeah. And that's why, and we'll come to it later, the shred of the proposal is critically important. Before you do anything, you want a deep dive into the proposal and understand it's not just L and M, there are other clauses too that could be disqualifiers, and other things you'll need to do in order to respond in a compliant, responsive and compelling manner.
You'll hear me mention that as we go through: compliant, responsive, and compelling is the typical order in which I structure proposals, because they are gates you have to meet to be considered for award. So that's a typical mistake I see, but it's easily avoidable and correctable. And good proposal managers typically get that high-level guidance to teams early on.
Christina Carter (08:43): Absolutely. If you don't have a proposal manager in place, then you don't know the right structure to do things.
Philip De-Bodene (08:52): Which is why a good proposal manager could be the most important part of your proposal response process. A good proposal manager and a good author are typically the two individuals who know the government's requirements inside and out.
For me, when I'm doing a proposal, and it's not unusual for us to be doing more than one at a time, you have to dive deep into these requirements and really compartmentalize. Because if you don't, it's easy to miss things. And in a highly regulated environment, which is what federal proposals are, compliance, often administrative check boxes, it's really important, all of the elements you've got to address in order to be considered for award.
Christina Carter (09:47): Yeah, you can't skip out on any bit of compliance with the federal government or SLED. It just doesn't work that way. Any one of us who have been in this profession a certain amount of time probably started out thinking something to be really true, and then a decade on we're like, wait a second, I don't believe that anymore. Is there a belief you hold now after your years of experience that you didn't have at the very beginning?
Philip De-Bodene (10:16): 100%. Coming into this world, one of the themes I've seen is that a lot of people fall into the bid and proposal management world almost by accident. So there I was, a senior vice president at a government consulting company, and I found myself writing a lot of proposals. We used to do a service delivery model, where you provide the services, you deliver them, and you also bid on them, often on evenings and weekends.
When I first got introduced to the bid development process, I thought good writing was what matters. I thought good, compelling writing was the most important thing in a proposal. And it didn't take me long to realize that evaluators are not there to read your proposal. They're there to score your proposal.
So while good writing is absolutely paramount and is critical, especially where part of the evaluation criteria says the government will evaluate you on the quality of your response, the writing is important, but what's more important is, again, coming back to Section L. I typically build a proposal across three main elements: compliance, responsiveness, and compelling. And if you get those three, you're going to stand a good chance of getting evaluated and maybe even meeting the government's high scoring criteria.
Compliance is gate one. If you're non-compliant, and it can be as simple as not acknowledging an amendment on a solicitation. Some contracting officers may issue eight amendments on a given deal. If all of those are not acknowledged in your response, you may find yourself non-compliant. So compliant is the first gate I strive for.
And then responsiveness. One of the things I saw a lot was great creative writing around "we will provide." You have a requirement that says the offeror shall, and I saw a lot of "we will do those things," but never a lot of the technical how. So responsiveness means you're not only saying you will do these things, you're telling them how, with sufficient technical detail that it takes ambiguity or risk off the table, because that's what the government wants to see. They want low risk, high probability of successful performance.
And the third, the compelling, is often telling them where you've done it before and why it's good for them. So good writing is like building a car. You've got to have the right chassis, the right components, and it's got to perform to certain criteria the government is expecting.
So compliant, responsive and compelling doesn't just mean good writing. It means I've got the structure correct, the outline correct, and the government's going to be able to score this as easily as they can. And that comes back to one of my first rules of proposal writing: don't make the evaluators suffer. Make it as easy as possible for them to score you. Writing is important, but it's not what makes a great proposal.
Christina Carter (14:24): Stargazy is a great place to find your next proposal software. We have a report we update every single month that helps you understand what the proposal automation software market looks like. If you're confused by all the tools out there, it's a great way to find your next tool without me being paid to show it to you. It's a genuine, unbiased, third-party way of looking at the market. Go find it below. Let's get back into it.
Christina Carter (14:51): I've had so much feedback from buying and purchasing teams about proposals my team or I submitted, and it was always, this is easily the best proposal we've ever received, the most well-written. And those are the ones we got second place on, which is a losing bid. You didn't win it. I was like, oh, that's really nice to hear, but we lost. That wasn't enough. So I'm with you.
Philip De-Bodene (15:26): Great writing, great punctuation, great syntax, all of that is important. But if they're not in the organization the government's asking for, it doesn't matter. They can be the most poetic, eloquent narratives ever developed, but they're not gonna win you the deal.
Christina Carter (15:45): No. If only it were that easy.
Philip De-Bodene (15:48): If only it was that. Because there are a lot of good writers out there.
Christina Carter (15:52): I had the exact same thought when I started. You just had to be a great writer, and that was enough. But this comes back to your shred philosophy. You have a philosophy, a way of thinking about the shred, and a sequence of how it should be done. Can you walk me through how you think about it and what you do?
Philip De-Bodene (16:00): Yeah. It's really important, before we jump into solutions and make decisions about what the government is asking for, that we understand all of the solicitation requirements. When I get handed a proposal to support, you can guess which sections I go to first. It's L and M. I want to see what the government's asking us for and how they're going to evaluate us.
Then I immediately go back to the instructions for page count, font size, font type, page allocations per section. So I get a good holistic picture of how the government expects to see our submission.
With that in mind, and acknowledging the SOW or PWS, in the federal government often Section C, the specific requirements, I'm able to build an outline. Like a lot of proposal professionals, we'll put that outline in an Excel spreadsheet that gives a clear view of how the proposal is structured, headings, subsections, and so on. During that process, I've confirmed how the government is directing us to what it wants to see, how it's going to score us, and how the response needs to be structured to connect the SOW or PWS requirements to the scoring criteria. If we do that well, we build an evaluator-friendly outline.
And outlines are critical, because on some deals the government may be looking at 40 submittals. It wants to get through them quickly. If you make their job easy, they can do the down-selects to get you into that group they'll take a deeper look at. And often they're using AI for that now too. They're running your proposals through AI platforms that identify whether you've addressed all the requirements they asked for. So they do a quick compliance check and identify where you've provided benefits, strengths, and risk mitigations.
So being able to shred correctly and build an outline has multiple benefits. We've got an outline we can give to authors, volume leads, and SMEs who can write with confidence. And if we've done the outline properly, it lets us identify strengths, especially with adjectival ratings, where the government looks for significant strengths, high likelihood of success, reduced risk, zero to no risk, and little to no government oversight. That may be an entire adjectival rating explanation, which would give you potentially an outstanding rating.
I wrote a couple of examples, if you want I can share one or two.
Christina Carter (20:24): Yeah, no, that would be amazing.
Philip De-Bodene (20:38): So if in an adjectival rating the government is asking for one or more significant strengths, you may see, right where it matters, "significant strength" used as a run-in heading. Here's language I may use: our fast-track automation monitors agency updates, applies validated STIG changes to staging environments in under 24 hours, reducing risk exposure and supporting continuous compliance audits.
There's a bunch of things happening. We're telling them how, when, and why it reduces risk. I'll repeat that wherever possible. I tie our technical solution back to the criteria the government is evaluating us on. That way we're not just telling them what we're going to do, we're telling them how and why it's good for them.
Another example, again using run-in headings to draw the evaluator's attention: we bring several significant strengths that directly enhance the agency's cyber operations. These are real examples, I've just changed the agency name. Over 95% closure of category one to three vulnerabilities within 30 days, ahead of what the government was asking, verified on prior agency contracts. 60% faster policy drafting and publishing using reusable templates. And five consecutive years of agency mission support with zero downtime.
Concrete examples, qualitative and quantitative data, that let the agency say, these guys told me they can do it, how they'll do it, and why it's a benefit to us. These examples capture the evaluator's eye and connect our solution directly to their evaluation language and scoring rubric.
You need to get very process-driven when you shred, because that enables a typical outline that makes it easy to build a response that strikes all the scoring criteria. I've been deliberate about that for many years.
Christina Carter (23:08): This seems like a really smart, formulaic way of making sure you hit all the points they're asking for, in the way they need to read it so they can score you positively for significant strengths.
Philip De-Bodene (23:23): Yeah. I won't lie, Christina, it's helped being married to a government contracting professional who has helped me hone my skills. We have very abstract conversations, and I get that feedback saying, yes, those things are important to us. A perfect example is 130 responses and you've got to get to one decision. How do you get there quickly? Normally through being able to see all the benefits and strengths of a proposal very quickly.
Christina Carter (24:02): I just want to be at the dinner table at some point when you're having a conversation about work. And thank you for those examples, that is super useful. When it says "this is going to be evaluated," how do you treat that differently? What does that make you do when you see that phrase?
Philip De-Bodene (24:25): First of all, I love it, especially if the government's been clear about what it's evaluating you on. Not all contracting offices are created equal, so some do this better than others. But when they have clearly defined evaluation criteria, it makes my job that much easier. I'm still surprised how many people treat L almost as compliance requirements rather than specific opportunities to build a compelling proposal.
When I see how something is going to be evaluated and I'm responding to a technical solution component, I really want to drive home the connection to that evaluation criteria. I've mentioned run-in headings, and I love them. I'm probably known as Mr. Run-in Heading, but they catch the evaluator's eye. And that run-in heading often mirrors the evaluation criteria language. So if they say significant strengths are important, my run-in heading may start with "significant strength" and then explain the requirement in plain, responsive language.
Then I talk about the technical detail, the how. Often that's missing in proposals I've reviewed. We tell them we're going to do something, but we don't often tell them how. That's the real differentiator. And then if I can, I provide a proof point, again reinforcing the evaluation criteria. On a previous contract, we used this same process to identify audit issues up to two weeks earlier than the agency was experiencing.
Give them something that qualitatively or quantitatively shows the process you're using has a defined benefit for them. Then tie it back to their hot points, which you may find in their stated objectives. So you could say that, as a result of these practices, we get the government to their authority to operate up to four months earlier than normal. The government may have stated they want to achieve ATO before the end of 2026. For a lot of companies, getting a system ATO is a big challenge. So if you tie a direct benefit to doing this sooner, it reduces risk and offers immediate value.
There's about five elements in what I just mentioned, and that's creating a compelling response to a requirement. Here's another example I've written. "Significant strength: staffing approach protects service continuity and reduces vacancy risk. We will start the program using the named incumbent, capture pre-cleared backup candidates, and a 30-day vacancy response process. This approach gives the government clear visibility into the staffing status, reduces transition risk, and protects mission continuity from day one."
The run-in heading matters because it brings the information directly to their attention. They can see easily: did that meet the criteria, did that answer the requirement. Evaluators are busy and they're very rarely reading proposals. They're scoring your proposal. They will read some, a lot in certain cases, but most of the time they're looking to score you, to move you on in the selection process or identify an offer for source selection.
Christina Carter (29:25): That's why I think of a lot of great proposal writers as people who used to be journalists, because they're really good at being master writers for skimmers. If you read a newspaper, you're skimming it, looking at the headlines and subheadings, saying what do I want to read here. That's what good proposal writers do with run-in headings.
Philip De-Bodene (30:01): Yeah. What is important to them? That's the stuff that matters. Keep the puffery and filler language out, no matter how well it's written, all the marketing stuff, none of that matters. What matters are the things they've already told you to focus on.
Christina Carter (30:20): Exactly. The whole reason we're writing this isn't just because we love to write, although I'm sure a lot of people do. The point is to get almost a tick box or a check mark of a strength.
Philip De-Bodene (30:39): Yeah, back to that adjectival rating, it typically says the offeror's proposal identifies one or two strengths or significant strengths, performance is beyond the thresholds, reduces or eliminates risk, has a high likelihood of successful performance execution, and can be delivered with minimal or zero government oversight. If you can identify those, that's exactly what they're looking for.
And in an adjectival rating table, that goes straight over to whether it's outstanding, very good, exceptional, whatever terminology that agency is using. So in any given section you can get outstanding or exceptional.
Here's one example. "Significant strength: transition approach reduces staffing risk before contract start. Our transition lead will complete all incumbent staff interviews within the first 10 business days, giving the agency a confirmed coverage plan before contract performance begins." So you don't have to wait until the contract kickoff or day one. These may be in our phased approach, maybe phase-zero activities.
We're being proactive, getting ahead of the government, saying these are value-add activities that if you select us, we're going to do, and we'll be prepared on day one. That's not just fancy formatting, that's evaluator guidance. I'm telling the evaluator, in their language, the thing that should score well. It connects an action to an outcome, and that's important.
Christina Carter (32:45): Do you see a place where a lot of contractors are losing points on self-scoring vehicles specifically?
Philip De-Bodene (32:56): Yeah, self-scoring vehicles, that's a whole different animal.
Christina Carter (32:58): By the way, I've never done one before. So this is one I'll be learning with everybody else.
Philip De-Bodene (33:08): Yeah, so I love self-scoring. They're typically MACs, multiple award contracts, or large agency contracts where they'll issue multiple awards. But you have to meet a threshold, often 85% or 90%, to be considered for award. I'm working on one right now with a thousand points to be attained. If the agency is awarding to those who get above the threshold, and it may be 85%, you've got to get at least 850 points across the things they're asking you to provide.
Often what I see, and this is the problem with self-scoring, is we all want to think we're better than we are, and that our contracts have done all these things, even when they might not have exactly done them. So the first trap is believing that the things you're scoring actually are the things the government asked for.
Second, a lot of companies misunderstand the scoring criteria. A vehicle usually has detailed requirements, such as specific NAICS codes. I can't tell you how many times I've been asked to write justifications for why the NAICS code on a contract, which isn't what the government's asking for but really is, meets the criteria. Some solicitations will give you that opportunity.
You've heard of CMMI and CMMC, and some companies respond even though they may be going through accreditation right now. They may not get there by the time the award is made, and that's normally the criteria. So that could be another way to lose significant points. Facility clearances, they could be going through that process, but if it's not there by award, those points are lost. And things like past performance exhibits with certain CPARS ratings show evidence you've performed well on contracts of similar scope, complexity and size. Those are often the weaknesses I see on self-scoring multiple award contracts.
And making the evaluator's job easier: if you do all those things right, there's still a risk. I tell my clients that self-scoring contracts are really an administrative nightmare and an exercise in thorough detailing and mapping of the artifacts you're providing to justify the evidence supporting your points. So the best teams build their responses almost like a legal argument. The details are absolutely clear.
I always develop a compliance matrix or crosswalk where I build a table crosswalking all the requirements to the artifacts, to the points, to the validation, and to our ability to prove everything. Here's the point we claim, here's the rule it's addressed in, here's the evidence, here's exactly where the evidence proves that claim. That is how you protect the score. The government can't argue with that. If you can't do those things, you leave it up to the government to figure out whether you actually got everything in place, and whether they can score you the way you scored yourself.
Christina Carter (37:42): A lot of people have questions about that one specifically, because it feels quite odd, the self-scoring vehicles.
Philip De-Bodene (37:51): They can be overwhelming. I've worked on self-scoring bids where it has literally taken a village, because there are so many parts. There are several going on right now, Army MAPS, OASIS, where if you don't get it right and one administrative checkbox is missed, you may miss out on that opportunity for the next five years. These are a big deal and critically important.
Christina Carter (38:16): They are a big deal. Just thinking about them stresses me out. So I'm glad I haven't had to deal with them much. And then, go hire a consultant who will make sure you don't miss anything.
Philip De-Bodene (38:31): Don't do one if you don't have to. And there are great companies out there that do it really well.
Christina Carter (38:45): So when we are responding and writing our proposals, we often have page limits or word limits. A lot of times we go over, at least I do. When you're going through and cutting things out, what do you tend to cut?
Philip De-Bodene (39:04): Great question. And I will not lie, we have to do this on every deal. It's harder to cut than to generate content. If I've written the content, I'm aware of what's compliant and part of the requirements. But if I'm working on a review or asked to help get something back into page count, it becomes challenging, because you're never sure what the author has written to in order to address a compliance statement or a specific SOW requirement.
But there are some obvious things. There's often a lot of what I call puffery, filler content, sometimes called connective tissue, that's unnecessary. "We are pleased to submit." "We understand the importance of the mission." "We bring a team of highly qualified professionals." That takes up space and everybody says it. The government doesn't care. They want to know what those highly qualified professionals can do.
I cut repeated proof points. If you've said you're going to do something four times, the government understood it the first time. What I don't cut is everything Section L is asking for. But I make sure brevity is our friend. I put heavy emphasis on Section M, the evaluation criteria, and if it provides a strength and reinforces the scoring rubric, it stays.
Page limits, while we don't like them, force discipline in your writing. Good teams know how to do this well.
Christina Carter (41:39): We've all seen the ridiculous ones that went too far. But without page limits there'd be too many "let's just add this extra thing in." It's good that we're forced to be focused. So I'm with you.
Philip De-Bodene (41:54): Clarity and disciplined writing. Sometimes the government's got 44 pages of a PWS and given you 10 pages to write a white paper around those 44 pages. You've got to understand what the important things are. A good colleague of mine, Brent, and I laugh and invoke George Orwell, we say all SOW and PWS items are created equal, some are more equal than others. So it's knowing which of those things to write to, especially in a page-constrained response. That becomes part art, part science, knowing which technical items are important. It comes back to what the government's asking you to focus on.
Christina Carter (42:47): So a lot of us in proposals have a lot of rigor. We're rule-based, we like a process. That rigor is good, because it makes sure we're compliant so we don't get kicked out. But when does that rigor become overthinking and a problem for us and our teams?
Philip De-Bodene (43:10): When I see overthinking, I'll say to somebody, I think you're overthinking this. You can tell when a team has crossed into overthinking, typically towards the end of a proposal cycle, during the review processes. We have a joke in a group of professionals I work with. It's called the last great, late great breaking ideas. Somebody woke up the morning before the white glove or gold team review and had a great idea on how to improve the technical solution. Often that's overthinking it.
If we're still clarifying our solution, improving win themes, providing proof points during red or gold team reviews, that's a good thing. But when you get to what we call happy to glad, when you're debating words or certain sentences, you're overthinking it. When you're identifying risks not identified by the government or represented in your solution, you're overthinking it. When you're adding new technical complexity because during your sleep last night you had a great idea, you're overthinking it. Those things can derail a proposal. And I've seen it happen.
And the challenge comes when a senior leader who hasn't been involved comes in on the gold team review with a fantastic idea that will set us apart. The only problem is you've got 48 hours and still need to figure out if you can price it, deliver it, and whether it comes with risks and schedule delays. So being able to temper those things is critically important.
This often happens on must-win proposals. I've worked with organizations that, if they don't win, are locked out for 10 years on a contract. Those are real examples where you can overthink the solution and your mind drifts into the realms of the sublime or the ridiculous. It can be challenging for proposal teams to manage those ideas born of overthinking.
Christina Carter (46:08): I've never experienced this, I don't know what you mean. No, unfortunately every single proposal person has been in this situation, usually with a senior leader who comes in at the last moment and creates chaos. And it's awkward, because you have to say, sorry, we're not doing this random thing you're suggesting.
Philip De-Bodene (46:42): It's hard. In my world, I'm often a hired consultant, and telling company employees, often senior employees, that this may not be a good idea at this late juncture, and may even jeopardize us, can be a tricky conversation. So you have to tread carefully.
Christina Carter (47:09): It's like, do I make my GM happy, or make sure the bid process doesn't go down the drain. It's a tough one.
Philip De-Bodene (47:18): And it happens more than you'd care to think.
Christina Carter (47:23): Some senior leaders are so prone to doing this. And when they are, those are the bid teams that are most stressed out and burned out. And that goes to my next thing, which is advice. I'm just starting out, whether a new proposal person or barely starting to respond to federal requests. What should I know? What's your advice to me?
Philip De-Bodene (47:56): Great question. Advice to somebody just starting out. Find a process and a discipline in your approach, whether you're a proposal manager or a writer, that enables you to fully understand the requirements before you do anything. It's really important you fully understand what the government is asking of you.
Some of these things enable you to qualify whether you can do the bid or not. There may be certain criteria buried in there your organization cannot meet. Or certain criteria that require critical path activities almost immediately that realistically you don't have time to do, like past performance questionnaires or attaining certifications. Everybody wants to start writing when they get a proposal, but it's important you understand the things that may qualify or disqualify you.
So really understand the government's requirements, in the federal space typically L and M. Do this well and you can create a detailed outline that guides the proposal development. I've been pulled into a solicitation and handed an outline that's completely wrong, and I've had to restructure it to ensure the proposal is written in a coherent, compliant, responsive and compelling manner. Do it well, and everybody involved can participate effectively, leadership, solution architects, program management, SMEs, subs, all the stakeholders.
If you do it well, you're already ahead of the game. The outline is like the chassis of the car. Get it right and the car drives well, goes around corners well, looks good. Get it wrong and it may not run so well. If you hand a solution architect a blank piece of paper and they can't see where the construct is taking them, they often get paralysis.
So my advice is to prep the battleground so everybody has the highest potential for successful participation. Done well, it makes the evaluation process so much easier. Make it clear, make it compliant, and make it easy for an evaluator to score your submittal.
Christina Carter (51:19): It's something that comes with practice, but you have to be intentional with the practice of being compliant. And what were the other words you use?
Philip De-Bodene (51:27): Yeah, and I've probably bored the heck out of all my friends and colleagues over the years, because I do it the same every time. The buildup is compliant, responsive and compelling. Always in that order.
And one other word of advice for somebody writing their first proposal: go ask somebody who's written many. Get advice, get guidance, and don't be afraid to explore other possibilities. What I've shared today has worked well for me and my clients, but it may not work for everybody. It may just be your operational style. But go talk to people who have done it, who have been in the trenches.
Because it's a continually evolving discipline, especially with the ubiquitous AI use now. The things I've shared today, it would be easy for somebody to take that information and create an AI agent that follows a similar discipline, or construct an agent with similar protocols and rules to get up to speed quickly. So definitely go talk to professionals in the space, and definitely lean into technology, because there are some wonderful tools at our disposal now.
Christina Carter (53:05): What type of people do you tend to work with? Who is your ICP?
Philip De-Bodene (53:10): A typical client of mine is often very technology-focused, technology-forward companies. I was AT&T's senior writer for about eight years. I've worked with the Maximuses, the Leidoses, the Northrop Grummans, the BAEs of this world. But I've also worked with everybody in between, some small SDVOSBs, women-owned small businesses.
The beauty of what I do is I work with a large variety of clients. Some are regular scheduled clients I support once or twice a year. But I typically support technology-biased companies, not necessarily the butts-in-seats service organizations. If a company is doing AI transformation, moving enterprise infrastructure from a premises-based environment to the cloud, those are the things I write to.
I have a wealth of experience with that. Government enterprise architectures, voice and data enterprise architectures, I could write about that all day long. It's very technology-focused, the world I work in.
Christina Carter (54:37): It's the best part, in my opinion. So, Philip, let's say I'm looking for a consultant in this space. Where can I find you?
Philip De-Bodene (54:39): Yeah, so I have a website. It's called The PDS, Proposal Development Specialist, and it's www.thepds.com.
Christina Carter (55:03): I'll put it in the description of wherever people are listening or watching.
Philip De-Bodene (55:08): Of course, and you can find me in the Stargazy lounge from time to time, and on LinkedIn of course.
Christina Carter (55:12): Of course. I know you're a fabulous person on LinkedIn. I'd suggest everybody listening go follow him. Thank you so much for being on the Stargazy Brief. I know this is going to be incredibly useful for the people in federal and SLED. So thank you so much.
Philip De-Bodene (55:29): If it helps just one person get a better proposal as a result of it. These are things that have worked for me. But if anybody wants any further clarification, they should be able to find me, and I'd be more than happy to provide any further advice on any given subject.
Christina Carter (55:47): Hey Stargazers, thank you so much for listening in. I hope you learned as much from Philip as I did. Winning federal government contracts is so difficult, so learning from his advice is going to bring you wins a lot easier and a lot sooner. So thank you, Philip, for joining, and thank you for listening.
If you found this helpful, please like, subscribe, and share this with a friend, somebody who really needs to learn how to win more federal and SLED government contracting bids. This is going to help them, and it's going to help the channel grow. So it's a huge way of you saying thank you to me without costing you anything. So thank you so much for listening, and we will see you next week for another very special guest. Keep gazing at the stars.