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What is Price to Win?

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Price to Win (PTW) is one of those phrases GovCon folks throw around without really understanding what it means. Some people hear the phrase and think there’s a winning number that guarantees them landing the next big contract if they find it. The truth is a little more complicated, but this guide will help you understand and leverage Price to Win strategies to solve your pricing problems and land federal contracts.

What Does Price to Win Mean?

PTW is a strategy for setting your price in a contract bid based on analyzing your competitors’ capabilities and evaluated prices. It aims to position your bid to win by offering better value for money than the competition.

In contrast to top-down Price to Compete analysis, PTW is a bottom-up build based on the draft and final Request for Proposal (RFP) documents. As soon as the draft RFP is out, PTW analysis starts from a Competitive Analysis to model rival solutions, what they’ll cost and how those contractors will price them.

PTW analysis should involve a comparison of labor categories, location and other components your competitors are pricing. The end result is the Total Evaluated Price (TEP). Along with the TEP, a thorough PTW analysis will recommend specific strategies from competitors to incorporate into your own pricing strategy.

How Does PTW Help Land Federal Contracts?

PTW helps GovCons land federal contracts by solving pricing problems and translating a Competitive Analysis into pricing to beat competing bids.

If you’ve been vying for contracts for a while, you’ve probably experienced pricing problems like:

  • You’ve been losing proposals because of the pricing factors involved.
  • Your technical and other volumes have been kicking down the door by getting excellent/good ratings, yet no wins.

Underneath these pricing problems is an analysis gap. PTW solves your pricing problems by filling that opening.

You achieve a winning price by thoroughly analyzing competition, acquisition trends, budgets, price and capabilities tradeoffs. You then balance applying your findings from this analysis with accurate cost proposal development. This process is essentially the concept of “Price to Win.”

GovCons, who leverage PTW to inform pricing decisions, have a major advantage over those who leave this robust analysis out of their cost proposal development process.

PTW Strategy Tips for GovCons

A Price to Win strategy’s result depends on how well you execute it. Here are four tips to help you price to win government contracts:

  • Start early: A PTW process should begin the minute you identify an opportunity, and you should integrate it into your bid/no bid decision.
  • Stay ahead: Understand the competitive landscape when the opportunity is announced and forecast what it’s likely to be by the time the final Request for Proposal (RFP) drops — this can be quite a long time, up to a year or two. Keep an eye on the ball because our industry’s landscape shifts constantly. A competitor may become your teammate, or a teammate might suddenly become a competitor if there is merger and acquisitions (M&A) activity.
  • Sustain profitability: Armed with the data from your PTW analysis, weigh the likelihood of winning with a certain price against the reward if you do win. Look for a sweet spot between competitive pricing and worthwhile profits. Sometimes, the best conclusion to draw from a PTW analysis is to pass on the contract and focus on a better one.
  • Source expertise: Hiring industry experts provides the lens needed for a robust view of the competition. A GovCon pricing expert will have a finger on the market’s pulse and access to data your internal team lacks. It’s worth investing in these experts to capture your PTW market analysis with an unbiased view.

Contact BOOST LLC for Strategic Pricing Solutions

Winning a federal contract bid demands more than the right technical solution — it requires pricing that fits the project budget and beats out your competitors. On a competitive landscape where rewards are high and wrong pricing calls leave you empty-handed, GovCons must leverage superior analysis for superior results. BOOST is your strategic pricing advantage for your next contract bid.

The dedicated pricing team at BOOST has the experience, expertise and resources you need to gain a competitive pricing advantage. Our Price to Win consulting service for GovCons will capture the accurate analysis you need to price your bid for the win. Our seasoned pricing buffs will help you gain key pricing insights and incorporate them into winning cost volumes.

Contact BOOST to schedule an appointment and give your bid the pricing edge it needs.

Post-Proposal | After Action Review

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Does your company know what happened?

The proposal was finally submitted, the team has finally gotten a night’s rest, (some having nightmares of missed compliance items and some cherishing the eventual win party)!  Either way, a lot of mental focus is disbanded after a successful proposal submission.  One of the things that many companies benefit from, but fail to do often, is an After Action Review or Lessons Learned review.  We recommend doing this often, and quickly, after the proposal is submitted.  It doesn’t have to be conducted in a formal manner, with meetings or papers.  After action reviews can be a simple non-formal format such as a survey or questionnaire to the key players of the proposal.  After action reviews should involve your proposal manager, your key subcontractors, any consultants you may have had, and most importantly your pricing lead.  Most companies forget to include lessons learned from a pricing/cost volume preparation perspective.  There are many lessons about after action reviews for GovCons to be learned on this front. Here are some basic questions to get you started:

1. Were you able to coordinate and manage your subcontractor pricing and its impacts to your proposal in a timely fashion? 

2. Was your C-level team allowed to make last-minute changes (hint: Gold team is NOT meant for changing levers such as fee/teaming ratios/labor rates) that absolutely caused a ripple effect and chaos across multiple volumes?

3. Was there enough emphasis on compliance in the Cost volume?

4. Was there enough time built in for cause and effect from pricing to other volumes?

5. Did you prepare with enough data/intelligence when it comes to deciding on wrap rates/labor rates?

 

Once the proposal is submitted it’s too late to make changes (unless errors are identified that you must inform the government about, but that’s a topic for another day).  What this does is get your proposal team ready to bid smartly and accurately for the next ones. After action reviews are all about sharpening your team, making them more efficient for your next contract Making the same mistakes is a fool’s errand in this business, it’s costly and redundant.  Don’t be that team! BOOST can help you to conduct After Action Reviews or even better, get your pricing on the right track the first time. Let’s talk: [email protected]

How to Price Labor for Your GovCon

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If you’re bidding on any government contract these days, whether it’s a Firm Fixed Price or Cost Plus, there is almost always a requirement to demonstrate and justify how your labor rates were developed.  Many companies may end up bidding existing employee rates (that’s fine, but may not be the smartest approach), or using free online sources such as salary.com.  We recommend a few better approaches to refine and really sharpen the bid rates. Note here that there is, of course, a cost to obtaining good data.  Good data paves the way for good analysis, and, in learning how to price labor for your Govcon, good analysis is everything.

Here are BOOST’s top three tips to develop and bid smart labor rates (that you can justify to the government and intelligently execute):

  1. Access: Get access to labor survey databases. This can be costly, but there are options for buying reports or gaining access. Options include: using cost-sharing with other partners buying a license directly with companies such as Economic Research Institute (ERI), Mercer, Western Management Group, proprietary survey tools from BOOST etc,. These depend on their cost and your usage.  Do not rely on free sites such as salary.com or LinkedIn. It’s possible to review them and perhaps use them as a way to triangulate, but they should not be used as primary sources of information to justify your rates. More than anything, these sources service as an initial pricing point for your labor, but how to price labor for your Govcon may vary from this data for any number of reasons.
  2. Research: Use government sources such as the Department of Labor Bureau of Labor Statistics data tables. This isn’t the most accurate way to define your rates, but it can provide a good range to compare to the other data sources and provide fidelity. Additionally, peruse GS Pay rates and add them into your analysis.  Use these resources with caution. They’re not as refined as the commercially developed salary databases mentioned above, but sometimes the government does require you to bid within these ranges, meaning you have a set spectrum within which you can determine how to price labor for your Govcon.
  3. Collaborate: Get your subcontractors on data calls. When developing labor rates, you’re often required to request rate data calls from your subcontractors. Without knowing their rates, or how they’ll fit into the equation, you won’t be properly able to price labor for your Govcon.
    This does two things –

1. Ensures that you’re performing a proper subcontractor rate analysis as a part of the FAR requirements.

2. Provides actual data points from various companies in the scope of the contract/work to be performed.

In a way, this is actual live market data, that you can use to compare and refine your rates.  This is an often-overlooked strategy because it’s very time-sensitive, but it’s one of the best ways to price labor for your Govcon.  Furthermore, you don’t usually get the data in enough time to make actual pricing comparisons and decisions on your rates.  This is why a proper timeline and pricing schedule must be implemented. That’s a story for another day!

Pricing is a monster all on its own, but with these smart tips you can start to tame the beast. The pricing experts at BOOST are experienced in helping to support your strategic pricing needs. Contact us today to better prepare and price your proposals.

Audit Files, How Important Are They?

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Well, the proposal was submitted, the “all-nighters” are done, the proposal team has celebrated either with a big happy hour or a 48-hour night/day of sleep, and all is well.  It seems that way at first until the pricing specialist wakes up in the middle of the night dreaming of errors and mistakes or compliance issues (I can only speak about myself, I’m sure the rest of the proposal team has the same sort of nightmares!).  One way to avoid having post-proposal-submission-anxiety is to document and save records of everything in your pricing files.  This is critical not only for your mental health, but for the corporate audit risk as well.  DCAA can and will come back at any point to conduct audits of how the proposal rates were developed.  Here are some quick tips to be prepared and to alleviate any post-proposal submission stress (I’ve named this condition PPSS):

  1. Create an Audit folder – archive this as a part of your proposal files. Create a substructure in which you can store documents related to inputs, version control history, emails, etc.
  2. Document, document, document – any email with inputs from the proposal or management team, such as basis of estimates, changes to management plans, hours, staffing or teammates. Anything that documents the direction of the proposal, why something changed, when it changed, and the reasoning.
  3. Save all emails – no shortcuts
  4. Save all inputs from the Finance, Accounting, HR teams – These are critical, because they will be the back up required to demonstrate how your rates and assumptions were developed.
  5. Save all versions of your cost models – This way you’re able to track and see iterative changes related to inputs or assumptions, and amendments related to the RFP.
  6. Save all versions of your cost volume – Ensure track changes are on, in all the draft versions, and save the final submitted versions (gold team), in a separate folder. You need to be able to trace if and how changes were made.  This is not just about CYA, it’s about accountability. If something changed and it didn’t sync up with the technical volumes, you may be able to figure out why and remedy it if the government wants clarifications and corrections after submission.
  7. Have a dedicated folder – It is best practice to create and save this folder as you develop the proposal, but it’s OK if you don’t get to it until after submission. Just make sure it’s done either way!

 

Overall, be smart, save all the relevant documents, versions and files in an archive folder.  Don’t alter the files, lock them down and only give access to parties that require it.  This is your audit folder, this should provide all the clarifications and corrections to DCAA, should they audit your proposal.  This also provides a good way to review any proposal related mistakes or for a regular after-action review.  This will also help you (yes, you the Pricing team), get a good night’s rest because you’ll have all the history saved and be able to check on mistakes or errors or compliance issues that might be keeping you up.  You can only prevent mistakes in the future if you know what happened.  This audit file can also be used during a re-compete to pull historical data or historical assumptions that might form the pricing strategy for your new bid.  Basically, always prepare and keep an audit folder after your proposal is submitted.

 

Proposals are challenging, but the hard work makes the win so much sweeter. Let BOOST LLC help you with your pricing strategy. Email [email protected] and schedule a consultation today.

How to Manage a Pricing Schedule

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Why a proper pricing proposal schedule matters.

You’ve been preparing and actively developing capture strategies for an upcoming bid and eagerly awaiting the draft or final RFP to drop. Finally, it drops! All proposal functions swing into action. The proposal manager’s first job is to develop a schedule and hold everyone accountable to it. Very seldom do we get a proposal manager to ask us for a “Pricing Schedule”. However, we always insist.  Here’s why:

Price/Cost volumes these days require a lot more facilitation and coordination with other volume leads than most people realize. 

  1. Basis of Estimates. Many cost volumes require a complete basis of estimates to be written and tied to the price tables. The question is “How is the pricing manager going to be able to do this without coordinating with the technical/management volume leads?” The Basis of Estimates (BOE) and technical schedules MUST be in sync with the cost volume timelines. We recommend that the pricing manager set this schedule. This includes giving out deadlines to the BOE writers and standardizing the BOE data calls.  This is usually a standard template organized to capture the various work breakdown structure (WBS) elements that feed the various Contract Line items (CLINS).  It is critical to understand that unless these estimates can be produced and relayed into the pricing tables in due time, the whole proposal WILL be at risk. It is never an easy task to take in estimates at the last minute and develop pricing tables and submit the proposal within a day. We recommend that the first cut of these estimates be provided to the pricing team right after red team is done on the technical volumes. Then a review and updates are to be provided after the final review of the technical volume.
  2. Subcontractors. If the RFP requires subcontractor rates and sealed bids, this must be coordinated in advance. This timeline must be set and adhered to early on. Not only for compliance, but also for finalizing rate strategies. Sealed bids also require a few extra days of preparation by your subcontractors. They need instructions and active management of this timeline. Often these rates also impact your small business plan numbers that must be submitted. All these pieces must be accurate and in sync by the time the cost volume is finalized. Pick up the phone and get everyone aligned, early.
  3. Management Review. Management reviews are a soap box item for many pricing managers. If you don’t give your pricing team enough time to cycle through the technical and rate updates, how do you expect them to be ready for a proper management review? If management has to make the final decisions on fee/profit, workshare, key personnel, and any other ways to finalize the price, they need the best models with the most accurate information in order to do so. Bad or incomplete technical estimates make for bad pricing models. Plain and simple. So, get them done in time! Organize and coordinate with the BOE writers, hold them accountable for the pricing timelines. You may also need to hold the management team accountable, so that they realize that any changes made at the last minute (yes Gold Team reviewers we’re looking at you), have cascading effects on the pricing volume.  All final decisions should be made during Green Team (which should happen a few days before Gold team, if possible).

We have seen many cost volumes developed in a rush in the final days of the proposal stage, and this puts the entire proposal at risk. Mitigate this by being aware of missed opportunities to refine/review a smartly developed and compliant proposal.  With good schedule management, the pricing volume can be a proper, accurate and complete document that will be a part of the winning proposal. Don’t make your pricing volume the reason for your proposal loss.

BOOST has pricing experts at the ready, but don’t wait until it’s too late. (See point b, above.) Get connected with us now so that when you need us you already have our number on speed dial. [email protected]

Top 3 Pricing Mistakes

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The govcon industry has its own sub-industry – the govcon proposal industry.  There are many companies, and thousands of professionals (if not more) dedicated to this profession of proposals and business development in the govcon sector.  It’s an intense career path, and it challenges professional sanity to quite an extent. This is not due to the difficulty of putting a proposal together, but because the government (yes we’re going there), makes the entire process extremely cumbersome and unnecessarily complicated. You can debate the necessity of providing cost data in 5 different formats all you want. There are brilliant proposal writers, managers and growth executives that are often caught in frustrating proposal hell because their product, aka the proposal, isn’t a function of their actual talent. Instead, it is a collection of documents that are much less of a sales pitch with compliance matrices and solutions weaved in.  Sometimes things can be made a bit easier.

There is hope! Some easy pitfalls to avoid, at least when it comes to the pricing volumes include:

  1. Incumbent bias (very common): If you’re an incumbent on a contract, your first instinct might be to bid existing contract rates.  We highly recommend against using that approach. No matter what the evaluation criteria are, whether cost is an important factor or not, the bottom line is that you must bid like a competitor. You must be very smart and understand the market landscape. The government is a buyer, their decision-making processes are rarely set up to award to incumbents without much justification. If your competitors develop an excellent solution including the best value and bid the fair market price/value, the government will need a lot of justification to award to the incumbent.
  2. Inaccurate calculations: Believe it or not, this happens a lot.  You must make sure that your actual pricing calculations are in sync with your accounting policies and procedures.  If your overhead base includes direct labor and fringe, then you must bid it that way.  If your G&A is total cost input, then you must apply it to all costs in the proposal.  Often small calculation mistakes can magnify a pricing error and it can cost you the entire bid.  Enough time for reviews and quality checks must be built into the pricing schedules, and executives must be coached about the impact of last minute changes and cascading effects on final pricing models.
  3. Non-compliance: Nothing gets you kicked out faster than a non-compliant proposal. This applies to all volumes, but particularly to the cost/price volume. This trips people up because often the instructions in section L of the RFP in regard to the cost volume are confusing and contradicting.

 

To mitigate these common mistakes we suggest that you should:

  • Shred the RFP thoroughly. No part left unturned.
  • Review all the instructions in Section L for all volumes (because there are overlaps and connections you may not even know between the cost volume and the tech volumes)
  • Note any and all questions as you review the first, second, third time. You must do this to capture every intent of the instructions.
  • Create a thorough compliance matrix for the cost volume. This step really helps flush out interdependencies on other volumes, and confusing instructions.

 

This process will give you enough time to prepare and submit questions to the government to help clarify issues ahead of time.  These 4 steps will help you to create the shell of the cost volume early on and the pieces will fit in better as you coordinate and facilitate the volume development.

As an understatement, pricing is difficult. Luckily you have BOOST GovCon pricing specialists in your corner. Let’s connect today and get ahead of these common mistakes so you can win more work! [email protected]

What is Strategic Pricing?

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Over the past decade or so, we’ve all been whacked by this beast of a trend called “Low Price Technically Acceptable” (LPTA) evaluation criterion.  It’s where the government looks at one thing and one thing only. Namely, your price.  The lowest price to be clear.  As long as all of your other volumes meet the basic criteria to “pass” the gates, the evaluation comes down to who has the lowest price proposal.  Yes, ladies and gentlemen, we are now talking about a government that has and is acquiring national security services/items by trying to shop at “Walmart” or “Amazon” (whichever is cheaper).  Let that sit for a minute.

It is unlikely that this trend is going to change quickly, in fact, it will probably be around for a few more years.  It’s smart to start bidding and optimizing your pricing strategy in a holistic way. The best approach isn’t to cut rates across the board), but also to understand what happens to your business and to the market when everyone finds themselves in the same boat.

Let’s dive in to the term “strategic”.  This means you need to approach each and every bid, whether it’s an LPTA or a best value or other type of evaluation, with a healthy amount of preparation.  You must review all of your contracts, your pipeline, your teammate rates, your teaming commitments, your HR policies, recruiting capabilities, and your mission and strategy in whole.  Is going after low price contracts going to keep you in line with your corporate strategy? Are you going after these bids to increase revenue so that you have a great top line figure, and perhaps aim for an acquisition? Are you bidding for past performance?  Depending on your intent to bid, you should shape your pricing approach accordingly.

Strategic pricing should be a very integrated and well thought out function of your organization that involves smart capture practices to smart financial planning.  Your pricing team should be a part of your bid/no bid decision phase, and they should also be advisors to your financial and executive teams to submit smart, effective, and winning proposals.

Various approaches to lower your rates can include:

  1. The Easy One: lower all of your rates, across the board. If you’re the incumbent, don’t bid your existing employee rates. Why? Because your competitors aren’t going to do that, they’re going to bid at or below market rates.
  2. The Difficult One: lower your indirect rates. This is a hard one to do quickly. How do you lower an existing General and Administrative (G&A) rate? It’s a part of your business costs, you can’t suddenly drop your G&A.  Or can you? Consider the impact of adding new revenue to your existing contracts, project out new budgets and forecasts and update your bid G&A rate.  Remember, this is just to bid. First you bid, then you win. Is your corporate G&A overloaded? Are there functions in your company, such as Accounting/HR/Recruiting that you can outsource and make your backbone leaner?
  3. The Good One: Overhead rates. For every new contract, create a new contract overhead rate.  Try to bid as many costs direct.  Keep the overhead rate to 4-6% of the total contract revenue.
  4. Escalation rates: research various sources, such as GSA rates, government data as Bureau of Labor Statistics. Don’t just bid your existing policy rates, or incumbent contract raises. That might not be a competitive approach anymore.

These are some quick and dirty ways to start sharpening your pencils for the next few bids.  As you build your strategic pricing capabilities for the long term, keep simple strategies in mind, but also know that it takes a while to actually become a smart bidder.  It’s not just about the mechanics of preparing a cost volume, but a multitude of factors. Your pipeline strategy, new cost centers, perhaps new divisions, new targets for M&A activity, new bids that might diversify your portfolio, all of these impact the growth of your business.  If you bid with the right intent, your strategy should follow as such.

If you’re questioning your current strategic pricing strategies, connect with those in the know. BOOST LLC has experts to assist you in managing this part of your proposal routine. Connect today at [email protected].