Federal contract consulting · SDVOSB
Most firms lose the contract before they write a word.
We tell you which ones you can win, and why the rest were never available to you. Read from the buyer’s side, against the sections that actually score. Not a course, not a lead list.
$250, credited to any engagement
Who you are actually hiring
Two facts decide whether advice about federal contracting is worth anything: who is giving it, and what they get paid when you bid. Both are on this page.
- A bid-decision practice, not an agency
- Every engagement here ends in a decision or a document — a written verdict on one solicitation, a positioning sequence, a scored draft. Not a course, not a template pack, not a marketing agency that discovered GovCon and repackaged its retainer.
- Paid honesty, and a real no
- No contingency, no commission, no percentage of an award. Nothing in the fee structure pays me more for telling you to bid, which is why the $1,000 assessment is allowed to come back a no-bid.
- Read from the buyer’s side
- Solicitations get scored against Sections L and M, which is what the evaluation board actually uses. Answering the statement of work and ignoring the scoring is how most losing proposals lose.
- A fixed price with a defined end
- $250 to $3,000 a month, with the deliverable and the date named before you buy. No open hourly, no scope that grows quietly, no retainer that exists to keep a seat warm.
Every solicitation gets read in this order
Not the statement of work. Three gates decide whether a bid is real, and most of them sit outside the technical requirements entirely.
-
01
Is the door actually open
Set-aside type, incumbent position, and any consent requirement that hands a competitor a veto. Authorization letters, proprietary data rights, OEM lock. These close a bid before evaluation starts.
Verdict: If gate one fails, nothing downstream matters. Stop here and write to the contracting officer instead.
-
02
Were the requirements written for someone else
Salient characteristics that describe one product. Experience minimums keyed to the incumbent's contract history. Certifications with no substitution clause. Sometimes lawful, always a signal.
Verdict: A shaped requirement is not automatically a no-bid. It changes what you are competing on.
-
03
Can you perform it and still make money
Limitations on subcontracting, hosting and compliance obligations, and where the real cost sits once you price the parts nobody puts in the SOW.
Verdict: Most first federal wins lose money. That is a choice you should make deliberately, not discover afterward.
Briefings
Written from real bids and real procurement data. If a briefing cites a number, the pull is described so you can reproduce it.
-
The compliance matrix that scores, not just checks
Most first-time bidders build a matrix from Section L and lose on Section M. Here is the one that tracks how you will be scored.
Read the briefing — The compliance matrix that scores, not just checks
-
Read Section M before Section C
The evaluation criteria decide a federal bid before the requirement does. How to read Sections L and M against each other, and what it changes.
Bring one solicitation. Get a straight answer.
Sixty minutes on a specific opportunity, including an honest no if that is the answer. The fee is credited against anything you book afterward.