What happens if the verdict is no-bid?

You paid $1,000 for a no, and that is the offer working correctly. A serious response consumes a week of your best people, and that week is spent whether you win or not. If one no-bid a year stops one unwinnable pursuit, the assessment has paid for itself several times over. Every no-bid also comes with the conditions that would flip it, so you know what to fix for the next one.

Do you write the proposal?

No. This offer ends at the decision. I do not write, price, or review the response, and I do not review a draft you have already written. If the verdict is bid and you want help building the response, that is a separate conversation and a different engagement.

What do you need from me to start?

The solicitation number, your UEI, your active certifications and set-aside statuses, three past performance references you would actually cite, and a rough sense of your capacity and cost structure. That is it. If I need something else I will ask on day one, not on day three.

Can you assess a sources sought notice or an RFI?

Not under this offer. A sources sought has no evaluation criteria to read, so two of the three gates have nothing to work with. Responding to one is usually a good idea anyway — it shapes the requirement and puts your name in front of the contracting officer — and that is a better use of a strategy call than of an assessment.

Is the $1,000 credited against anything?

No, the assessment is flat and stands alone. It works the other direction — if you booked the $250 strategy call first, that $250 is credited here, so the assessment is $750.

Will you sign an NDA?

Yes, a mutual one, before you send anything. The solicitation itself is public, but your cost structure, your teaming conversations, and your capacity are not, and those are exactly the inputs Gate 3 depends on.

Can I send you three solicitations at once?

Pricing is per solicitation, and each one gets its own assessment and its own verdict. If you have a pile of them and no way to sort it, the underlying problem is that nothing is filtering your pipeline, and that is a positioning problem rather than three separate reads.

Opportunity Assessment: bid/no-bid on one solicitation

$1,000

per solicitation

You send me one solicitation number. I send back a two-page written verdict — bid, no-bid, or bid with conditions — with the reasoning behind it and the specific conditions that would change the answer.

You can pay $1,000 for a no. Most consultants are paid to find a reason to bid.

Book a call

Who this is for

This is for you if

You are registered in SAM with an active UEI, you have a specific solicitation in front of you, and you are about to commit forty or more hours of your own people to a response. You want a second read from someone who competes in this market before you spend them. Most firms who buy this are either about to submit their first bid, or have submitted four or five, lost all of them, and have not been told why.

This is not for you if

Not for you if you are not yet registered — an active UEI and CAGE come first, and an assessment of a bid you cannot legally submit is worth nothing. Not for you if the response is due in under five business days; the verdict lands in 72 hours and that leaves no time to act on it. Not for you if you want the proposal written, priced, or reviewed — this ends at the decision, not the submission. Not for you if you have already decided to bid and want the decision validated; I will tell you no, in writing, and you will have paid $1,000 for an answer you did not want. Not for you if you are looking for opportunities to bid on — I assess the one you bring, I do not source pipeline. And not for you if the target is a multi-volume IDIQ or GWAC on-ramp; that is a capture decision, not a fixed-fee read.

What you get

Two-page written assessment as a PDF, with the verdict — bid, no-bid, or bid with conditions — stated in the first sentence, not buried on the last page.
Gate 1, is the door open: set-aside type against your certifications, NAICS and size standard, incumbent position and award history, and any consent, authorization, or facility-clearance requirement that has to exist before you are eligible to submit.
Gate 2, were the requirements written for someone else: Sections L and M read against each other, salient characteristics and brand-name-or-equal language, evaluation factors you have no way to score well against, and PWS language traced back to the prior award where it exists.
Gate 3, can you perform it and make money: rough order of magnitude on cost, limitations on subcontracting exposure under FAR 52.219-14, wage determination risk, past performance you can and cannot substantiate, and when you actually get paid.
A "what would have to be true" section naming the specific conditions that turn a no-bid into a bid — the teaming partner, the letter of supply, the certification, the past performance reference — so a no is a roadmap rather than a dead end.
Every claim carries its source. Solicitation section and clause numbers, FAR citations, and the FPDS or USASpending pull behind any award history, so you can check my work rather than take it on faith.
A 20-minute call after delivery to walk the verdict and answer questions on it. Not a sales call, and not a strategy call — a debrief on the document you paid for.

Most firms that lose federal bids do not lose them in the writing. They lose them at the decision — by committing a week of the company to a solicitation that was never available to them, was written around an incumbent, or was priced below what they can perform it for.

This is the smallest engagement I offer, and it exists because that decision is the highest-leverage hour in the entire pursuit.

How it works

You send the solicitation number. Plus your UEI, your certifications, three past performance references, and a rough sense of your cost structure. One email. If something is missing I ask for it that day.
I read the solicitation the way an evaluator will. Sections L and M against each other first, then the statement of work, then the clauses. Section C is the last thing I read, not the first.
I pull the award history. Prior awards on the requirement, the incumbent’s position, and how the agency has bought this before, from FPDS and USASpending.
I run it through the three gates. Any one of them closing is enough to stop a bid, and they are ordered so the cheapest disqualifier surfaces first.
You get two pages inside 72 hours, verdict in the first sentence, then the reasoning, then what would have to be true for the answer to change. Twenty minutes on the phone after you have read it.

The three gates

Gate 1 — Is the door open? Set-aside type, size standard, certifications, required consents and authorizations. This gate is arithmetic. A firm that cannot pass it cannot submit a responsive bid no matter how good the writing is, and it is the fastest no in the process.

Gate 2 — Were the requirements written for someone else? Salient characteristics that describe one manufacturer’s product. Past performance thresholds that only the incumbent meets. Evaluation factors weighted toward something you do not have. None of this is improper, and most of it is not hidden — it is sitting in Section M for anyone who reads it before deciding.

Gate 3 — Can you perform it and make money? Limitations on subcontracting, wage determinations, delivery terms, and payment timing. Plenty of firms win their first contract and lose money on it. That outcome is visible in the solicitation before you bid.

What I will not do

I will not tell you a bid is winnable because you want to hear it. The value of a paid verdict is that it can be a no. If you want an assessment that agrees with a decision you have already made, there are cheaper ways to get one.

Where this fits

If you are not yet at the point of assessing individual solicitations, the Federal Accelerator is the engagement that gets a firm positioned to have opportunities worth assessing. If the verdict comes back bid, proposal support is what turns that decision into a compliant, scoreable response.

The method is not a secret. Read Section M before Section C shows the Gate 2 read running on a real solicitation, and why the evaluation criteria decide the bid before the requirement does.

Timeline

72 hours from the time I have the solicitation number and your capability inputs, weekdays. Send it Thursday afternoon and you have it Tuesday morning. If the response deadline is closer than five business days out, say so before you buy — I will decline rather than deliver a verdict you cannot act on.

Common questions

What happens if the verdict is no-bid?: You paid $1,000 for a no, and that is the offer working correctly. A serious response consumes a week of your best people, and that week is spent whether you win or not. If one no-bid a year stops one unwinnable pursuit, the assessment has paid for itself several times over. Every no-bid also comes with the conditions that would flip it, so you know what to fix for the next one.
Do you write the proposal?: No. This offer ends at the decision. I do not write, price, or review the response, and I do not review a draft you have already written. If the verdict is bid and you want help building the response, that is a separate conversation and a different engagement.
What do you need from me to start?: The solicitation number, your UEI, your active certifications and set-aside statuses, three past performance references you would actually cite, and a rough sense of your capacity and cost structure. That is it. If I need something else I will ask on day one, not on day three.
Can you assess a sources sought notice or an RFI?: Not under this offer. A sources sought has no evaluation criteria to read, so two of the three gates have nothing to work with. Responding to one is usually a good idea anyway — it shapes the requirement and puts your name in front of the contracting officer — and that is a better use of a strategy call than of an assessment.
Is the $1,000 credited against anything?: No, the assessment is flat and stands alone. It works the other direction — if you booked the $250 strategy call first, that $250 is credited here, so the assessment is $750.
Will you sign an NDA?: Yes, a mutual one, before you send anything. The solicitation itself is public, but your cost structure, your teaming conversations, and your capacity are not, and those are exactly the inputs Gate 3 depends on.
Can I send you three solicitations at once?: Pricing is per solicitation, and each one gets its own assessment and its own verdict. If you have a pile of them and no way to sort it, the underlying problem is that nothing is filtering your pipeline, and that is a positioning problem rather than three separate reads.

Have a solicitation you cannot get a straight answer on?

Tell me what you are bidding on and where you are stuck. If this is not the right engagement for it, I will say so and point you at the one that is.

Book a call