How many opportunities will I see a month?

It depends entirely on your codes, and I will not quote you a number to close a sale. Some lines have twenty qualified solicitations a month and some have two. What I will do in the first month is tell you honestly what the volume under your criteria looks like, and if it turns out to be thin, say so — a firm in a low-volume line is usually better served by capture work on a handful of targets than by a weekly list, and the retainer shifts to reflect that.

Do you write the proposals under this?

No. The retainer covers sourcing, screening, a ranked shortlist with a recommendation on each opportunity, and pre-RFP capture — everything up to the decision and the positioning around it. A full three-gate written assessment is $1,000 whether or not you are on retainer; being on retainer buys you speed, not a discount, because your capability set is already known. Producing a compliant response is proposal support, priced per bid, because a month with three live responses in it is a different quantity of work than a month with none. Retainer clients get priority on proposal support and a lower per-bid rate.

Will you work on contingency or take a percentage of what I win?

No, and it is not negotiable. A consultant paid on wins tells you to bid, because a no-bid pays them nothing. The entire value of an outside read on your pipeline is that it can be a no, and that only holds if my fee is the same either way.

Do you take competing firms in the same market?

Not in the same NAICS and geography where you would be bidding against each other. I take a limited number of retainers and I will tell you at signing whether your space is open. If a solicitation comes up where two clients qualify, neither gets it from me and I tell you both that a conflict exists without naming the other firm.

Why three months minimum?

Because a one-month trial measures the wrong thing. Month one is spent building and calibrating the search criteria, and the opportunities it surfaces are the ones already in flight. The pipeline that results shows up in month two, and the first month you can fairly judge the arrangement by is month three. Anyone selling you a one-month pipeline trial is selling you month one twice.

What if the honest answer is that my pipeline is thin?

You will hear it, in the monthly report, in writing. Sometimes the finding is that your codes are wrong and you need positioning work rather than sourcing. Sometimes it is that your line genuinely has little federal demand and the retainer should end. I would rather end a retainer at month three than bill a firm for watching an empty market.

Can I pause during a slow season?

After the minimum, yes — one pause of up to two months per year, with notice. The sourcing criteria and the pipeline history stay in place so restarting is not starting over.

Does the strategy call credit against the first month?

Yes, once. The $250 comes off month one, and the call is a reasonable way to find out whether you are at the volume where this makes sense at all.

Pipeline Retainer: standing capture support, monthly

$3,000/mo

3 month minimum

Ongoing pipeline work for a firm that bids continuously rather than occasionally. I source and screen opportunities against criteria we set together, give you a ranked shortlist with a recommendation on everything that clears the screen, and run the pre-RFP capture work that decides bids before they are published.

Full assessments are still $1,000 separately. The retainer buys speed, not a discount.

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Who this is for

This is for you if

You are already in the market. Registered, positioned, and bidding — you have submitted several responses, you have won something or come close, and you can perform more work than you currently have. Your constraint is that nobody at your firm has time to watch SAM.gov, DIBBS, agency forecasts, and prime supplier portals every week, so you bid what happens to land in front of you. This is for firms that want a deliberate pipeline instead of an incidental one, and that will actually respond to what it produces.

This is not for you if

Not for you if you are not registered or not positioned. Sourcing opportunities for a firm that cannot yet credibly bid them wastes $3,000 a month — the Federal Accelerator at $2,500 is the engagement that comes first, and it costs less than one month of this. Not for you if you bid two or three times a year; at that volume per-solicitation opportunity assessments cost you a fraction of this and get you the same verdict, and I will point you there rather than take the retainer. Not for you if you want proposals produced every month — screening and capture are included, response production is not, and a month with three live bids in it is three proposal support engagements plus this, not this alone. Not for you if you want a guaranteed number of opportunities or a promised award; I control what I find and what I tell you about it, not what the government publishes or who it picks. Not for you if you want to pay a percentage of the award — I do not work on contingency or commission, because a consultant paid on wins has an interest in telling you to bid, which is exactly the incentive this practice exists to avoid. Not for you if you want me to represent your firm to contracting officers as your employee or under your badge; I prepare your outreach and tell you what to say, you make the call. And not for you if you want to try it for a month — the minimum is three, because the first month is spent building the search criteria and the pipeline that results from it does not show up until the second.

What you get

A written sourcing criteria document in month one — the NAICS and PSC codes, set-aside types, dollar bands, agencies, geographies, and vehicle types I am watching for you, plus what I am deliberately excluding and why. You approve it, and we revise it as the market answers back.
A weekly opportunity list, every week, with everything that cleared the screen: solicitation number, agency, set-aside, value band, due date, and one line on why it is on the list. Everything that did not clear is summarized as a count, so you can see the funnel rather than only the output.
A written gate-one screen on every opportunity that makes the list — set-aside eligibility, incumbent position, and any consent or authorization requirement — so the unavailable ones are killed in a paragraph rather than a meeting.
A ranked shortlist rather than a flat list, with a recommendation on each opportunity that makes it — bid, no-bid, or watch, and the reasoning in a line or two. Full three-gate written assessments are a separate product at $1,000 each; retainer clients get them faster, because your capability set, past performance, and screening criteria are already known and the work starts at the solicitation instead of at intake.
Pre-RFP capture work, which is where bids are actually decided: agency forecast tracking, sources sought and RFI responses drafted for your review, contracting officer and small business specialist outreach prepared for you to send, and market research responses that shape a requirement before it is written.
A teaming target list maintained over time — primes buying under your codes, small businesses whose capabilities complement rather than duplicate yours, and the mentor-protégé and joint venture routes worth considering for the work you keep almost qualifying for.
A monthly pipeline call and a one-page written report: what was sourced, what was screened out and why, what you bid, what happened to it, and what the pattern across the last three months says about your positioning.
Email access with a one business day response, including the "should we drop everything for this one" question that shows up on a Friday afternoon. That question is most of the value of having someone on retainer.

A firm that bids occasionally can afford to react. Something lands in an inbox, somebody forwards it, and a decision gets made in a hurry. A firm that intends to bid continuously cannot run that way, because the opportunities you happen to see are not the opportunities you are best positioned to win, and by the time a solicitation is published the work that decides it is usually already done.

This is the engagement for the second kind of firm. Sourcing, screening, and the pre-RFP work that shapes what shows up on the list in the first place.

How it works

Onboarding, week one. Your capabilities, capacity, past performance, win history, and what you will not bid. Out of it comes a written sourcing criteria document you approve.
Weekly lists from week two. Everything that clears the screen, with the gate-one read attached and the reason it is on the list. Plus the count of what did not clear, so you can see the funnel.
Full assessments when you want one. Priced separately at $1,000, the same three-gate written verdict sold standalone — turned around faster for you, because your capability set is already known.
Capture work, continuously. Forecast tracking, sources sought and RFI responses, CO and small business specialist outreach prepared for you to send, teaming targets maintained.
Monthly call and a one-page report. Sourced, screened, bid, won, lost, and what the pattern says.

Where the value actually sits

Not in the list. Anyone can run a saved search. The list is the cheapest part of this and any firm can build one in an afternoon.

In what gets killed. A pipeline is useful in proportion to how much it removes. Most of what matches your codes is unavailable to you — wrong set-aside, incumbent locked in, a consent requirement that hands a competitor a veto — and the value is in a paragraph that kills those on the day they appear instead of after a team meeting three weeks later.

In the pre-RFP window. By the time a solicitation is published, the requirement is written and the shaping is done. Sources sought responses, market research submissions, and a relationship with the buying office are the work that puts your capabilities into the requirement rather than reacting to somebody else’s. That work has no deadline attached to it, which is exactly why firms without a retainer never get to it.

What I will not do

I will not work on contingency, and I will not tell you a pipeline is healthy when it is not. The month you get a report saying “nothing this month was worth bidding, and here is why” is the month the retainer is doing its job. If that finding repeats for three months, the conversation is whether you should be paying for this at all, and I will start it.

Where this fits

If you are not yet positioned to bid continuously, the Federal Accelerator comes first. If you bid a few times a year, buy an opportunity assessment per solicitation instead — at that volume it is the cheaper answer and it gets you the same verdict.

Timeline

Ongoing and monthly, with a three month minimum because one month proves nothing — month one builds the criteria, month two is the first real pipeline, and month three is the first month you can judge it by. Week one is onboarding and the sourcing criteria document; weekly lists start in week two. After the minimum it runs month to month, cancel with 30 days' written notice, no penalty and no exit conversation. I take a limited number of these at a time.

Common questions

How many opportunities will I see a month?: It depends entirely on your codes, and I will not quote you a number to close a sale. Some lines have twenty qualified solicitations a month and some have two. What I will do in the first month is tell you honestly what the volume under your criteria looks like, and if it turns out to be thin, say so — a firm in a low-volume line is usually better served by capture work on a handful of targets than by a weekly list, and the retainer shifts to reflect that.
Do you write the proposals under this?: No. The retainer covers sourcing, screening, a ranked shortlist with a recommendation on each opportunity, and pre-RFP capture — everything up to the decision and the positioning around it. A full three-gate written assessment is $1,000 whether or not you are on retainer; being on retainer buys you speed, not a discount, because your capability set is already known. Producing a compliant response is proposal support, priced per bid, because a month with three live responses in it is a different quantity of work than a month with none. Retainer clients get priority on proposal support and a lower per-bid rate.
Will you work on contingency or take a percentage of what I win?: No, and it is not negotiable. A consultant paid on wins tells you to bid, because a no-bid pays them nothing. The entire value of an outside read on your pipeline is that it can be a no, and that only holds if my fee is the same either way.
Do you take competing firms in the same market?: Not in the same NAICS and geography where you would be bidding against each other. I take a limited number of retainers and I will tell you at signing whether your space is open. If a solicitation comes up where two clients qualify, neither gets it from me and I tell you both that a conflict exists without naming the other firm.
Why three months minimum?: Because a one-month trial measures the wrong thing. Month one is spent building and calibrating the search criteria, and the opportunities it surfaces are the ones already in flight. The pipeline that results shows up in month two, and the first month you can fairly judge the arrangement by is month three. Anyone selling you a one-month pipeline trial is selling you month one twice.
What if the honest answer is that my pipeline is thin?: You will hear it, in the monthly report, in writing. Sometimes the finding is that your codes are wrong and you need positioning work rather than sourcing. Sometimes it is that your line genuinely has little federal demand and the retainer should end. I would rather end a retainer at month three than bill a firm for watching an empty market.
Can I pause during a slow season?: After the minimum, yes — one pause of up to two months per year, with notice. The sourcing criteria and the pipeline history stay in place so restarting is not starting over.
Does the strategy call credit against the first month?: Yes, once. The $250 comes off month one, and the call is a reasonable way to find out whether you are at the volume where this makes sense at all.

Bidding often enough that the pipeline is the bottleneck?

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