What does the "+" in the price cover, and how is a bid scoped?

$2,500 covers a single-award response with one or two volumes and a normal attachment set — the shape of most small business set-aside solicitations. Price goes up with volume count, page limits, subcontractor and teaming coordination, oral presentations, and anything multi-phase. I read the solicitation before quoting and give you a fixed number, not an hourly estimate. If the read tells me the bid is not worth making, I say that instead of quoting.

You really will not write any of it?

I write the compliance matrix, the annotated outline, and the reviews, and I will rewrite a section for clarity when the substance is already there and the sentence is fighting it. What I will not do is invent your technical approach or your staffing plan. Evaluators can tell, and a response that cannot be defended in an oral or a post-award conversation is a liability.

Can you review a draft we have already written, without the matrix work?

Yes, and it is priced lower — say so when you send it. It is also the weaker version of this engagement. By the time a draft exists, the outline is set, and the most common finding is that the response is organized around your capabilities rather than around Section L, which is expensive to fix late.

Will you support two firms bidding the same solicitation?

No. One firm per solicitation, first commitment wins, and I will tell you the seat is taken without telling you who took it. If I have already assessed that solicitation for someone else, you get a decline rather than a quote.

What happens if we lose?

You request the debrief, using the letter that comes with the engagement, and we read it together on a call. That call is included. Losing on a technical factor tells you something about your writing, losing on price tells you something about your cost structure, and losing on past performance tells you what to fix before the next one. A loss with a debrief is worth more than a loss without one.

Do you guarantee compliance?

I guarantee the matrix covers every requirement I can find in the solicitation and its attachments, and that I will say plainly when a section does not satisfy one. I cannot guarantee your team fills the gaps I identify, and the government can still make a determination I disagree with. What this removes is the category of loss where a responsive, capable firm gets thrown out for a page limit, a missing form, or a requirement buried in an attachment nobody opened.

Does the opportunity assessment credit against this?

The $250 strategy call credits against anything, once. The $1,000 assessment does not credit, but it is the right first purchase anyway — a bid verdict costs less than a compliant response to a bid you should not have made.

Proposal Support: compliance and review on a live bid

$2,500+

per bid

Compliance and review on a response you are already committed to. I build the compliance matrix, map Sections L and M to an annotated outline, and score your draft against the evaluation criteria the way the board will. Your people write the technical content; I make sure it is compliant, responsive, and scoreable.

Scored against the evaluation criteria, not the statement of work. Most losing proposals answer the requirement and ignore the scoring.

Book a call

Who this is for

This is for you if

You have decided to bid, the decision is sound, and you have subject matter experts who can write the technical approach. What you do not have is someone who has read enough solicitations to build the compliance matrix, catch the requirement buried in an attachment, and tell you that your best-written volume scores badly against Section M. This fits firms on bid two through ten — past the first attempt, not yet running a proposal shop, and losing on compliance and responsiveness rather than on capability.

This is not for you if

Not for you if you want the proposal written for you. I do not draft your technical approach, your management plan, or your staffing narrative — those have to come from the people who will perform the work, and a response written by a consultant who has never done the job reads exactly like one. Not for you if you have not decided to bid; get the $1,000 opportunity assessment first, because paying $2,500 to be compliant on a solicitation that was written for the incumbent is the most expensive way to lose. Not for you if the response is due in under ten business days — there is a point past which review does not improve the outcome, and I would rather decline than take the fee. Not for you if you need cost volume construction, indirect rate development, or a DCAA- compliant accounting position; I sanity-check pricing against the solicitation and the subcontracting limits, and the rest belongs with a government accountant. Not for you if you want me to submit on your behalf; you hold the SAM and PIEE credentials and you push the button, because a submission is a certification and it has to be yours. Not for you if you are bidding continuously and want this every month — per-bid pricing is worse value than the retainer at that volume, and I will tell you so rather than sell you six of these. And not for you if you want a win rate promised; compliance is necessary, it is not sufficient, and nobody honest sells the other thing.

What you get

A compliance matrix covering every "shall," "must," and "will" in Sections C, L, and M plus every attachment, exhibit, and incorporated clause — each one traced to the page and paragraph of your response that satisfies it, and each one owned by a named person on your side.
An annotated response outline with headings mirroring Section L in Section L's order, page and word allocations set against the Section M weighting, and the evaluation factor each section has to win written at the top of it.
A Section M read in writing: how the factors are weighted, how they trade against price, what "acceptable" versus "outstanding" looks like against each one, and where your response currently has no way to score above the minimum.
A gap list from the first pass — requirements with no owner, no content, or no evidence. Delivered early enough to fix, not as a post-mortem.
Two review passes on your draft. The first is compliance and responsiveness: is every requirement addressed, in the right volume, in the right place. The second scores the near-final response against Section M the way an evaluation board will, with the weak sections named and the reason stated.
A pricing sanity check against the solicitation — not a cost build. Limitations on subcontracting under FAR 52.219-14, wage determination exposure, whether your price is structured the way the CLIN schedule requires, and whether the total is credible against what the agency has paid for this before.
A submission checklist run against the actual portal — reps and certs current, SAM registration active and not expiring mid-evaluation, file formats and page limits, required forms signed, and the portal mechanics for SAM.gov, PIEE, eBuy, or whatever this one uses. Bids die at upload more often than anyone admits.
A debrief request letter drafted after award, win or lose, with the specific questions worth asking. The debrief is the cheapest market research available and most firms either skip it or waste it.

Small firms lose federal bids for two reasons. The first is that the opportunity was never available to them, which is what the opportunity assessment exists to catch. The second is that a capable firm submitted a response that was hard to score — requirements answered in the wrong volume, sections organized around what the company wanted to say rather than what Section L asked for, and an evaluation board that could not find the evidence for a factor it had to rate.

The second one is fixable, and it is fixable by structure rather than by writing talent.

How it works

You send the solicitation and the due date. I read it and quote a fixed number, usually same day. If I think the bid is a mistake, you hear that first.
Compliance matrix and annotated outline inside 48 hours. Every requirement, every attachment, mapped to a section and an owner. Your writers start against structure, not a blank page.
Kickoff with your team. Who writes what, by when, and what each section has to prove to score.
First review at roughly 60 percent. Compliance and responsiveness. Gaps named while there is still time to fill them.
Scoring review three days out. Your near-final response read against Section M the way a board reads it, weak sections named and explained.
Submission checklist and the upload window. Forms, formats, page limits, active registration, portal mechanics. You submit.
Debrief request after award. Win or lose, with a call to read it.

Why the matrix comes first

A compliance matrix is not administrative overhead. It is the only artifact that proves, line by line, that a response answers what was asked. Building it first has three effects: requirements buried in attachments surface while there is time to deal with them, every requirement gets an owner instead of an assumption, and the outline ends up in Section L’s order rather than yours.

Firms that build the matrix at the end use it to confirm what they already wrote. That is the wrong direction, and it is where late-stage rewrites come from.

What I will not do

I will not write your technical approach, and I will not promise a win rate. Compliance and responsiveness are necessary conditions. They do not overcome a weak price, thin past performance, or a requirement that was shaped for somebody else — which is the thing to establish before you commit to responding at all.

Where this fits

If the bid decision itself is not settled, start with the opportunity assessment. If you are responding to something most months, the pipeline retainer covers this work at a lower cost per bid.

Read Section M before Section C covers the half of this the compliance matrix is built on: scoring the draft against the evaluation criteria rather than against the statement of work.

Timeline

To the solicitation deadline, working backward from it. I need the solicitation at least 10 business days before the due date to take the engagement, and 15 is where the work starts paying for itself — the compliance matrix and outline land in the first 48 hours so your writers are working against structure instead of a blank page, the first review sits at roughly 60 percent draft, and the scoring pass sits at least three days before submission so there is time to act on it. Amendments reset parts of the schedule and I will tell you which.

Common questions

What does the "+" in the price cover, and how is a bid scoped?: $2,500 covers a single-award response with one or two volumes and a normal attachment set — the shape of most small business set-aside solicitations. Price goes up with volume count, page limits, subcontractor and teaming coordination, oral presentations, and anything multi-phase. I read the solicitation before quoting and give you a fixed number, not an hourly estimate. If the read tells me the bid is not worth making, I say that instead of quoting.
You really will not write any of it?: I write the compliance matrix, the annotated outline, and the reviews, and I will rewrite a section for clarity when the substance is already there and the sentence is fighting it. What I will not do is invent your technical approach or your staffing plan. Evaluators can tell, and a response that cannot be defended in an oral or a post-award conversation is a liability.
Can you review a draft we have already written, without the matrix work?: Yes, and it is priced lower — say so when you send it. It is also the weaker version of this engagement. By the time a draft exists, the outline is set, and the most common finding is that the response is organized around your capabilities rather than around Section L, which is expensive to fix late.
Will you support two firms bidding the same solicitation?: No. One firm per solicitation, first commitment wins, and I will tell you the seat is taken without telling you who took it. If I have already assessed that solicitation for someone else, you get a decline rather than a quote.
What happens if we lose?: You request the debrief, using the letter that comes with the engagement, and we read it together on a call. That call is included. Losing on a technical factor tells you something about your writing, losing on price tells you something about your cost structure, and losing on past performance tells you what to fix before the next one. A loss with a debrief is worth more than a loss without one.
Do you guarantee compliance?: I guarantee the matrix covers every requirement I can find in the solicitation and its attachments, and that I will say plainly when a section does not satisfy one. I cannot guarantee your team fills the gaps I identify, and the government can still make a determination I disagree with. What this removes is the category of loss where a responsive, capable firm gets thrown out for a page limit, a missing form, or a requirement buried in an attachment nobody opened.
Does the opportunity assessment credit against this?: The $250 strategy call credits against anything, once. The $1,000 assessment does not credit, but it is the right first purchase anyway — a bid verdict costs less than a compliant response to a bid you should not have made.

Have a live bid and a deadline you are not comfortable with?

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