Baking Award Acceleration Into Proposals

The concept of award acceleration is extremely popular given the realities of bidding nearing Q4 2022.

But what is it? Our CEO explains the concept in his 50th LinkedIn article found here, and we also have the shorter summary version below:

Acceleration in this case means you’ll be streamlining the procurement phases in order to help the purchaser finalize the award (towards your firm, ideally). More prioritized finalization and faster agreement means a quicker first invoice.

It relates to a series of nudges, applied best practices, and use of knowledgeable people to get it done better than doing absolutely nothing post-submission, which is the case with 95% of contracting firms out there. Most are sending one follow-up email at best and calling it a day.

But this is a competitive arena! 

Sending merely one email is not sufficient, nor is calling the purchaser for an award ETA. They’ll always respond with ‘under evaluation’ if you don’t know which questions/phrases to use. Knowing these questions and having a timely distribution of supplemental materials ready boosts purchasing confidence.

We’ve covered the tail-end of the procurement phase pretty well - Now how about during the proposal phase? What is to be done there?

Award acceleration still applies to the proposal phase at TKS, and with each response, we bake in certain ingredients that enable our partners to reach the contracting table faster.

There are three critical areas to examine while in the proposal development phase: 1) Administrative, 2) Narrative, and 3) Out of the Box (our Director helped to create this third area).

This graphic lays out how each area does its job to better educate the evaluator on the solution, trim the fat, and/or provide an easier avenue to say ‘Yes!’:

Missing 1-3 of these components should not negatively impact the result; we simply use this framework as a model for better transitioning into phase two.

It also certainly helps when TKS can perform award acceleration across the entire sourcing event, rather than relegated to only one section or item… This way, the application of these nudges (etc.) feels consistent and the motivation or energy is there from the beginning.