How Updating Your RFP Response Template Can Improve Government Contract Proposals

Ensuring you have a solid starting place with your proposal content and templates will help streamline your proposal operations as they come in, turning an annoying task into a game changing asset. 

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Taking the time during a slower season in your RFP responses allows your team to start on the next project with refreshed content, making you stand out even more from your competition. This work will help maximize your response process and ensure your team can effectively respond to proposals, even when you have multiple competing deadlines on the table. 

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But what if you don’t have time to sit down and really focus on refreshing all of your content? It’s worth the effort to find the time, but if your RFP response team is already stretched thin, let’s dig into some of the areas where refreshed content and templates can make the biggest difference and maximize your strategic edge.

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What is an RFP Response Template?

For those just getting started in the world of RFP responses, it helps to understand what we’re talking about with RFP response templates. An RFP response template is a pre-structured document designed to streamline the proposal process when responding to a Request for Proposal (RFP). 

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These are particularly important for government contract proposals, where they demand precision and organization on everything from case studies to SOW responses to pricing. A solid template ensures you provide consistent, clear, high-quality responses, allowing you to focus on meeting the prospective client or agency’s needs instead of reinventing the wheel with every submission.

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Your RFP response template will include pre-written and designed essential components like the cover letter, proposal executive summary, key resumes, capability statements, and more. This template will be tailored to reflect your strengths and align with government proposal writing standards. Then, when new proposals come in, you can use the template as a foundation to build out your response, ensuring you already have high-quality and approved content that only needs to be modified to focus on the client’s needs. 

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The RFP Response Process

Have you ever felt overwhelmed at the 50-page requirements document that accompanies an RFP? It can feel like a huge task as the first step of project management to just go through and make sure you’re addressing each requirement and all deliverables, especially when you’re already juggling multiple deadlines. This gets multiplied by the exacting requirements included in government RFPs. 

While each proposal is going to be unique, you know each proposal will have similar components. So having a well-organized template and process in place will help make building your responses much easier.  

Approach each RFP with the same response process, especially when you’re working with government contracts. The process will always begin by thoroughly reviewing the request for proposal to identify the client's needs. From there, you can customize your proposal template to highlight your most relevant experiences and capabilities. You can include automation in steps of the response process by already having plug-and-play content built, like past performance writeups, key resumes, and capability statements. This allows your team to reduce redundant tasks and focus on delivering concise, targeted proposals that meet the RFP's specific requirements.

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How to Build your Template with Key Deliverables

Ready to get started building your template so you can hit the ground running on your next RFP response and help improve your win rates? We’ve put together a list of some of the most impactful pieces of your RFP response. Whether you’re focusing on government proposal writing or building out enterprise response templates, these components will likely be a part of every winning proposal you deliver. 

The key to creating a strong government contract proposal template involves crafting sections that highlight your strengths while creating spaces where you can stay aligned with the client's needs. The functionality of your template will improve with experience. If you’re just starting out though, here's how to approach it:

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Cover Letter

The cover letter sets the tone for your proposal and introduces your company. It should be concise, professional, and focused on demonstrating your understanding of the client's needs and your proposed solution. And please make your contact information very clear. Don’t make a potential client hunt for how to get in touch with you. Use headers with your company name clearly visible and address it to the decision-makers where you can. 

We strongly believe that every cover letter can be unique and focused on the client’s needs. But you can build a template out that helps to streamline the process for creating a cover letter for each proposal. Build out the designed page with your letterhead and spaces for including the client’s information. Write prompts of what to include where. Instead of starting the cover letter with “we are pleased to present this proposal”, include a prompt that will help address the unique qualifications for why your company is the best solution for this project. Add sections for a bulleted list addressing win themes throughout the document. Close with a paragraph briefly introducing either key members or your company's past experience.

Keep your RFP cover letter template concise, ideally one page. 

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Proposal Executive Summary

This is your opportunity to capture the prospective client's attention early on. The executive summary should provide a brief overview of your solution, emphasizing your expertise in government contracting and aligning your services with the specific needs outlined in the request for proposal. If you have unique information that will help your company stand out to potential clients, include them here. These can be things like metrics of your previous success, a unique methodology you deploy to solve their problems, a lower total cost over the lifetime of your product, success stories or testimonials from previous clients, or a very short description of an advanced project timeline. 

The Executive Summary should still be concise, but you have 2-3 pages to give a first impression of your product before you dive into the requirements outlined in the statement of work, touch on key points of the evaluation criteria, and show why you would excel when you gain this new business. Use strong visuals throughout this section and keep them updated. 

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Past Performance Writeups and/or Case Studies

When you’re presenting your case in your proposal, your past performances are part of your credentials that support your argument. Having these case files on hand and ready to submit in a proposal is part of an effective RFP response process that saves time from having to continually write new ones. If you’ve already written some past performance writeups, rewriting and organizing them allows you to have fresh content you can use more efficiently. And we know you’ve had some recent successes, so add those performance writeups as well. Where possible, include case studies that show your work on similar projects or required similar subject matter experts. 

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Key Resumes

You know resumes change regularly. You’re not the same person you were ten years ago, so why would you stay the same professionally? By updating your key resumes, you avoid having to explain outdated information (which is embarrassing), showcase your team’s latest certifications, and present the strongest case by showing your most relevant (and recent) experience as part of your final proposal.

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Capability Statements

Just like your key resumes, it’s likely the services your company can perform have changed over the years since you last updated your capability statement. You don’t want to miss out on a contract because a contracting officer didn’t see a capability you’ve gained recently, so updating this document is a must.

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Brochures/Collateral

Think you don’t need great marketing because you’re in government contracting? Think again. Effective and engaging marketing is just as important for government contractors as any other business. Updating your print materials (i.e., brochures) and digital marketing collateral ensures your brand stays fresh and current, keeping your company top of mind when it comes time for the next bid.

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Pitch Deck

This is where the four previous points come together to showcase why your company should be the big winner for your next bid. By updating your pitch deck to reflect everything your company offers today, you’ll communicate that not only are you the most qualified candidate, but you clearly have the most relevant experience and have the capabilities to take on this project.

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Sample Implementation Plan

Have a spreadsheet or table ready that highlights the key milestones for onboarding. Make sure it’s labeled as an RFP document that needs to be updated with as many details as you can get from the RFP. While it will have the key milestones your company usually hits, make it flexible enough to address critical items from the scope of work. Where possible show who will be providers for each step, when follow up will happen, and address common FAQs during the onboarding process. Because transitioning to a new vendor can often be one of the biggest pain points for the client, show them how you will support them through the process as painlessly as possible.   This is where the four previous points come together to showcase why your company should be the big winner for your next bid. By updating your pitch deck to reflect everything your company offers today, you’ll communicate that not only are you the most qualified candidate, but you clearly have the most relevant experience and have the capabilities to take on this project.

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What is an Example of a Good RFP Response?

So, you’ve built out some content for a good RFP response template. What’s next? Where do you go from here? 

You need to use your templated content to build out a good RFP response process. A high-quality RFP response is tailored specifically to the prospective client's needs. For example, in a government proposal, you would open with a concise cover letter that directly addresses the client’s goals, followed by an executive summary that aligns your solution with their requirements. Then your RFP response will dive into the specific requirements, question responses, and experience requirements the RFP requires. While some RFPs will include a list of questions to respond to, others may include a Statement of Work (SOW) that will have requirements listed that your company needs to address. Your RFP response should ensure it answers those questions or addresses those issues and meets any page limit requirements established by the soliciting agency. 

Often you will be able (and required) to include resumes of key personnel, past performance writeups, and project plans. Ensure each section of your proposal supports your argument that your team is uniquely qualified to deliver the project successfully. Including updated, relevant content ensures your response is compelling, informative, and aligned with the request for proposal.

Redoing each of these pieces from scratch for each proposal is time consuming. So having your government contracting proposal response template available and up to date ensures you can deliver a good RFP response that meets the unique requirements of the RFP.

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How to Customize Your Template Response

While templates are essential for efficiency, customization is the key to standing out in government contract proposals. Each response should be fine-tuned to the specific RFP.

You can still use a template for customization. As we said above, use your cover letter template as a space for prompts and suggestions for what to include and customize your content for this particular proposal. You can have two or three versions of your executive summary that address unique solutions related to this proposal, or you can have components of your executive summary that are highlighted so you can easily customize them for each unique proposal. 

Having a bank of resumes of key personnel ready so you can pull in the team members with the most relevant experience will help streamline your response process. You can also have a library of past performance experiences pre-written and regularly updated that can be pulled in and used to best highlight the experience most like the current proposal. These can be stored in a file on your shared drive or within RFP response software. 

By blending the efficiency of automation in the RFP template with the specificity of personalized content, you’ll build a proposal that resonates with the evaluators, supports stakeholders and SMEs at your company, and increases your chances of winning the contract.

At Summit Strategy, we understand the difference updated content and templates can make for your business creating a winning RFP response and we specialize in providing customized plans for business owners ready to grow. With a team of experts who understand your industry, Summit Strategy can organize, refresh, and elevate your content and templates.