Program: Welcome Information
On Behalf of Our program Partners, We Thank You and Congratulate You on Advancing to the Next Phase(s) of this Program to Win Contracts.
Congratulations on moving into the next Phase(s) of the program.
We will be working with you every step of the way and we will need to get you familiar with the tools, resources, and systems required for contracting success. There’s quite a bit of information here so please take your time to review the following items:
- Action Item: Complete Registration (Required)
- Team Introduction: CMG Project Manager / Support Team
- Resource: Your Own Personal Opportunity Identification and Proposal Staging Specialist
- My CMG Member Portal: Capability Statement Examples, SOQ and Capability Briefs Examples, CA Available Certifications, Federal Available Certifications, Go No Go Checklist, Proposal Examples / Templates, and other useful information
- Strategy: What We’re Focused On to Help You Win a Contract
- Tool: Go / No Go Checklist and Process for Approving of Declining Opportunities
- Tool: CMG INFUSEPro Opportunity and Proposal Management CRM System
- Tool: Google Drive Document Management
- Process: Proposal Development and Contract Capture
The phase will continue into contract administration and project expectations from the government.
Action Item: Your First Action Item
Complete Registration
- REQUIRED: Complete the CMG Registration Form – Your first action Item is to complete the client set up form. Your CMG program manager should have already provided a link for you to register and sign up.
- REQUIRED: Include which Program Referred You – Make sure to enter the program that referred you as the referring program
Team Introduction: CMG Project Manager / Support Team
Assigned CMG Alliance Project Manager.
The PM is the primary point of contact will answer any questions you have about the program moving forward and will get you set up to start receiving opportunities and reviewing Scopes of Work.
Instructor – Rene Cota
President, CMG Alliance
rene.cota@cmgalliance.com
CMG Alliance – Mario Rojas
Program Operations
mario.rojas@cmgalliance.com
CMG Alliance – Alexis Patlan
Project Manager / Government Contracting Consultant
alexis.patlan@cmgalliance.com
Connor Haley
Project Manager / Government Contracting Consultant
connor.haley@cmgalliance.com
Michelle Matthews
Government Contracting Consultant
michelle.matthews@cmgalliance.com
Resource: Your Own Personal Opportunity Identification and Proposal Staging Specialist
You will be assigned your own Personal Opportunity Identification and Proposal Staging Specialist who will be responsible for Finding Opportunities, Reviewing and Analyzing RFP’s and RFQ’s, and Proposal and Management Planning.
During this next phase, we have our procurement specialists conduct opportunity searches that fit your capabilities. We conduct searches every week and will email to your inbox as we find them.
Once we locate an opportunity (RFP/RFI/RFQ etc.) that you feel confident in, we walk you through our proposal production process. In this part, our team helps draft proposal templates that are basically the outline of your proposal from beginning to end. We also provide you with resources to complete your proposals and offer advising.
The goal of this phase is to not only to help you develop proposals, but to equip you with the knowledge, tools and resources for you to use in the future.
CMG Member Portal
What’s included:
- How to Review Opportunities (What you need to know)
- Go / No Go Checklist
- Procurement Website Links
- Teaming and Subcontracting Tools
- Proposal Templates
- Spending Research
- GSA Competitor Pricing
- Unlimited government contracting opportunities
- RFP analysis
- Proposal formatting and staging
- Strategic advising
- Assistance with teaming and subcontracting opportunities
- Cost analysis support
- Public records request and FOIA requests instruction
- Strategy meetings
- Inclusion in the CMG Network of Certified Government Contractors
- And much more…
Strategy: What We’re Focused On to Help You Win a Contract
- Understanding procurement methodology
- Opportunity and proposal management CRM system (CMG Infuse) setup
- Producing proposals/ cost analysis
- Teaming agreements and MOU’s
- Negotiations and business tactics
- Contract administration, Business structure, management, key personnel, and execution of a project
- Quality assurance and quality control procedures
- Development of differentiators and advantage strategy
- RFP analysis
- Establishing connections to local partners
- Making Introductions to potential customers and working with service providers
- Conducting market overviews
- Providing research
- Providing tailored services to contacts
- Opportunity identification of specific contracts (go no go checklist)
Tool: Go / No Go Checklist and Process for Approving of Declining Opportunities
The Go / No Go checklist is a process utilized to determine if you’re in a good position to move forward on a particular contracting opportunity. Your Personal Opportunity Identification and Proposal Staging Specialist will use specified search parameters for each business and perform searches for each business that fit your company’s core competencies.
This is executed by trained government contracting professionals who know how to analyze bid documents, identify set-asides and preferences, review scopes of work, and assist the businesses on making a decision to bid on government solicitations.
Please follow these new instructions when reviewing opportunities:
- Review the opportunities and scopes of work.
- Click here to complete the Go / No Go checklist
- Make sure you select the correct Training Program
- After you complete the Go / No Go checklist, we will reach out with next steps.
You must complete the Go / No Go checklist to start with next steps. Complete for each opportunity whether you are moving forward or not. If you decide to pass, please include reasons why this opportunity was not a good fit so we can update the search criteria for your business.
Tool: CMG INFUSEPro Opportunity and Proposal Management CRM System Account
We set up the business in our cloud-based opportunity and proposal management CRM system (CMG Infuse) which is designed to speed the proposal development and collaboration process required to author and produce competitive bids. This state of the art software is provided free to each business in the program.
We will create an Infuse account for you. Infuse is our proposal management software. We will be using this platform moving forward to house information regarding proposals we will work on. This platform allows us to create individual files for each one. Here we can house bid docs, links, information and most importantly communication between us.
Having a record of our projects will make it easier for us to manage the status of what we are working on and will give us the ability to reference them at a later point in time if needed. You can use the “Client Communications / Feedback” function to add comments/questions as well.
You will receive your login credentials to your email with instructions on how to login.
https://infusepro.cmgalliance.com/
We advise you to bookmark both your Google Drive file and Infuse (once you receive login information) since we will be using both of these platforms frequently.
Tool: Google Drive Document Management
*Gmail account access required.
We will be placing everything in your Google Drive folder. This includes the assignments, capability statement(s), marketing materials, opportunities, proposals, and any other information you’ve completed during phase I along with the opportunities we find and other documents. The opportunities will all have a unique Opp ID # and will be organized by month.
They can be found in the “opportunities” folder within your Google Drive file. In addition, you will see a RFP Checklist that you will reference. Once you receive opportunities from us, you will complete a brief form indicating your status for each opp. The form will also allow you to provide feedback that will help our specialists narrow down searches for you.
This includes the assignments you completed during phase I along with the opportunities we find and other documents. The opportunities will all have a unique Opp ID # and will be organized by month. They can be found in the “opportunities” folder within your Google Drive file. In addition, you will see a RFP Checklist that you will reference.
Once you receive opportunities from us, you will complete a brief form indicating your status for each opp. The form will also allow you to provide feedback that will help our specialists narrow down searches for you.
We advise you to bookmark both your Google Drive file and Infuse (once you receive login information) since we will be using both of these platforms frequently.
Process: Proposal Development and Contract Capture
We’re focused on helping you win a contract as well as understanding a cost and profitability model used as a safeguard against loss. The phase will consist of providing tools for proposal development, technical writing approach, and the proper structure of planning, preparing, and submitting a proposal.
Required Items to Submit a Proposal
- Meeting RFP requirements
- Assessing contract magnitude, price pressure, and competition
- Federal set-asides and state / local preferences and advantages
- Proposal production
- Cost analysis
- Negotiations and business tactics
- Developing sub-contractors
- Bid format, packaging, and submission assistance
- Contract administration and management
- Quality Assurance
We incorporate the use of Google Docs and establish a format that meets proposal requirements giving the businesses an advantage when developing responses. Google Docs enables us to guide the business through the proposal development process to produce an effective proposal response with co-authoring functionality.
Items Required for Proposal Submission
- RFP ANALYSIS
- Go / No Go Checklist
- Submit Questions to Agency (PRR / FOIA Who’s current contractor, what are current rates)
- Proposal Staging Major
- Technical Writing, Data Entry, Bid Forms
- Complete Pricing, Schedule, and Identified Personnel for the Project
- Finalized Last Proposal Items
- Final Packaging and Review
- Last Quality Assurance Review (Sign off)
- Submit / Mail Bid
- Monitor for Award / Win Contract
We stage and develop the core framework and base elements of the proposal which includes title page, table of contents, cover letter, addendum / amendment acknowledgement letter, response / tabbed pages, bid forms, appendix and other elements required for the proposal submission.