What the GSA Won't Tell You About Your GSA Schedule Proposal

By Juanita L. Walker



If you are marketing to the federal government, a General Services Administration (GSA) Schedule contract is a necessity. Getting a GSA Schedule often feels like an impossibility. The solicitation is a couple hundred pages of forms, procurement regulations and confusing instructions. But if you take the time to carefully weed through the document, you can successfully complete all the paperwork for your proposal.

To support you, GSA offers online and classroom training to guide you through the process. But, too often, your proposal will be rejected for its first submission.

Some GSA contracting officers (CO) reject proposals for technicalities and cheerfully console you with the news that you may resubmit your proposal after you correct its deficiencies. Of course, that means your proposal goes to the back of the queue when you resubmit it, and you wait another three months before finding out if it is acceptable for the next phase of the review process - which takes another month or two. There was a small business in Florida that went through the reject/resubmit cycle for four years before finally getting an award.



Picky, Picky

Why do GSA COs readily reject good proposals? The most common reason is because they have a significant backlog of proposals to review. A CO may have 15 to 20 proposals on his or her desk at one time. COs are not goaled on the number of awards they make, but rather for efficiently processing proposals. The most efficient way to reduce the backlog is a quick rejection for minor omissions in your proposal.

Another unfortunate reality is that the evaluation criteria for GSA Schedule proposals are exactly the same for small and small disadvantaged businesses as for large businesses. And there are no goals or incentives for GSA to award schedules to small businesses. It is a level playing field with criteria that are challenging for many small businesses to meet.

Here are common mistakes seen by GSA and a few tips to help you develop a clean GSA Schedule proposal to avoid that initial rejection.

¥ Compensation Plans. This is a requirement that is not in the proposal instructions but is actually buried in the solicitation clauses. If you are proposing services with professional employees, your proposal must include a compensation plan that describes your benefits, performance review and overtime policies. If you did not read the entire solicitation word for word, you are likely to miss it.

¥ Non-Compliant Project Descriptions. Proposals need to have descriptions of two or three contracts that are similar to the services in the GSA Schedule. If project summaries do not restate the words found in the solicitation's statement of work, making the similarity obvious, it is grounds for rejection.

Another "gotcha" is the period of performance for those contracts. Specifically, the project's actual start and end dates need to comply with the proposal instructions. For example, GSA wants to evaluate the past performance of a project that ended in the last two years. If you submit one that ended more than two years ago, or one that is still active, your proposal will be deemed technically non-compliant.

¥ Online Reps and Certs Application. Another proposal requirement that is often overlooked is the Online Representations and Certifications Application (ORCA) or Central Contractor Registration (CCR). It is always a good idea to check that your profile is current and you have renewed the registrations annually. Most GSA Schedule proposals now require a snapshot of your CCR profile saved in PDF format and a copy of your ORCA.



Good Customer Relations

The Past Performance Evaluation (PPE) conducted by Open Ratings carries significant weight in the review of your GSA Schedule proposal. The PPE is a customer satisfaction survey conducted by an independent company that contacts customers from a list you provide.

There are two parts to the evaluation report. The first page shows numeric scores for 10 customer satisfaction criteria and page two presents a bar graph with colors representing the types of comments your customers provided for those same criteria - green for positive, gray for neutral or no comment, and red for negative. Unfortunately, it often happens that a company will receive a very high numeric score, but received a negative comment from one customer, which results in a red coded bar. Some COs at GSA will reject your proposal based on a poor past performance evaluation because of one negative comment.

Here are a couple of suggestions to avoid this happening to you. First, contact each person whose name you will provide to Open Ratings and ask for assurance they will rate you favorably. Secondly, have the PPE results sent directly to you, not GSA. Then, if your report contains a red bar, you will have time to repair the relationship with the unhappy customer and submit a request for a new report.

Finally, here is a recommendation to help improve your chance of an award in a timely manner. Seek the support of a federal government agency. If you have a government customer that is pressing for your company to obtain a GSA Schedule, ask them to write a letter on their agency letterhead addressed to GSA. In that letter, they may request an accelerated review of your proposal because that agency has upcoming GSA Schedule purchase, and your company is a "preferred vendor." Attach the letter to the front of your proposal. It will move to the top of the pile and the CO will be more supportive and work with you to obtain a GSA Schedule for your company.



Juanita L. Walker is president of Walker Communications Inc. (www.walkercommunicationsinc.com), a small business advocacy firm that helps companies develop and negotiate award-winning GSA Schedule proposals. She can be reached at 410-461-3100 or e-mail jwalker@walkercommunicationsinc.com.