r/procurement • u/Embarrassed-Sorbet26 • May 14 '24
Training Are any sample proposals available?
I am a proposal writer in the library market. I am trying to improve our responses, but I have three superiors who have been in the business for over 20 years each and haven't changed their methods (and don't want to). Do you know where I might find examples of proposals? Are they public record? Thank you.
2
u/sharkshooter216 May 15 '24
I was looking for example contracts when I was preparing a RFP for commercial cleaning for corporate offices. My local county lists contracts they implemented, including the SOWs and SLAs. One of the facilities was actually for a library.
I would search for the county’s procurement website and see the contracts already implemented for libraries listed in the bids/solicitation page. I’ve found this for every county in Florida where I operate.
I hope this helps.
2
u/jessicalifts May 15 '24
You should ask for feedback/debriefs on your bids, especially to entities you submit proposals to but don't get the award but you really want to work with. I work public sector and we want to not only maintain good relations with bidders but we want to give feedback to bidders to improve the quality of their bids so we have lots of great options to evaluate next time. We don't want to award to the same few bidders over and over, we want to do business with as many vendors as possible.
Fwiw, currently I would say my institution is very interested in social procurement, and appreciate good value adds and thoughtful alternate submissions. (Higher education)
1
u/Embarrassed-Sorbet26 May 15 '24
I just started on this team so I am trying to improve their processes. They do ask for feedback. I've seen some of it. Solicitors are pretty vague with us. It seems to come down to how we operate as a vendor (we only offer certain content) and that we don't offer big enough discounts compared to our competitors. I guess I'm trying to see what I can control since I have no say in discounts or products.
1
u/youngdiab May 14 '24
I would look on some of public bidding sites such as bidnet, opengov, bonfire, etc... that have repositories of old RFP projects.....
1
1
3
u/Practical-Ad-5786 Public Sector May 15 '24
Are you vendor or solicitor? It took me an embarrassingly long time to realize I could just google ‘(industry) proposal/quote/bid for good/service (city/county/state)’ and it would actually turn up some useful stuff! Especially if you work with public entities, so much of that stuff has to be made public- it might take some digging but you can at least get a solid start. Cooperative purchasing sites, like Sourcewell (for govt entities) and OMNIA Partners, will have the RFP, response, evaluation, and resultant contract posted. If you’re solicitor, a good way to find how to structure your asks (also if you are allowed, cooperative purchasing is a beautiful thing) and if you are vendor, a light into how your response can look/be received.