For companies looking to sell products and services to the federal government, obtaining a Multiple Award Schedule (MAS) contract is one of the most popular routes. This contracting vehicle is managed by the General Services Administration (GSA) and streamlines procurement across the entire federal government for up to 20 years per contract award.
GSA maintains the MAS program through extensive vetting of any company that submits a proposal for a Schedule contract. GSA’s assessment of potential contractors spans three different major categories: administrative information, technical information, and pricing information. However organized this process sounds, it’s not an easy task, especially if you do not have previous experience with GSA Schedules. This article will guide you through the most common issues companies face when going through the schedule acquisition process, and how to avoid them.
Incorrect Registration in SAM
Registering in the System for Award Management (SAM.gov) is required for any company that does business with the federal government and is often the first step in the GSA Schedule acquisition process.
There are a few mistakes we frequently catch prospective contractors make when they register their entities in SAM:
- Registration is Expired: Entities must update their registration at least once a year.
- Incorrect NAICS Codes: The NAICS Codes you register on your SAM account must align with the Special Item Numbers (SINs) you include on your contract proposal. (Read more about the difference between SINs and NAICS Codes).
- FAR and DFARS Not Acknowledged: Prospective MAS contractors must comply not just with the Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR) but also the Defense Federal Acquisition Regulation Supplement (DFARS).
Missing Documentation in Your GSA Schedule Proposal
When your GSA proposal is submitted, a Contracting Officer (CO) is assigned to review it. One of the first aspects they evaluate is the completeness of the offer. If your offer lacks any of the required documents outlined in the MAS Solicitation, your CO or Contract Specialist (CS) will reach out to get that information before moving forward in the process.
Missing documentation can be an avoidable cause of delay in getting your contract awarded; worse, it can contribute to a complete rejection of your GSA proposal. To avoid this, review the MAS Solicitation closely and familiarize yourself with the requirements of each proposal section. Be aware that based on your business structure or proposed offerings, you may be subject to additional documentation requirements. For example, a business categorized as “other than small” will be required to submit a subcontracting plan in addition to the universal administrative section requirements.
At Winvale, we help businesses create compelling and compliant GSA Schedule proposals. Our contract proposal checklist can help you start to organize the components of your offer.
Insufficient or Unfavorable Financial Information
To verify your business’s ability to perform reliably under the MAS, GSA requires annual financial statements for the previous two years. Each financial statement must include a balance sheet and income statement. These documents are not required to be audited but GSA does prefer audited. Businesses that submit financial statements with a net loss will be flagged during a contracting officer’s review and can struggle with getting past this stage without the right supplemental information.
If your financial documents demonstrate a net loss for either of the past two years you are not automatically disqualified from obtaining a GSA contract. You can still demonstrate financial fitness and responsibility by providing an explanation for the negative equity or income. Valid reasons for a net loss could include investments in market growth, research and development costs, company restructuring, or increases in the price of raw materials.
Whatever may have led to unfavorable financial information, be proactive in addressing that in your GSA proposal. The information submitted to GSA is considered proprietary, but as an extra precaution you can include a disclosure statement or confidentiality statement in your proposal documentation.
Insufficient Demonstration of Corporate Experience
The technical section is an opportunity to demonstrate your experience and capability in providing the products or services you are offering on your GSA proposal. Successful offers leverage this section to give a strong impression of their expertise and competitive edge over other entities in the space.
The corporate experience narrative and quality control narrative are made up of short answer prompts that GSA uses to assess if your company can perform well under a Schedule contract. For service offerings, each SIN you propose in your offer will require a past project description in addition to the former two technical documents.
While it may be tempting to answer these prompts in bare-bone terms (there’s going to be a lot of other moving pieces in the Schedule proposal process), I’d recommend strategizing carefully on how you’ll best answer these questions. Further, it helps to look at each set of prompts holistically, creating a cohesive narrative rather than a loose string of answers. Since GSA’s goal is to determine whether your company is a good fit for the proposed scope of work, you should provide comprehensive technical detail when answering the prompts for the technical section.
Inadequate Pricing Support in Your GSA Proposal
The pricing section of the GSA Schedule proposal is the longest part of your proposal; GSA requires a thorough description of your Commercial Sales Practices and proposed pricing terms for the Schedule contract. You’ll construct a comprehensive information package that includes a commercial pricelist, proposed pricing to GSA with discounting and pricing terms, a proposed method for economic price adjustment (EPA), and pricing support for your proposed rates.
The pricing support you provide in your proposal will be paramount to the negotiations phase of the Schedule acquisition, as well as demonstrating that your pricing is “fair and reasonable” in the first place.
Generally, the best ways to demonstrate that your prices are fair and reasonable are through examples of prior sales aligning with the proposed pricing and market research demonstrating those rates are competitive within the federal marketplace.
Another opportunity prospective contractors can miss is not applying for Transactional Data Reporting (TDR) if they are eligible to. Certain SINs fall under the umbrella of TDR, which some contractors opt for over the traditional Commercial Sales Practices method because its variation of sales reporting is advantageous for their contract maintenance. If you are applying for a SIN that is TDR eligible, make sure to compare both reporting mechanisms to choose what will work best for your business.
Do You Need More Information on the GSA Schedule Acquisition Process?
Are you a prospective contractor interested in learning more about the proposal process to get on GSA MAS? In this article we looked at some of the most common mistakes seen in contract proposals, but there’s plenty more to learn about acquiring a MAS contract. Below are some relevant past blog posts to get you started:
- GSA Schedule Acquisition FAQs
- How to Minimize Delays in the GSA Schedule Acquisition Process
- Where Do You Fit into the GSA Multiple Award Schedule?
- How to Optimize Your GSA Schedule Pricelist
If you’re interested in more information and guidance, reach out to our team of proposal writers and GSA consultants.
