How to Bid on More Government Contracts in Less Time

If you want to bid on more government contracts, you don't necessarily need to work more hours.

You need to stop repeating work you've already done.

A lot of contractors treat every new solicitation like they're starting an entirely new project from scratch. They research from scratch. They create documents from scratch. They write from scratch. They contact teaming partners from scratch.

Do that five times and you've created five times the work.

The goal should be different.

Build a bidding operation where every proposal makes the next proposal easier.

Here's how.

What are you doing on every bid that you should only have to do once?

Look for anything you're repeatedly recreating.

Your company introduction.

Past performance.

Resumes.

Quality control procedures.

Safety information.

Management approaches.

Teaming partner information.

Proposal formatting.

These things will obviously need to be customized for individual solicitations, but you shouldn't be staring at a blank page every time.

Build a library of your best reusable material.

The more you bid, the more valuable that library becomes.

How can you work on multiple bids without doing multiple times the work?

Build capacity around a repeatable process.

If every proposal requires you personally to perform every task from beginning to end, your capacity will always be limited by your available hours.

Instead, separate bidding into individual functions.

Prospecting. Qualification. Solicitation review. Pricing. Teaming. Writing. Formatting. Compliance. Submission.

Once you see bidding as a process instead of one giant task, you can determine what can happen simultaneously and what other people can help with.

That's how you begin increasing capacity.

What's the biggest waste of time in the average contractor's bidding process?

Working on opportunities they shouldn't be bidding.

You can optimize your proposal writing all you want, but nothing wastes more time than spending three days on a proposal you should have eliminated during the first hour.

Qualify aggressively.

Can you perform the work?

Can you price it?

Can you meet the requirements?

Do you have enough time?

Do you actually have a reasonable path to winning?

A faster no-bid decision can save more time than almost any productivity hack.

Where can AI legitimately take work off your plate?

AI can be incredibly useful when you treat it like an assistant rather than expecting it to magically write winning proposals for you.

Use it to summarize sections of solicitations, organize requirements, compare documents, develop initial outlines, identify information you need to address, and help transform existing material for a new requirement.

You still need to understand the solicitation.

You still need to determine your strategy.

You still need to verify the output.

But if AI can turn a repetitive 45-minute task into a 10-minute review, repeat that across dozens of proposals and the time savings become substantial.

What should you stop doing yourself if you want to submit more bids?

Anything that doesn't require your highest level of expertise.

As the owner, you shouldn't automatically be the person downloading documents, organizing files, formatting every page, scheduling every call, researching every subcontractor, and performing every administrative task.

Start identifying work someone else can perform at 80 or 90 percent of your level.

Then teach them.

Your goal isn't to remove yourself from everything overnight.

It's to gradually remove yourself from the lowest-value parts of the process.

What should already be prepared before a solicitation hits your desk?

As much as possible.

Past performance descriptions.

Resumes.

Company information.

Representations and certifications.

Teaming partner information.

Proposal templates.

Standard management approaches.

Quality control information.

Pricing assumptions.

Checklists.

The middle of an active proposal isn't the time to start hunting for information you knew you'd eventually need.

Prepare during slower periods so you're ready when the opportunities arrive.

How can teaming partners take actual work off your plate?

A good teaming partner shouldn't only provide a price.

They can help develop the solution.

If they're performing part of the work, let them contribute their technical expertise.

Ask them to review the Statement of Work related to their responsibilities. Have them identify equipment, staffing, risks, timelines, and execution details.

They know their trade.

Use that expertise.

You're still responsible for assembling the final proposal as the prime, but you don't need to independently solve every technical problem when you've already brought an expert onto the team.

What would you change first if you wanted to double your bids without doubling your hours?

Stop starting over.

That's the highest-impact change I'd make.

Every completed proposal should leave something behind.

A better template.

A stronger past performance description.

A new checklist.

A pricing model.

A teaming relationship.

A technical approach.

A lesson about what doesn't work.

Your tenth proposal should be significantly easier to produce than your first.

If it isn't, you're probably not capturing enough of the work you've already done.

How quickly should you turn a solicitation into a plan of attack?

Pretty quickly.

You shouldn't need days before you understand what needs to happen.

Read the proposal instructions and evaluation requirements. Identify what needs to be submitted. Determine your major sections. Flag missing information. Identify pricing and teaming requirements. Assign responsibilities and establish deadlines.

Now you have your plan.

I always say never start a proposal with a blank page.

Your solicitation review should become your notes.

Your notes become your outline.

Your outline becomes your proposal.

What bidding tasks become faster when you batch them?

Almost anything repetitive.

Run your opportunity research together.

Make your teaming calls together.

Review subcontractor pricing together.

Handle administrative forms together.

Format sections together.

Conduct compliance reviews together.

Every time you switch from writing to pricing to email to research and back to writing, there's a cost.

Batch similar work and stay in the same mode longer.

You'll usually accomplish more in less time.

How do you keep three or four bids moving without constantly switching between them?

Give every bid a clear status and next action.

You shouldn't have to reopen a solicitation every morning just to remember where you left off.

Maybe Bid A is waiting on subcontractor pricing.

Bid B needs technical writing.

Bid C is ready for compliance review.

Bid D needs pricing.

Now you know exactly what moves each proposal forward.

A simple pipeline and task-management system can prevent a tremendous amount of unnecessary mental switching.

What are you perfecting that probably doesn't affect whether you win?

Contractors can spend an unbelievable amount of time making things look perfect.

They rewrite sentences ten times.

They obsess over tiny design decisions.

They spend hours adjusting things the contracting officer probably won't notice.

Professional presentation matters.

Clear writing matters.

Formatting matters.

But eventually you reach diminishing returns.

Ask yourself whether the next hour you're about to spend will materially improve the government's evaluation of your proposal.

If not, move on.

How can you get subcontractor pricing without days of emails?

Pick up the phone.

Email absolutely has its place, especially when you need a written record.

But don't turn a simple conversation into a three-day email chain.

Call the subcontractor.

Explain the opportunity.

Confirm they're interested.

Walk through what you need priced.

Establish exactly what they need from you and when you need their response.

Then follow up in writing.

Ten minutes on the phone can eliminate days of back-and-forth communication.

What should have a checklist so you never have to remember it again?

Anything you do repeatedly.

Solicitation review.

Bid/no-bid qualification.

Teaming partner outreach.

Pricing.

Proposal formatting.

Compliance review.

Final submission.

If forgetting one step could cost you a contract, it probably belongs on a checklist.

Don't use your brain as storage.

Use it to make decisions.

How can deadlines make you work faster?

Give yourself less time than you actually have.

If the proposal is due Friday, don't make Friday your deadline.

Your internal deadline might be Wednesday.

Do the same thing with subcontractors.

Don't give them the government's final deadline. Give them yours.

Work expands to fill the time you give it.

Internal deadlines create urgency while still leaving you room to recover when something inevitably goes wrong.

What technology is actually worth using?

Technology that removes repetitive work.

You don't need an expensive software stack just because you're a government contractor.

A spreadsheet can manage your pipeline.

SAM.gov Saved Searches can automate opportunity discovery.

Cloud storage can organize your proposal library.

AI can accelerate repetitive analysis and drafting tasks.

Simple project-management software can help when multiple people are involved.

Start with the problem.

Then add technology if it solves that problem.

Don't buy software and then invent a reason to use it.

When should you pay someone else instead of doing the work yourself?

When the value of your time exceeds the cost of having someone else do it.

This becomes increasingly important as your business grows.

If you can spend three hours formatting a proposal or pay someone else to format it while you spend those three hours developing pricing, speaking with the contracting officer, or preparing another bid, outsourcing may create significantly more value.

You don't need to hire everything out.

But eventually, protecting your own time becomes a business decision.

What part of bidding should you deliberately make simpler?

Everything that doesn't improve your probability of winning.

Your folder structure doesn't need to be complicated.

Your pipeline doesn't need 50 fields.

Your templates don't need elaborate graphics.

Your meetings don't need to last an hour.

Your internal processes shouldn't require ten steps when four will accomplish the same result.

Complexity accumulates surprisingly quickly in a business.

Every once in a while, look at your bidding process and ask:

Why are we doing it this way?

If nobody knows, simplify it.

How do you know when a proposal is good enough to submit?

When you've satisfied the requirements, communicated your solution, checked compliance, validated your pricing, and additional work is producing increasingly smaller improvements.

There's always something else you could change.

Another sentence you could rewrite.

Another graphic you could adjust.

Another person who could review it.

Eventually, you have to submit.

Your goal isn't to produce the world's most perfect proposal.

Your goal is to consistently submit strong, compliant proposals that give your company a chance to win.

If you only had half as much time to bid, what would you stop doing?

This is one of the best questions you can ask yourself.

If you suddenly had half the available time, you'd probably stop pursuing marginal opportunities.

You'd stop rewriting things that were already good enough.

You'd stop doing administrative work someone else could handle.

You'd reuse more of your previous work.

You'd make faster decisions.

You'd probably discover that some of the work you thought was necessary wasn't necessary at all.

Sometimes the easiest way to become more efficient is to create a constraint.

Force yourself to identify what actually matters.

Final Thoughts

Submitting more government proposals doesn't have to mean spending more of your life writing proposals.

Build a system that gets better every time you bid.

Reuse what you've already created. Prepare before opportunities arrive. Qualify opportunities faster. Batch repetitive tasks. Delegate lower-value work. Use AI and technology where they genuinely save time. Build checklists so you aren't constantly relying on memory.

Most importantly, stop starting over.

Every proposal you submit should make the next one easier.

That's how you eventually increase your bidding volume without increasing the number of hours you spend bidding.

About Derek James

Derek James is the founder of GovKidMethod. By age 30, he had won 32 federal contracts worth more than $15 million. Since then, he's helped small businesses win more than $75 million in government contracts by teaching practical proposal writing, positioning, and bidding strategies that contractors can actually apply.

Ready to Go Further?

Reading about government contracting is one thing. Knowing exactly how to write winning proposals is another.

That's why I've made the first modules of my GovRFP Proposal Writing System available for free. They'll walk you through the foundation every contractor should understand before submitting bids.

Access the free GovRFP Proposal Writing System here:
https://www.govkidmethod.com/govrfp