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Professional Writing · Chapter 6

Answer the Ask

In most formal procurements the first cut is administrative, not intellectual: someone checks the forms, the page limit and whether each required section was addressed, and sets aside everything that fails before reading a word on the merits. Build the compliance matrix for this RFP, spend your twenty pages against the evaluator’s own point weights, and pick win themes a scorer with forty submissions can actually find.
The solicitation
Section L · instructions. Technical volume shall not exceed 20 pages, 11-point minimum. Late submissions will not be evaluated.
Section M · evaluation. Technical approach 50 points · Past performance 30 points · Price 20 points.
Note. The words “sustained after the period of performance” appear three times in Section C.
One row per requirement
Where does each requirement get answered? Anything you leave unassigned is a row a reviewer cannot tick.
Spend the twenty pages
Page limit is a live requirement, not an end-stage problem. “We will cut it at the end” is how good content gets deleted at 11 p.m.
12of 20 pages allocated
Choose two win themes
Two or three claims you want the scorer to remember, repeated at the top of each major section and evidenced every time.
0/7
Requirements addressed
—
Projected score
§RequirementWhereStatus
Answer in the proportion they are scoring
Gold is the share of your twenty pages. Teal is the share of the points. When gold falls short of teal, you have handed back points you were eligible for.
What a scorer would say