Bid / No-Bid Scorecard

Most small federal firms lose money not on bids they lose, but on bids they should never have entered. A disciplined bid/no-bid gate is the cheapest win-rate improvement available.

What it does: Score an opportunity before you spend proposal hours on it.
What you need: Opportunity details plus your capabilities and past performance
What you get: A weighted fit score with a bid or no-bid recommendation
Cost: Free

Key takeaways

Built for federal bidders, not generic business planning.
Use the output as a starting point, then validate against the actual solicitation.
Save results into your Company Brain so future drafts reuse them automatically.
Works alongside RFP Scribe's $2 single-draft option for a full first response.

How it works

Score the opportunity across customer knowledge, past performance relevance, technical fit, competitive position, incumbent strength, price competitiveness, and available capture time. The scorecard weights each factor and returns a recommendation with the weakest dimensions flagged.

Why it matters

Every proposal consumes senior staff time you cannot recover. Cutting three poor-fit bids frees enough capacity to genuinely compete on two strong ones, which is how firms move from a 10 percent win rate to 30 percent without hiring anyone.

Tips for better results

Set a hard minimum score and honor it. Score before the kickoff meeting, not after drafting has begun, and treat late discovery of a strong incumbent as a legitimate reason to stop work.