Bidding for contracts that involve the provision of services like stenography, medical transcription, and the like requires boldness and nerve. Generally, it is impossible to beat an incumbent because they know from their previous bid how low they can go. When the bid comes out, you are entitled to ask the following standard questions during the Q&A period: Is there an incumbent? Who is it? Are they entitled to bid? What was the total value of their previous contract or contracts, if there were more than one? That gives you the potential ammunition to develop a bid that undercuts their bid by the same 4% you lost the last bid for.

Hi Matrixinc - I'm not sure if this information is available, but you can try contacting the U.S. Airforce Small Business office at http://www.airforcesmallbiz.org/contact_us.php

One way to help improve your chances bidding on the next contract is to ask for a debriefing when you lose. The bid we just lost was rejected prior to the final stages of bidding, so we got to choose whether we wanted to be debriefed before or after the bid was awarded. I'd say wait for the award, since you get somewhat more information. This is known as FAR 15.506 (wrote that down during the debriefing). They told us in extreme detail where we failed to make satisfactory responses (but revealed almost nothing about the winner and absolutely nothing about any other bidders). It was not much fun to listen to. One major concern they had about our potential performance was that we had no experience with a contract of that size. Made me wonder - how might one win such a contract in order to begin gaining experience? Oh well. You may have guessed - the incumbent won.

Medical transcription is a very lucrative and attractive area of federal contracting. Many agencies require this knd of contracting activity. The fact that you lost to an incumbent should not deter you. Incumbents always have the upper edge. In military contracting, you have to look at your best cost proposal and undercut yourself so that you can beat the incumbent. You can look at the bids that were submitted by filing a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request with the agency's FOIA officer. They will provide you with a redacted copy of all the papers but they will give you an idea of where you lost the bid. Also, you can contact the contracting officer and ask for a debriefing on your rejected bid. Debriefings are designed to give you an understanding of how your bid measured up to the evaluation criteria. Jos A. Rivera President & CEO Rivera, Sierra & Company, Inc.

you should have the best offer if you want to receive a new contract. I don't say that it must be very cheap, but you should present some guarantees.