GSA Clarifications stage
The General Services Administration (GSA)
After you submit your offer, it will be assigned to one of GSA contracting professionals for review. GSA contracting professional is responsible for ensuring that your company is responsible, capable of delivering the products and services you plan to offer, and offers the government buyers the best possible pricing. GSA contracting professionals work directly with your assigned representative to clarify any questions or issues, correct any errors or inconsistencies, and negotiate pricing or other elements of your offer, if necessary. At the end, you will know if you will receive a Schedule contract based on the decision the GSA contracting officer made. If any clarifications or additional information required, you will receive an email with a list of demands and most often with a short deadline.
Third Step
What is GSA clarifications?
The GSA must (1) be fully satisfied with your document package and (2) it’s contents must be consistent. GSA contracting officer handle many of the issues relating to these two areas. Every GSA offer is unique, contracting officers knows this. They seek clarifications in your GSA offer, it can be as simple as a reference to a missing document or asking you to redo an entire document. Many a times you may be told to withdraw the offer and submit it again with corrections. Every offer will have gaps, no offer will pass without clarifications. This is a critical stage in the GSA contract life-cycle. GSA Clarifications must be handled with carefully and in a timely manner to build momentum to progress towards the next stage.
What are GSA negotiations?
Getting into Negotiations stage of GSA contract life-cycle indicates completion of few important milestones.
GSA Contract Negotiations cover following areas:
1) GSA contracting officer will discuss major Terms & Conditions of the GSA Contract and will assess your understanding of the same.
2) Negotiating the General Discount, Volume/Quantity Discounts, Prompt Payment Discount, Freight Conditions, etc. of the GSA Contract.
3) Preparation of a Final Proposal Revisions document to wrap up the final agreed upon terms of the GSA Contract.
GSA Clarifications are pretty straightforward, but Negotiations are where hiring an outside consultant is of great benefit. You must know how much discount to give in order to get your contract approved. Sometime hard negotiations can fail. The GSA Contracting officer goes through these a few times every week, they deal with multiple vendors like you, they are experts in negotiations and are trained how to navigate the negotiation process. Their objective is to obtain discounts and your objective is to get maximum value for your work, both of these are in the opposing interests. An experienced GSA Consultant will level the playing field and assure your GSA Contract benefits you in the end.
