40 / 40
Lowest bid submitted. Full marks.
Keelson & Company
Win the work.
Win the work.
Grow the book.
Bid packages, acquisition strategy, and new-market builds for companies competing for contracts and growing the book.
What I do
Three ways I
help you win.
01
Bids & RFPs
Win the contracts you go after. The full response, engineered to the scoresheet and priced to win with margin intact.
View → 02Acquisitions
Make the acquisition pay off. Margin health, price increases, and the team and systems that hold the book together.
View → 03New markets
Stand up a new market from zero. Pricing, disposal, people, and process, built to a pipeline that is already moving.
View →And moreOperations and sales run deeper than three service lines. If it touches winning work, pricing it, or building the team that sells it, it is on the table. Just ask.
Keelson & Company
The lowest
Bid packages and pro formas that win on more than price.
The lowest
bid lost.
It happens all the time. Price is rarely more than 40 percent of the award. The other 60 is where most companies stop paying attention, and that is the part I build.
Evaluation summary
100 pts
Bidder A · low price
0
Bidder B · Keelson
0
Bidder A submitted the cheapest price on the table and lost by 22 points.
Bids & RFPs
Win the contracts
you go after.
The full response, engineered to the evaluation criteria and priced to win with margin intact. Here is what goes into it.
Research & positioning
I learn the incumbent, the current rate, and what the buyer is actually struggling with before a word of the response is written.
Built to the scoresheet
The response is engineered to the evaluation criteria, section by section, not pulled from a template.
Pro forma pricing
Priced from real operational times, growth, and efficiencies, at a number competitive enough to win with margin intact.
A complete package
Full compliance matrix, required forms, and every appendix in the order an evaluator expects to find them.
Award review
Win or lose, I review the award. When something is wrong, I help you challenge it inside the window.
The tabulation
Same solicitation.
Two responses.
A five-year municipal collection contract scored against a standard rubric. Watch where the award is actually decided.
CriterionBidder A · low priceBidder B · Keelson
Price
40 pts available
36 / 40
Three percent higher. Costs four points, deliberately.
Operations & technical approach
25 pts available
14 / 25
General service narrative. No route structure or coverage detail.
24 / 25
Route-level plan, container inventory, coverage maps, staffing by zone.
Experience & past performance
20 pts available
12 / 20
Client list included. References not matched to the scope evaluated.
19 / 20
References mirroring the scope, with quantified outcomes.
Transition & implementation
10 pts available
4 / 10
One paragraph promising a smooth start. No dates, no sequence.
10 / 10
Day-by-day cutover, delivery sequence, named accountability.
Compliance & responsiveness
5 pts available
2 / 5
Two required forms omitted. Final addendum not acknowledged.
5 / 5
Full compliance matrix. Every form, signature, and addendum.
Total score
0Cheapest bid. Did not win.
0Higher price. Won the award.
Bidder A gave up nothing on price and lost 28 points everywhere else. Sixty percent of the award was decided outside of price, and that is the part most companies write last, in a hurry, without reading how it will be scored.
The pro forma
Price wins bids.
The pro forma sets
the price.
I build the pro forma from actual operational times, then model what the contract can become. Not only what it costs to serve today, but where it grows, where it gets more efficient, and what it takes to win in a market you do not operate in yet.
Actual operational times
Route, stop, drive, and disposal times measured from how the work really runs, not carried over from the prior contract.
Growth around the contract
Population, annexation, and added stops modeled across the full term, so the price still holds as the route grows.
Efficiencies over the term
Route density, automation, and optimization that lower the cost to serve as the contract matures and volume builds.
Expansion outside your footprint
What it actually takes to stand up service in a new market, so a bid beyond where you operate today is priced, not guessed.
SWOT & competitive position
Where the incumbent is strong, where they are exposed, and where a well-built bid can take the award.
Priced to win
Priced where it operationally makes sense, with a healthy margin, and competitive enough to win. The lowest number devalues the service. The right one takes the award.
Built this way, the pro forma does more than price the bid. It shows what the contract is worth over its life and where it can grow. Already have a pro forma? I will audit it and show you where the assumptions break before it costs you the award or the margin.
Method
The work happens
before and after
the bid.
Most bid help starts when the solicitation drops and ends the day it is submitted. That is the narrow part of the job, and it is why good companies keep losing.
Before
I do the research.
What the current contract costs. Who holds it and how they have performed. What the buyer is actually struggling with, whether that is service complaints, rising costs, missed pickups, or an agreement nobody has revisited in years. That research decides what I price and what I lead with. It is the step almost everyone skips.
During
I build to what I found.
The response is written to the evaluation criteria and to the buyer's real problem, not pulled from a template. Every section is there for a reason: to earn the points it is worth, or to answer something the evaluator is already worried about.
After
I review the award.
If you win, I debrief what worked so the next one is stronger. If you do not, I request the award documents and find out exactly why. When something is wrong, a non-responsive competitor, a scoring error, criteria applied inconsistently, there is a narrow window to challenge it. Most companies miss that window because nobody was watching for it.
The package
A reviewer judges
the package before
the pricing.
Clean front matter, a complete table of contents, and every appendix in the order an evaluator expects. It signals a serious bidder before anyone reaches the numbers. Here is the front matter from a typical package.
RFP 2026-114Sealed proposal
Proposal for
Residential Solid Waste Collection & Disposal Services
Confidential & proprietary · 1 of 1 sealed original
Table of contentsPage
Contents
1Cover letter & executive summary1
2Company qualifications & experience4
3Technical approach & operations plan9
4Transition & implementation plan17
5Management & staffing22
6Pricing proposal26
7References29
Appendices
ACompliance matrixA-1
BRoute maps & service zonesB-1
CEquipment schedule & specificationsC-1
DKey personnel résumésD-1
EFinancial statements & suretyE-1
FCertificates of insuranceF-1
GAddenda acknowledgmentsG-1
Notice appendix A. The compliance matrix is the first thing a procurement officer checks and the fastest way to be ruled non-responsive. Every required form, signature, and addendum, accounted for and cross-referenced, before the proposal is ever sealed.
I cannot promise you win every bid. Nobody honest can.
What I can promise is that you never lose one because nobody did the homework.
Acquisitions
Make the
acquisition pay off.
You bought the book. I make sure it actually earns, from margin health and price increases to the team and systems that hold it together.
Margin health of the acquired book
Whether the business you bought is actually making money, where the margin leaks, and what it takes to fix it.
SWOT & competitive position
Strengths, weaknesses, and threats in the market you just entered, and where the real opportunity sits.
Price increase (PI) opportunity
Where the acquired customer base is underpriced and can be brought to market rate without losing the book.
Territory establishment
Standing up and zoning the new territory, with routes and a target list your team can work from day one.
Hiring & training reps
Building the sales team for the acquired operation and coaching them to perform, not just fill a seat.
Integration
Folding the new book into your existing sales motion so nothing falls through the cracks during the handoff.
New markets
Stand up
a new market.
Entering a market where you have no book yet. Pricing, disposal, people, and process, built from zero to a pipeline that is already moving.
Market pricing
Pricing built for a market with no existing book, from disposal costs, drive times, and what the competition is charging.
Disposal outlets
Identifying and securing the landfills, transfer stations, and tipping arrangements the whole operation runs on.
Sales team
Hiring, structuring, and training the reps and leadership to cover a footprint that did not exist yesterday.
Territories
Zoning the new area into workable territories with routes and a target list the team can run from day one.
CRM build
Standing up the CRM, pipeline stages, and lead flow so the team runs on a system instead of a spreadsheet.
Ready to sell
The end goal: a new market with pricing, disposal, people, and process in place, and a pipeline already moving.
Who you work with
A senior operator,
not a slide deck.
I have spent half a decade inside competitive procurement, territory strategy, and sales leadership, building the bid tooling and territory systems that win real contracts.
Where I do my best work is the problem without a clean answer: a route that should not pencil, a market nobody has cracked, a service model the standard playbook does not cover. I build custom operational solutions, the outside-the-box ideas that actually hold up in the field.
You work with the person doing the work. No account layers, no handoff to a junior team, no generic playbook pulled off a shelf. If you call, I answer.
5 states
Experience across competitive markets in the Southeast
1 : 1
One client per solicitation. Never on both sides of your bid.
Start here
Let's talk.
A bid, a market, a stalled deal. I will give you a straight read on where it stands and what would move it. No cost for the first look.