You submit your proposal after weeks of work. You wait. The rejection arrives with that all-too-familiar phrase: "While your solution was impressive, another vendor better aligned with our budget expectations."
Translation? Your pricing was off. Way off.
The Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) provides RFP bidders with legally-accessible pricing intelligence on competitors' previously awarded government contracts. Instead of guessing at market rates, savvy proposal teams systematically request actual contract values, pricing schedules, and negotiated rates to precisely position their bids within a client's budget expectations, significantly improving win rates.
Here's what nobody tells you about RFP pricing: while you're guessing based on vague "market rates" and "industry standards," your savviest competitors are pulling actual contract values from previous awards. They know exactly what the state of Texas paid for that cloud migration. They know precisely what California budgeted for managed services. They know because they asked - using a strategy that's hiding in plain sight.
The Intelligence Gap That's Killing Your RFP Win Rate
Most proposal teams price RFPs using one of three fundamentally flawed methods:
The Cost-Plus Prayer: Calculate your costs, add your target margin, and hope for the best. This works great until you discover the buyer's budget was twice what you bid - leaving money on the table that could have been yours.
The Undercutter's Gambit: Slash prices to "buy the business." You win the work but at margins so thin you can't deliver quality service. Everyone regrets everything.
The Premium Position: Price high, emphasize superior quality and experience. Lose to someone who delivered the same quality at 30% less because they actually knew the client's budget range.
Each approach shares the same fatal flaw: you're operating blind while the incumbent (and smart competitors) work with actual pricing data.
Your Competitors' Secret Weapon: Public Records Anyone Can Access
The Freedom of Information Act isn't just for journalists and political activists. It's a pricing intelligence goldmine that most proposal and bid management teams completely ignore.
Every government contract—federal, state, and local—becomes public record once awarded. The contracts. The pricing schedules. The negotiated rates. Even the unsuccessful bid tabulations in many jurisdictions.
We recently worked with a mid-size IT services firm competing for a $750,000 state healthcare contract. Twenty bidders. Several Fortune 500 competitors. Our client? A 30-person shop with limited proposal resources.
They won.
Not because they were the cheapest. Not because they knew someone on the inside. They won because they'd spent six months building a FOIA database of every similar contract awarded in that state for the past three years. They knew exactly where the pricing sweet spot was. They knew which competitors consistently overpriced certain service categories. They knew the state's historical budget range for that exact service type.
Building Your FOIA Intelligence Machine: A Systematic Approach
Here's the methodical approach that turns RFP pricing from guesswork into science:
Step 1: Map Your Competitive Landscape
Start with your last five proposal losses. For each:
File a FOIA request for the winning contract (including pricing exhibits)
Request unsuccessful bid tabulations (many agencies provide these)
Pull the full RFP documents if you didn't save them
Most state agencies now have online FOIA portals that make requests simple. Federal agencies use FOIAonline.gov. The typical turnaround? 20 business days for straightforward requests, though complex ones may take longer.
Step 2: Create Your Pricing Intelligence Database
Build a structured spreadsheet tracking:
Agency/Department name
Total contract value
Contract duration and payment structure
Service categories and scope details
Winner's hourly rates by labor category (if applicable)
Key personnel requirements and certifications
Evaluation criteria weighting between technical and price factors
After analyzing 10-15 contracts in your target market, patterns emerge. That seemingly "random" pricing suddenly isn't random at all. You'll identify agencies that consistently select the second-lowest bidder. Departments that willingly pay premium rates for specific certifications. Regions where your competitors consistently leave money on the table.
Step 3: Decode the Budget Signals Hidden in Plain Sight
Government agencies drop budget breadcrumbs everywhere:
Prior year contracts (immediate FOIA targets)
Annual budget documents (usually published online)
Planning documents mentioning "similar investments"
Questions asked during pre-bid conferences
One proposal team we know maintains a running spreadsheet of every Q&A question asked across all competitive RFPs. Why? Because when three vendors ask about budget ranges, sometimes the fourth question finally gets an answer. That answer immediately goes into their pricing intelligence database.
Step 4: Track Your Competitors' Actual Rates and Pricing Models
This is where your competitive advantage becomes significant.
Your biggest competitor just won a five-year, $10 million contract with the state agency next door. File a FOIA request for their complete contract including rate cards. Now you know:
Their senior consultant rate: $185/hour
Their project manager rate: $145/hour
Their volume discount structure for large projects
Their annual escalation clauses
Which certifications they charge premiums for
When you compete against them three months later? You know exactly where you can strategically undercut their pricing and where you can maintain premium rates while still winning.
The Uncomfortable Truth About "Proprietary" Pricing in Public Contracts
"But isn't this unethical? Looking at competitors' prices feels like cheating."
Public contracts are... public. That's the entire point of government procurement transparency. Taxpayers have the right to know how their money gets spent. You're not stealing trade secrets. You're reading public documents that your competitors are probably already requesting about your company's contracts.
The uncomfortable truth? While you worry about ethics, three of your competitors have already pulled your last state contract award. They know your labor rates. They can calculate your margins. They're using that information right now to position against you in the next bid.
Beyond FOIA: The Complete Proposal Pricing Intelligence Framework
FOIA is powerful but not sufficient alone. For maximum competitive advantage, layer in:
Incumbent Intelligence: Current contract holders often get complacent. They'll frequently bid the same rates they've charged for years. Pull their original contract, apply standard escalation percentages, and you've got their likely bid within 5%.
Bid Tabulation Analysis: Many agencies post all bid amounts after contract award. Study these patterns over time. Some agencies' awards always cluster around specific dollar thresholds—that's not coincidence, that's budget reality.
Loss Debrief Mining: Request detailed scoring breakdowns after each loss. Many agencies will provide these. You'll discover if you lost on price, technical approach, or qualifications. Each debrief feeds your pricing model and improves future bids.
The System in Action: A Real-World Example
Here's what this intelligence-driven approach looks like in practice:
You receive an RFP for IT managed services from a state health department. Before touching your pricing calculator:
Pull Historical Data: Check your FOIA database. This agency awarded similar work 18 months ago for $2.3M over three years.
Check Competitors: Your main rival won that contract. Their rates ranged from $125-175/hour depending on labor category, with volume discounts at 2,000+ hours.
Identify Patterns: This agency consistently weights price at 40% in evaluations but has never selected the lowest bidder. They prefer proposals in the 30-40th percentile price range with strong technical scores.
Price Strategically: You price at the 35th percentile of expected bids, knowing you're in their sweet spot while maintaining healthy margins.
Win Profitably: You win the contract at pricing that's 15% higher than your initial "market rate" guess would have been, maximizing both win probability and profit.
The Critical Questions Every Proposal Team Should Ask Before Pricing
Every RFP pricing decision should start with these questions:
What did they pay for this service last time?
Who won the previous contract and at what rates?
What's their documented budget authority limit?
Where did losing bids fall on the price spectrum?
What pricing model has this agency historically preferred?
Which evaluation criteria receive the highest weighting?
If you can't answer at least three of these questions with data, you're not ready to price your proposal.
Start Small, Scale Fast: Building Your Intelligence Operation
You don't need to build a massive proposal intelligence operation overnight. Start with:
One FOIA request for your most recent significant loss
One spreadsheet to methodically track findings
One competitor to research deeply
One state or agency to master completely
Within 90 days, you'll have more pricing intelligence than 90% of your competitors, even those much larger than you.
The Future of RFP Success Belongs to the Data-Informed
The companies winning tomorrow's RFPs aren't necessarily the ones with the best technical solutions. They're not even the ones with the lowest prices.
They're the ones who know exactly what everyone else is charging and precisely what the client expects to pay.
While others guess at appropriate pricing, they know. While others hope they're in range, they plan with precision. While others consistently lose on price, they win with strategic pricing intelligence.
The tools are public. The process is completely legal. The competitive advantage is substantial and real.
The only question is: will you keep guessing on your next proposal, or will you start knowing exactly where to price?
Pricing intelligence only pays off if it is captured, shared, and used at the exact moment you price and write. Trampoline helps teams run this workflow inside the RFP response itself. Turn each RFP into a board. Add cards for FOIA requests, bid tabs, rate cards, and debriefs. Assign owners. Track deadlines. Nothing slips.
Store FOIA returns and pricing schedules in Trampoline’s knowledge. When you draft, the AI side panel surfaces past proposals, rate cards, and budget notes next to the question or pricing section. It flags gaps and inconsistencies before submission. When the work is done, the Trampoline Writer extension compiles a clean proposal in your format. The result is fewer blind spots, less time chasing info, and a pricing library that compounds with every bid.