Prepare your past performance references before the proposal deadline

Prepare a past performance reference by confirming that the right customer contact can respond, giving them the exact project information and current questionnaire, and following the solicitation's submission instructions. Do this early enough to resolve an unavailable contact or a missing form. Your proposal team can finish its own writing on time and still be waiting on someone else's response.

The conversation is familiar. A customer agrees to serve as a reference, then discovers that the buyer needs a particular form by a particular hour. The project manager who knows the work is on leave. The questionnaire in an old proposal folder has different instructions. None of this says anything about the quality of the work you delivered, but it can make that work harder to evaluate.

This article follows the decision covered in our guide to choosing past performance for a government proposal. Once you have selected the projects, someone needs to make the reference process work.

Read the form as carefully as the narrative instructions

Start with the opportunity in G2X, then open the original notice, attachments and amendments. Find out who completes each part of the questionnaire, where it goes and when it is due. Check whether the buyer asks for a questionnaire at all, permits another form of evidence or contacts references itself. Follow the actual procurement's instructions.

A recent Department of State questionnaire shows how specific the process can be. The original attachment for solicitation 19AQMM26Q0429, for the Florida Regional Center Training Skills Class Renovation, assigns Section A to the offeror and Section B to the reference. It directs the completed response to come from the reference's government or commercial email system and gives an exact subject line. Its stated deadline was September 23, 2026, at 3 p.m. Eastern. That date has passed; the form illustrates the handoff, rather than advertising an open bid.

The attachment also puts follow-up responsibility on the offeror. Sending the form once is therefore a weak internal definition of “done.” Your coordinator needs to know whether the reference received it, can respond and understands the route for returning it.

Make the customer's part manageable

Give the reference enough factual context to identify the work: the contract or project number, performance period, your company's role and the relevant scope. Check these details against the project records before sending them. If your company performed one part of a larger contract, describe that part accurately.

A short cover note can explain why the customer is receiving the request and point out the deadline and return instructions. Attach the current form. Keep the reference's assessment independent; preparing administrative information does not mean writing the customer's ratings or evaluative comments for them.

Confirm availability before the final week where the schedule allows. If the original contact has moved, identify someone with firsthand knowledge who meets the solicitation's requirements. Do not assume that any senior person at the customer organization is a suitable replacement. If the instructions leave an important question unresolved, use the authorized buyer channel while questions can still be raised.

Track the response without taking it over

Keep an owner and follow-up date for each reference. Record the project, contact, form version and destination together so the next person helping the proposal does not have to reconstruct the conversation. G2X's free CRM can retain the customer relationship and relevant notes; the solicitation remains the source for what must be submitted.

Separate a reference saying it sent the response from the government confirming receipt. Follow whatever confirmation process the buyer allows. If the questionnaire must go directly from the customer to the buyer, preserve that route. You do not need to collect the customer's assessment simply to keep the proposal schedule organized.

An older Department of Energy solicitation, 89243324RFE000084, makes the distinction explicit on its printed pages 208–209: the offeror supplies project information and forms, while the reference returns the questionnaire directly to the government. It also requires enough identifying information to match the returned questionnaire with the project described in the proposal. That is a useful reason to check identifiers, not just contact details.

Let Lumen help with the coordination brief

For work approved for G2X, upload the solicitation instructions and blank questionnaire to Lumen. Ask it to identify responsibilities, deadlines, required project fields and submission instructions, with document references. It can help you spot a mismatch between the narrative instructions and the attachment before you ask a customer to act.

Check the result against the original files. Keep private customer assessments and restricted project information out of any workspace that has not been approved for them. You can complete the same preparation manually using free G2X opportunity research and your source documents.

By proposal review, the team should be able to say which references are ready, which responses are still outstanding and who owns each follow-up. That gives the capture lead time to address a problem while there is still time to do something about it.