Am I Ready For Gov Sales? (Podcast Transcript)

                         [01:11]: Hey, guys, Richard here. Thanks for listening to Government Sales momentum in this episode. I wanted to give a quick review because the meat of this episode covers the question, are you ready for government sales? But it was actually put out initially in a video to some of our clients. So we do have a company, Richard C. Howard and Associates, where we help companies sell products and services to the government that's separate from the podcast. But we received such an overwhelming response to the video that I wanted to convert that into a podcast and it's really a great checklist essentially to go through to decide if your business is ready to start selling in the government or the federal marketplace. So hope you enjoy. Reach out with any questions. You can go to Dodcontract.com. Any questions, you can shoot me through there and we'd be glad to answer them. All right, take care.

                         [02:38] Richard C. Howard: Today we're talking about the top five things you need to consider before beginning your federal sales journey. So if you're a company that is already selling to the government, this video is not for you. We certainly have a lot of services that can improve your sales, capture new business in different agencies. Feel free to fill in a consultation form, check out our services page. But for those of you that haven't sold anything to the government yet, this is worth watching. So I'm going to jump right into it and talk about the first thing that you need to do before selling to the government. And this comes even before registering. And that's asking the question, does the government buy what we sell? Now, there are a lot of ways to answer that question, but what I would recommend is going to USAspending.gov. You can do a quick search there to just ensure that the government buys what you sell? The product or service? The answer is almost always yes.

                         The government is the single biggest purchaser of goods and services in the world, but you want to know how much they're buying, who's buying what you're selling, and what quantities. That can give you a pretty good indication of whether to even move forward or not because there are a few areas where the government's not spending a lot of money. Now the second thing we need to think about, once we know they buy what you sell; you have to have a company and be registered to sell to the government. So you can check out some of the training videos that we have on our site. There are some others out there that can walk you through how to register with Sam.Gov and how to get a duns number and a cage code. But those are all things that you're going to need to do before you can sell anything to the government. Now the next thing that you need to consider is what's your commercial pipeline look like. And the reason I bring that up is because government sales, the timeline involved with government sales is typically a lot longer than in commercial sales. So most companies need to have some type of revenue coming in while they build that initial government sales pipeline. And that could take twelve to 18 months. It can be very lucrative, but you want to make sure that you have revenue coming in and that you can consistently engage with the government over that time period. So you can bring work in. Now you could sell the government in a couple of months, right? But it usually takes longer than that. It usually takes you need to be prepared for twelve to 18 months and depending on how focused you are and how much effort you're putting into it, you'll certainly see the results. And that leads to the final two things, which are kind of linked. Four and five really has to do with budget, time and money, right? So we talked about the timeline involved with selling to the government. So you just need to be able to budget your time knowing that someone on your team is going to be able to consistently engage with the offices you're targeting for sales. Whether you're talking about marketing or responding to RFI, someone is going to have to put some consistent effort in over an amount of time in order to generate those initial sales and then kind of keeps that moving. The second piece of that is just budgeting your funding for this, right? So unlike commercial sales, everything with the federal government is regulated by the Federal Acquisitions Regulations, so they're very specific about things like commissions. So I certainly have companies that reach out to me from time to time asking if we work on a commission only basis, and the answer to that is, no.

                         The Federal Acquisitions Regulations are very specific about commission. So what you're going to find is if you find somebody to help you and you need to pay someone to help you with your federal sales, if they have a background in acquisitions and understand Federal Acquisitions Regulations, you're probably not going to find someone that will work on a commission only basis. You're going to have to be prepared to pay a fee, and that's typically how we charge fee or fee plus commission, but usually not just commission. So just wanted you to hear kind of the five things that you really need to be aware of before you jump into federal sales again. It can be very lucrative. Many companies base and pivot to only federal sales eventually and do very well, but it does take a little bit of time to get there and some consistent effort and engagement. Thanks for watching the video. Like I said, feel free to if you check those boxes, sign up for a free consultation. Love to talk about your company and your approach to the federal marketplace. Cheers.

                         [06:52] Richard C. Howard: Hey guys, Ricky here and hope you enjoyed this episode of Government Sales Momentum. If you did enjoy the episode, please subscribe to the podcast and leave a review. It's very much appreciated. If you're interested in selling products and services to the Department of Defense, I have something for you that you're not going to find anywhere else in the world. The team and I created a program that takes everything you need to win defense contracts and put it into one place. Up until now, only large defense companies and a small amount of people in the know have had access to how products and services are really sold to the Department of Defense. I've taken all of that information and put it in a step-by-step training module that shows you how to consistently sell to the US. Military. If you join our membership, not only do you get the model, but you get weekly sessions with former DOD acquisitions officers for training and guidance to answer your questions and a community of like minded business owners that want to partner on different opportunities to bid for subcontracting and teaming, or just to discuss general strategy on how to sell to the DOD. You'll have access to every course I've created, every coaching session I've ever recorded in every interview with an acquisitions professional that I've ever conducted, and we covered topics that range from defense sales planning and competitor analysis to SBIR, ST, TR, and foreign military sales. The list goes on. Go to Dodcontract.com if you are interested, and I would love to see you in the membership.

You can also check out our blog on Proximity is Power where I discussed how attending meetings can help you with Government sales. Thank you.