Assessment: Are You Ready For Federal Sales? (Podcast Transcript)

                  [01:12] Richard C. Howard: Hey, guys, Richard here with government sales momentum podcast. Today we are going to walk through a self-assessment checklist for your company and this is targeted at are you ready for government sales? And even if you're in government sales now, you've been doing it for 20 years maybe, where are the holes in your plan and your team going forward now? This assessment actually is much more in depth than I'm going to walk through today. I have about 100 questions that we walk through our clients with and if you're interested in that, you can reach out to us at Dodcontract.com or to me personally at my email, [email protected]. But we're going to cover the big rocks today. We're going to cover the big picture.

                   So the first thing that you need to ask yourself, and this is more applicable for companies that are new to sales, is, am I okay with the timeline involved with selling to the government? We always tell clients you need to plan on twelve to 24 months of actively trying to win a government contract before you are ever on contract with the government. And that's just the game right now. Certainly there are caveats to this. If you sell hammers and nails or low dollar products, you can be on contract much faster. But if you are a technology provider, you're developing a technology or a service provider, or you have larger scale products that you're offering, the timeline is what it is. It takes a long time to identify opportunities, influence those opportunities, and develop relationships, because it is a relationship game. And then by the time the solicitation comes out, really have that benefit of all the work that you put in before that. So that's twelve to 24 months of actively working. Someone needs to do that work. So that's your first question. Am I prepared to do what it takes to get on government contract. Now these contracts can be extremely lucrative and stable. That's the benefit of this. But it does typically take longer to sell to the government than it does commercially. So that's step one. Step two is okay, you, understand the timeline. Does the government even buy what you sell? Right? So before you go out and invest money anywhere, I would go to USAspending.gov and just take a look there are some great search. It's a government website. It's free and you can search and see how much the government is spending within your industry and you can do keyword searches. You can get an idea of the products or services that you provide and what's being spent. You want to have an idea of that because that tells you what type of contracts are going to be available. Meaning there are some industries if you're in cyber security or it there's billions of dollars spent in those areas. If you're after larger contracts in an area like that those are going to be available. But if you're in an industry that's like documentary film, the government still makes purchases there. But your ability to go on contract with the government if you're making commercials or doing things like that, those are going to be smaller dollar contracts. You just got to have an idea of what the government is spending, how much, what those contracts typically look like, and that can also help you decide, hey, this is worth it for me because I'm only looking for x number of dollars a year with the government or it's not worth it. So you need to know that going into it.

                  Next question. The government probably buys what you sell because they buy almost everything. But the next question is who in the government buys what you sell? It's amazing to me how many companies that have been selling to the federal government for years. Some better than others. If I ask them who their target client is, they can't answer me. They can tell me who they sold to in some cases, but they can't tell me, hey, you know the Department of Homeland Security is clearly spending more than the other agencies in my industry and they are our absolute clear target. They like our set-asides. We have relationships there. You really need to have a target, especially if you're a small business. Even if you're a large business, I can tell you the big defense contractors know exactly who they need to talk to, who's making the purchases, who the influences are and who's spending the money, who has it. You need to know that too. So just as a small business, your focus is going to be a little bit smaller. One agency is plenty to start off with. So if you're focused on the DOD, Air Force and you find out air Force Material Command is the acquisition center that's making the purchases in your industry. That's your focus, right? So who is making those purchases? You want to know not only the agency, but what is the acquisition shops and the different commands involved with making those purchases.

                   [05:41] Richard C. Howard: So focus. Who am I selling to? Next question. How do they make those purchases? Right? So you know you're selling to, let's say, Homeland Security, right? How are they making the purchases in your industry? Are they using GSA or is GSA only a small percentage of what they're selling? So a lot of companies go out and get a GSA contract without doing the research. When we look at past sales, we can look, see very clearly and quickly, hey, how much is GSA actually utilized in your industry? In some cases it's a lot. Some cases it's 60. 70% of sales are going through some type of GSA vehicle. What that tells me is that you should probably have a GSA contract, but in a lot of cases, more often than not, GSA accounts for less than 10% of all sales. So that means you don't need a GSA vehicle. Going forward, are you seeing a lot of openly competed solicitations? That means you need to identify opportunities early and influence those meaning before the solicitation ever comes out, you need to find out about that opportunity and influence. Influence. How do I get that opportunity to have the certifications and the set asides and the specifications when the solicitation comes out so it looks like it's handwritten from my company and we will have the best chance of winning. What about if your service that you provide or your product that you provide, we're seeing as part of larger contracts where it's part of a larger contract. This happens a lot with building and construction contracts, right? So you might be in charge of automation or SCADA. That might be your thing for government sales, but we see that wrapped in with a lot of large government construction projects. So it's just a piece of the larger contracts. In those cases, you want to be a subcontractor with larger companies. So you can see it really depends on how they're making those purchases. That will dictate your entire approach to how you're going to sell to the government.

                    Now there's a lot in that topic area that I'm not covering right now. But big picture, how does the government make purchases? So the timeline we're okay with the timeline. It takes a long time. We're prepared to do that. We know that the government makes purchases. We know the types of contracts that are available and that aligns with what your vision is for your company. And you now know how does the government make purchases which dictates your entire path forward? It dictates everything you're going to be doing to get on contract with the government. So what's the next piece? The next piece is what does your team look like? I mentioned that there's a lot of work that goes into this. In some cases it's the CEO or the president of the company themselves. Or if it's just a one or two man shop, they're going to have to do this. But somebody has to do this work. As you get more experience with government sales and past performance, or if you've been doing this for a while, you probably have a team. What do the teams look like in those types of jobs, those functions that have to happen just to get on contract with the government? I'm not going to cover who you need on your team to actually manage those contracts right now. We'll cover that in another podcast, but one of the checklists I run through is, okay, who on your team is? Now keep in mind, we've done all the other work up to this point. So someone did that for you, right? That's either you or you hired somebody like me to do that work or somebody on your team did it. Once you know who you're selling to, how they make purchases.

                     Now you got to find opportunities, right? Lots of ways to do this. There are lots of great systems out there that you can use. I did a podcast review of some of the paid for and free tools you can use to find opportunities. We're not just talking about solicitations, right? We're talking about because again, if you've been listening to me, you know that my broken record mantra is find opportunities before the solicitation comes out. RFI's sources sought, acquisitions forecast, going to conferences, setting up meetings with small business offices, setting up meetings with contracting officers and program offices. I mean, these are the ways that you find out about these opportunities ahead of time and is absolutely essential. Absolutely essential. And somebody has to do that work. So who on your team is doing that work? Identifying opportunities, someone has to be doing that consistently. Because it's not just finding out about an opportunity, like a request for information that you submit a response to. You also need to track that to make sure that when the solicitation comes out that somebody is paying attention to that. Because you don't want to do all of this work. We talk about influencing opportunities, setting your company up for the win, and then you missed the solicitation when it comes out. So someone has to be in charge of that. Could be you, could be somebody else in your team, could be us. If you're talking with me and my team, influencing opportunities, someone's influencing those. And I'm not just talking about setting up meetings, which is business development and kind of using your network to get your foot in the door, but somebody is putting responses together for you. Somebody's putting white papers, RFI responses. Somebody is sitting in on these meetings asking the right questions. So that could be you as a business owner. That could be someone on your team that you've hired but somebody needs to be doing that and then eventually proposal writing itself.

                    Proposal writing is not something that if you're just jumping into this, you absolutely need to find someone with the expertise to write that, because the government proposal is so specific that if you miss something, the government proposal team may just throw it away. In a lot of cases, especially if we get a lot of responses and I say we put my government hat back on, as I used to do this for the Department of Defense, a lot of times they're just looking for reasons to eliminate proposals because they get so many of them on certain opportunities. You need to make sure that you're hitting all of the specifications of the contract or of the proposal and the solicitation, and you need to understand the nuance of what the organization is actually looking for. And the way you do that is by setting up those meetings ahead of time, talking to the program managers, talking to the contract officers, and having somebody with the skill set to be able to look at that and say, okay, this is how we're going to write the proposal. You may be using a matrix to make sure that you're hitting all of the pieces that need to be in the proposal, you know, the nuance or you're hitting the nuance because you've had those conversations. And then you may also need, depending on the size of the contract, you might want to have a former contracting officer review that so you understand what the fire clauses involved look like, what you're really signing your company up for, because a lot of that is gray. And you need to really understand what you're signing up for when you put a proposal in, because if you put a proposal in and win and your company cannot deliver, that may be something that you never recover from. So you don't want to shoot yourself in the foot before you get involved with a government contract.

                     Okay, so that was a quick and dirty on a selfie. I hope you enjoyed that. If you want to reach out to us, if you did enjoy the episode, 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, 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 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 cover topics that range from defense sales planning and competitor analysis to SBIR and STTR 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. Thanks.

You can also check out our episode on Orbital Prime to know more about the details for the SPACEWERX Orbital Prime SIBR phase 1 that was due on 3 Feb 2022.