Defense Sales Calls, Hustle & What Not To Do! (Podcast Transcript)

                         [01:22] Richard C. Howard: Hey guys, Ricky here with the Dodcontract Academy and government sales momentum podcast. Thanks for listening today. We just had a great interview with Brian Steam. He's the CEO of Vermeer, and that is an upcoming episode, which we'll have out next week. But it was just really amazing what he did because he went out and he won five SBIR contracts, which, you know, to win a direct phase two SBIR is not easy. And it wasn't easy for him. He put in the work to get it done. But it just made me want to do a recording about what it takes to actually break into the defense sector. And by the way, Brian doesn't have any military background. No government background, quite the opposite. He came from the entertainment industry. He was out there doing films in Hollywood. And you're going to hear about some of the stuff that he worked on with his drone technology, went to NYU. I mean, he couldn't have come from a more different place to approach defense sales, but what he had is what all people that truly succeeded something have, which is that grit and determination to get something done that hustle and a great product or solution, right? So you're going to hear all about that in the upcoming episode.

                         You know, the long days and nights he spent but developing relationships. And I don't know how many times we've talked about this, but this is a relationship game. And he goes into great detail about how he developed relationships with the right people in the military. And some of them were not necessarily the right people, but some of those relationships, because you never know who you're talking to in the government. But when you reach out to someone and you have a conversation, they can usually point you in the right direction. And it was great to hear how willing all of the people he was talking to and starting these conversations with how willing they were to help him. Because people in the military want great technology, they want great solutions and they want to talk to you. And it was just such a 180 from the companies that I've talked to.

                         Doing consultations was kind of the frustrated small business that has never won anything. And if you fall into this category, it's worth thinking about where you're just writing proposals, you're doing a lot. Maybe you're writing archives and some source of salt responses like I've advised, but you're still not getting anywhere. And maybe you're just the interaction that you're having is all digital, right? You're submitting proposals, you're submitting maybe some responses in the marketing phase, market research phase, which is absolutely essential. But I'm not going to go on that tirade on this podcast. But it's the relationships, right? So what he was doing is having conversations with people and that was his focus. He was having relationships. He was trying to get people to understand his technology and eventually sponsor his solution into a SBIR phase two. And it's really, really paid off for him and has skyrocketed his business in the defense industry.

                         He's in the Air Force, he's getting involved with space now. It's really going to be a great podcast. I think you are really going to like it. So just talking about those relationships, right? And it made me think of a few things that I want to talk about in this podcast, which is closing, right? So in the traditional sense, in the traditional sales sense, asking for the close, asking for the sale during a call, that's not typically the way you want your conversations to be going with the Department of Defense or the US military or even other government agencies. Because typically the person you're talking to, even if they are an acquisitions professional, right? Typically it is in almost all cases, it is not up to one person to make that decision. So we're talking about any purchase that's not a GPC card purchase. We're talking about a contract with the government. You're not going to be talking to someone that can just say, yep, I'm putting you on contract.

                         There are a lot of reasons for that, right? But mainly it is the fact that there are so many different people involved with a government purchase. So that's one thing. Just to give you an example, you have your program managers like I was, which would be in charge of solving a problem, managing whether it's a software suite or a contract for whatever it was. There were contracting officers who put you on contract, right? You have finance people who have different kinds of money in the Department of Defense. So we need to make sure we have the money and that it's the right kind of money. You have an engineering department, right? So what you're selling is technical. It has to meet the, I guess you could say, evaluation of our engineering team. And you have a chain of command, right? So that chain of command. So for instance, I would have a boss. So I'm a program manager.

                         So let's say you're talking to me back when I was in the government, right, I'm running an acquisitions branch. You may think because you're talking to someone that's managing billions of dollars in contracts and has program managers and contracting officers that they're working with that I could have made a decision like on the spot like, hey, you want to sell this thing? It's obviously a great solution for our problem. Hey Rick, let's commit to close a deal. I can't commit to close that deal. There's no way. In fact, we tell you guys, never make any financial commitment when you're talking to a business because you can't, right. The only one that can put you on contract is a warranted contracting officer. So that's the first thing.

                         First and foremost the PM can't do it. Right. The contracting officer isn't going to just say, hey, I'm going to commit to this, because he's just putting people on contract. He needs to make sure that everybody else involved, the program manager, everybody else on the other side, hey, is this the company that they want to put on contract? Are they talking to anyone else? I've said it before, but they're more like the officiator at a wedding, like the judge or the priest that's marrying the program office with the company. Right? Well the program office has to decide that they want to work with that company or there has to be a competition, right, if we're talking about a competitive solicitation. But the point is there are so many people involved that if you go and you try to close a person on the other end of that phone, they're immediately going to know that you don't understand the process. You're probably going to **** them off and you're not going to get anywhere. But there is a way forward, right? So what you're trying to do is you're trying to commit to the next step.

                         There is a logical way forward in the conversation. If you just have a conversation, you're shooting the breeze. You talk about your system and you kind of leave it at that. You're really missing the point. Now what I like to do is if I am having one of those calls for a client, I like to first of all I want to know if we're a fit or not, right? So if you're not a fit, then you're saving everybody a lot of time by just letting it go. But you can always ask, hey, we're not a fit for you, but do you think that we fit somewhere else? Do you know somebody else in the government that's working on a program that we can work on? That my solution would be a good fit for and you'd be surprised. So many companies don't ask that question, but ask the question. I remember constantly sending warm introductions for companies I met with to somebody else in the acquisitions world that may be able to use their product or system. That is a great way to get leads. That's a great way to move forward.

                         Another step is, hey, you have a conversation. It's a great conversation, but what's the next step? You know, they can't commit to you, especially if it's an initial conversation. And they're probably not talking about funding or anything, but say, hey, you know, that could be a fit. Okay, so maybe the next step is doing a more in depth presentation with their engineering team. If you just had a conversation, it might be sitting down with a couple of people and going through your PowerPoint presentation, your slides. It might be going to a demo. Sometimes it takes two or three meetings to get to a demo, but a demo is something they can commit to. So these extra meetings are things that they can commit to. So if your product or solution is a good fit and they say it's a good fit, now you want to start talking about the next meeting, the next call. So that's where you want to start making those commitments. Because what's going to happen is you're going to get closer and closer to the yes. Right?

                         The more people that see it on their side, the more people are going to say, hey, I think this is a path we want to go down. And then eventually you're going to get to, okay, after they see the demo, now you can start getting into things like, okay, so you want the solution. What does it look like from a timeline standpoint? What does it look like from a funding standpoint? Are you guys funded for something like this? They may ask you for a quote, what does it look like for contracting? And that's going to you can listen to the podcast about this, but if you have a contract vehicle that you're on an IDIQ, or if you're on something like NASA Soup or GSA, those might be ways that they can put you on contract. Does it have to be competed? Right. So are you because a lot of things do have to be competed. So are they going to be looking at competition? And that's where they'll be saying something like, hey, we expect the RFP to go out on this date, or maybe the RFI is going to go out on this date. Those are things that you want to know, and you want to know them ahead of time so you can prepare for them.

                         On the flip side of that coin, you might be a small business that is Sdvsb. You might be eight or if it's under a certain amount of money, you may be able to approach them with a simplified acquisition purchase. So there are a lot of different ways to put you on contract and they're going to have a good idea of what they want to do because they have the things they're comfortable with. Right now, if you're eight A, if you're Sdvsb, if you have some, or if you're a Silver phase Two graduate and we'll talk about this again, we talked about it with a podcast with Oliver, we'll talk about it again with Brian, how that can enable the government to put you on contract without a competition, right? And so you may have to if you have something like that going forward. You may have a situation where just so you're aware. We are SBIR phase two graduates. You can put us on contract without a competition. You can give us a sole source contract and you can give the fire clauses and the right language so they can look it up and make sure their legal team or their contracting officers. Hey. This is a viable path forward. Maybe we should look into this. So again, that's what I wanted to talk about today. A little bit about closing, getting to the next steps in conversation, and then again, just that preview of this great upcoming podcast with Brian. I think you're really going to like it.

If you enjoyed this episode, you can also check out Defense Contracting is Not a Jobs Program where I went over a pretty controversial statement I posted on LinkedIn, what the real point of defense contracting is, and where to concentrate your efforts for the best results.

If you have any questions, feel free to reach out to us here and we will get back to you as soon as we can.