Fall Out Funds (Podcast Transcript)

                         [01:13] Richard C. Howard: Hi guys, this is Richard and thank you for tuning into the Government Sales Momentum podcast. Today we are going to talk about fallout funds. Now if you've been in the government contracting space for a while, you've probably had conversations with your customer, meaning your government customer on the funding that's available to pay for your contract essentially. Now it's great if you have a fully funded program and you can count on that money coming in every year and there's a whole requirements development process and funding process associated with the Department of Defense and the different government organizations. But we're not going to talk about that in this podcast. We're going to talk about specifically fallout funds. And this is a great avenue to go down when you don't have enough funding to pay for what needs to be paid for. So certainly in the government I used follow up funds towards the end of the year. It's something that your customer, your government customer might go after, especially this time of year if you're in the negotiation process or just talking with if you're currently on contract and looking to modify the contract or add to it, but your customer doesn't have the funds. What I would ask about is follow up funds. So this essentially is what I'm talking about.

                         Each of the government acquisitions offices have their programs and they're trying to execute and get to the end of the fiscal year, which for the government is the end of September. Now if it looks like they are not going to be able to spend all of the funds that they have on the individual programs, then typically well, a couple of things can happen. Certainly the money can be given back to different government agencies. But usually what happens is within the organization, it could be a base, it could be within a division or wing that extra funding will get rolled into something called Fallout Funds. And then the people on the base or the organization, the division, the different programs that need that money, typically the way they do it is they will start soliciting for, hey, if you have a program and you need funding for something, let's message that. So it will be and the government has different colors of money, so that complicates things a little bit further. But typically it's, okay, what is the program? What do you need? Why don't you have the funding? How much funding do you need to execute what you're trying to execute? Now this is something you can help your government customer with.

                        So for one, they might not be thinking about fall out funds and it's easy to get caught up in the day to day, hey, I'm trying to execute a program. If you're a program manager or contracting officer, get things on contract without thinking about the Fallout fund process. But in order to get into that and compete for that money, you got to start early. And this is a good time of year to start for that. That's why I wanted to do this podcast today. So the conversation with your customer should be, hey, we can give you, if there's a certain amount of money you need, providing them with very great detail on why that funding is necessary, how they can justify it, doing everything for them. So the government customer program manager has to do the least amount of work and then, when they can go and start asking questions, hey, the follow up funds this year, what's the process? Now they're going to have some of that data that you've given them to be able to input and compete for that money.

                         Every organization is a little bit different, so they may come back to you and say, hey, this is a process. They may want some help putting some slides together. I would lean forward heavily and help them with whatever they need because again, this is a great time of year to capitalize on some extra funding. It's also if you don't happen to be on contract with the government, but you're trying to get there and you've spoken with someone that said, hey, what you've got is great, but we just don't have the funding for it. This is an opportunity to reengage with them and say, hey, look, I understand we're coming up on April and follow up funds start becoming available around this time of year. Wondering if there's a process for your organization there. You said you didn't have the funds. Wondering if there is a way for us to go after some fallout funds, either in your unit division, whatever it is, or maybe somebody else's that's related. Because often when I used follow up funds, they didn't necessarily belong to my division. I might compete at a much higher level to get that funding and then we would certainly win it. But we were very dedicated to going after that money, and that's what your government customer is going to have to be as well. So this is a quick lesson on those fallout funds. But I just wanted to make you aware that they are out there and now is the time to start asking about it, especially with different funding challenges this time of year.

                         With what's going on in the world. We're looking at the end of March in 2022. So lots going on out there in Europe and Ukraine. But just wanted to take some time to talk a little bit about that to maybe open up a path forward to additional contracting actions that you weren't considering. So hopefully that helps. Look, if you need help with your government contracts, the ones you're currently on, or with proposal writing, I know proposal writing is a bad word and a lot of organizations because it's a lot of work. We have a dedicated team of professional proposal writers, former US government contracting officers that help us with the Red teaming and whatnot. We put together a solid package, so if you need help in that area, feel free to reach out. You can go to Dodcontract.com, and if you have any suggested topics, you can also go to the website, leave that in a consultation box, and we'd love to address any topics that you're looking for help in. So looking forward to talking to you next time and thanks again.

                         [07:13] Richard C. Howard: I 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 at 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 also get weekly sessions with former DOD acquisitions officers for training guidance to answer your questions. In 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 acquisition professional that I've ever conducted. And we cover topics that range from defense sales planning 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.

If you enjoyed this episode, check out our episode on Proposal Writing Strategy where I discussed the different components and compliance matrixes whether you're responding to an RFQ or an RFP.