Military Contracts (Podcast Transcript)

                         [01:13] Richard C. Howard: Hey, guys, Rick here with government sales momentum podcast. Thank you for tuning in. This week we are going to be shaking things up and just wanted to let you know. So we are going to be a little bit more focused on the podcast and what we're talking about and I'll get into that in the upcoming weeks. Here what our focus is going to be and it is going to be within obviously government sales, but we get a lot of questions. We've been helping a lot of people and focus is something that I preach in federal sales. So we're going to do the same thing with the podcast to ensure that we're helping everybody that listens to this show, that we're providing some great advice. We have some amazing guests lined up here coming in this year. I think you're going to enjoy listening to them and whether it's somebody that has been selling to the government and what their experience has been or a professional salesperson, former contracting officers, people with a specialty in selling to the government somehow in the Department of Defense and some of the different organizations. So it's going to help you really, especially if you have a niche and you're looking to expand upon that or maybe gain some insight that can help you develop relationships or understand requirements or even really just sculpting an RFP to benefit your company when it comes out how can you kind of gain a little bit of competitive advantage above your other companies that your peer company. So all that's coming. We're really excited about that. So stay tuned to that.

                         [03:05] Richard C. Howard: This week we are going to be talking about what is the difference between selling to the military versus other federal organizations now there's going to be a lot of similarity and I'll talk about the similarities at the end because it's probably more similarity than not, but there are some distinctions. If you're selling to whether it's the Air Force, army, you'll see that when you're looking at opportunities, sometimes the different bid matching tools and information tools will say, hey, this is a DOD opportunity, this is an Air Force, this is Marines, this is AFRL. There's tons and tons of organizations within the Department of Defense, within the services. So it's easy to get lost within that different language. And that's probably one of the first things that you're going to notice is the military has different terms for saying the same thing and even the different services, right? So if I'm talking with the Navy, I can tell you as a former Air force guy, I have a hard time understanding even the rank structure there. So even among the services, we might use different ranks, different acronyms, we might have referred to money in different ways and the contracting methodologies. But overall the federal acquisition regulations covers all of the services and as long as we're not talking about OTA and we're not for this podcast, so there are some differences. So let's talk about those.

                         [04:25] Richard C. Howard: Let's talk about the language, right? Because when you're picking your customer and I've talked about this in other podcasts, you want to be laser focused. Especially if you're a small business, you want to be laser focused. And let's say you pick the Air Force or the army, you want to know within there where are the commands that are actually making the purchases. So having a deep understanding of the service that you're selling to is going to very much benefit you. And that's why having a target like one particular branch of the military to start off with is really great because it can give you the time to research the organizations you're trying to sell to. They can give you some time to learn about their acquisitions methodologies. Typically the services will each have an acquisition command of some sort, right? So in the Air Force, air Force material command is in charge of the big acquisition contracts and whatnot. In fact, there's an entire profession within the Air Force, your acquisitions officer, where you can start as a second lieutenant, as a program manager or contracting officer and spend your entire career putting companies on contract with the government. And they have their own language, right?

                         Acquisitions is its own language versus maybe the user of your item. And I'm going to stick with the Air Force. They have their own language too, right? So if you're an aviation company or you're selling, whether it's aeronautical software of some sort or maybe even it's a radio that you want to have on an aircraft, or it could be a training at a flying wing or a flying base that you're trying to get down there or software that they use to manage, you name it, inspections or training. Point being, the operators are going to have a different language, a different way of speaking than your acquisitions guy. And this is where that focus is really going to pay off because you're going to start noticing. For instance, I started off as an operator, as a flyer, and then transition into acquisitions. So when I got into acquisitions, I had to learn a whole new vocabulary on how to execute that mission. So it makes it even that much more difficult for the outside person that hadn't been in the service to come in and try to learn what's going on. But it's not impossible. And with that focus you can do that. So learning hey Air Force material Command, for instance, is going to be where a lot of the big contracts fall under. And then learning that under Material Command you have, for instance, Lifecycle Management Center and they have units at certain bases like Hanscom where I was at and others. And you can learn what the different directorates do, what they're in charge of, and see what they're doing there. That's really where the benefit for you is going to be, getting that focus and understanding and having a relationship with the program managers and the engineers and whatnot.

                         Now the mission is a big part of the military. When you're selling to the military, you need to know that their mission is going to be paramount. So in the military, the people in the military that you're dealing with, for instance, you could be dealing with a military officer instead of a government civilian. And that's going to be a different paradigm. If you're focused on if you were selling to NASA before or maybe the Department of Energy or you pick it, that's going to be a different mission set than in the military. And keep in mind, people in the military, military officers, military enlisted men and women, they don't have the same rights that we have as civilians, right? So you give up some of those rights to be in the military and so you take orders and you do what you're told and there's no quitting if you don't like the orders, right? But that creates a different structure and just understanding that mindset and that there's a different atmosphere when you're working there. In some cases you'll notice that there is a huge degree of morale that you might not be used to dealing with and even an aggressive mindset at accomplishing whatever they're going after. But in other places within the military, you might be dealing with a unit that's a little bit more laid back. So that's where the focus comes in and just understanding that difference. But hey, mission is going to be different. It's going to be a focus dealing with military men and women that is also going to be different.

                         Dealing with the morale and the sense of urgency and the sense of need, depending on the unit you're with. If you're selling Special Forces or mission that's operational, that can have an impact on how you do business. Now let's talk about the similarities because at the end of the day, there's more similarities than there are differences, right? So the focus is important and that's going to be your biggest difference. But as far as similarities are concerned, look, the Federal Acquisition Regulations covers most of what is going on in the contracting world, in the military as well as in Homeland Security, health and Human Services. Doe go down the list of federal agencies that you're trying to sell with. So a good example of this would be I would use contracting vehicles as a program manager in the Air Force that other agencies would use, like NASA Soup, for instance. So the DOD doesn't even own that, but we could use it, right, and we did all the time. So some of the contract vehicles are the same, the same requirements. You're going to have a warranted contracting officer that actually puts you on contract, right. But you're also going to have a program manager that is really probably in charge of the effort that is going on contract. So that's a similarity, right. The contracting officer cares about doing things legally and ensuring that when they put you on contract, they're going to make sure the competition and everything else that they had to square away was done appropriately. But once you're on contract, you're going to be dealing with program manager whether you're in the Air Force or again one of the other federal agencies. So that is absolutely a similarity.

                         You're going to be able to discover a lot of the efforts or opportunities in a similar way, right? So Sam.gov, if you're using that for and I would advise you to use a different tool that kind of pulls information from there. But yeah, if you're using that to find opportunities for the Department of Energy, you're going to be able to find them for the Air Force as well now or the army or the Navy. So it's going to flow through there. Now, where some of the differences lie within that is there are going to be specialty organizations within the military and by the way, within other federal organizations and you're going to want to know where those websites are where you can pull information. Just as an example, if you're going outside of the Far and you're interested in other transaction OTA, there are going to be different consortiums set up. For instance, one called Sosec that would apply to a lot of the Air Force efforts. So you'd want to potentially go to their website and see if that could sort of something that your company wants to join. And you might monitor that if you're selling to the Air Force versus if you were going to be selling to one of the other organizations or for instance Fwork or DIU, there are some other websites you can go to gain some insight on upcoming opportunities, a lot of developmental efforts and new technology. But if that's what you're selling, it's going to make a lot of sense for you to learn about those. But the other federal agencies in some cases will have similar place to where you can go, repositories of information, upcoming opportunities. So having that focus on the customer is going to give you that. But really when you're thinking about how something goes on contract and how most of the opportunities are going to be advertised and then the process of hey, is it a marketing phase where the agency is trying to figure out who's available to put on contract, whether they're using RFIs and sources, that's something that's going to be similar with the DOD and the other agencies.

                         The same thing when a solicitation comes out, you could expect the same mechanism of dealing with a contracting officer and the team. For instance, if you've ever started asking questions after an RFP has come out, you probably noticed that either you're not getting a response from the contract officer or more likely they're going to put out answers to your questions in one group blast and they'll probably do it on Sam Gov. So everybody has the same information. That's the type of stuff that is going to be very similar, even some of the stuff if you do going to conferences to acquire leads and to learn about different agencies. We use very similar strategies when we're going to a conference or a symposium with other federal agencies as we would with the DOD. Look, I've done this for obviously I spent my time within the Department of Defense and the Air Force. But I will tell you that after I got out, one of the very first contracts that I helped secure wasn't even a DOD contract. We did it very quickly and the procedures were almost exactly the same. So I do want to let you know that when you are going after the military versus another agency. If you're looking to Pivot or you're looking to focus on the military initially. Just know that what you pick up. The skill set you learn as far as the federal acquisitions regulations and the contracting process goes. That's going to be pretty similar and you'll be able to take that to other agencies. It's really more of the mission and the people within the organization, the relationships, learning the language, that's really going to be the difference in what you're going to be learning over time as you deal with an agency. So I hope that this has been useful for you. We will keep you guys updated as we move towards our rebranding and refocus of the podcast and websites and everything. So stay tuned for that. We're going to have some great guests coming up here in the next week and have a good one. Take care.

                         [14:55] 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 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 also get weekly sessions with former DOD acquisitions officers for training and 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'll 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 and defense sales planning and competitor analysis to SBIR. 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 have any questions, feel free to reach out to us here and we will get back to you as soon as we can.

You can also check out GEOINT 2022 where I discussed the conference I attended and some of its key insights from a BD perspective.