Pitching The Big Top with Gene Moran (Podcast Transcript)

[01:11] Richard C. Howard: All right, well, thanks everyone for tuning in this week it is the Government Sales Momentum podcast. Today we have Jean Moran, president of Capital Integration and author of Pitching to Big Top and Make Your Move. Hello, Jean.

[01:25] Gene Moran: Ricky, thanks for having me. Good to be here.

[01:27] Richard C. Howard: No, thanks for coming. Again, I'll disclose to our listeners that I made the cardinal sin of not hitting record on the last podcast, but now we're just that much more prepared for this one. So now we're recording and we'll go out here in a couple of days. So thank you again for agreeing to come back on.

[01:46] Gene Moran: Happy to help. Great.

[01:47] Richard C. Howard: So one thing I wanted to stay up front. People that listen to the podcast are used to listening to me bring contracting officers on and business developers and talk about things like how to find opportunities ahead of the solicitation and influence the requirements that end up in a solicitation. But we really don't go into what comes before that, which is how do programs of record actually get established and where does that money come from, how does the congressional allocation process work and lobbying and that type of thing. And that is at least one of your areas of specialty, and that's one of the reasons I wanted to have you on today. I know you talked extensively about that and pitching the Big Top, but before we get into that, maybe you could tell everyone a little bit about your background and how you got to where you are now.

[02:39] Gene Moran: Yeah, happy to. And I'll try to keep it brief. I've been at this for a while. I'm like you, retired military officer. I did 24 years in the Navy at sea and in DC. As they say. So I was in ships while at sea, in the cruiser and destroyer world and then ashore I did congressional and budget work where I helped represent the Navy to Congress, both the House and Senate, through a number of tours that gave me great exposure to the policy and appropriations process. I left the Navy and went to work for an international defense contractor and worked in the Washington office, worked in and then led legislative affairs before going out on my own nine years ago now. Hard to believe, but I've been an independent consultant and solopreneur, as they say, helping clients achieve dramatic outcomes in their sales effort with the federal government.

[03:43] Richard C. Howard: Yeah, the time does go by, and you definitely have a unique perspective on how to help clients, clients selling to the government products and services. Maybe we could jump right into how you do that. And I know a lot of that probably links into pitching the big top. I know you talked a little bit about the three-ring circus there. Maybe you could start with what that means from your point of view.

[04:08] Gene Moran: Yeah, thanks for the lead. And I left corporate and went out on my own, in part because I recognized that there were many companies in the supply chains who didn't have a complete perspective on the customer to which they were selling. They understood the Washington space through the eyes of their prime and maybe didn't see that there were many other opportunities that they could participate in. So I feel a niche of companies that have revenue between, let's say, 5 million and single digit billions. I know that's a broad swath, but the processes apply the same to all companies. And I use the metaphor of the three-ring circus. The three rings are industry, agency, and Congress just as a way to help companies see the relative motion that occurs in a circus. There are a lot of things going on at once that play out over multiple years, and I help companies get aligned correctly with the industry, agency and Congress over the multiple years that the budgets play out. We know that in any one year there is at least three budgets in motion, and those can represent near mid and long term opportunities. But most companies who don't have Washington experience don't necessarily recognize where those points of alignment are, and I help companies figure that out. And as a result, they typically produce what I referred to as bedrock federal business that is sustaining and has endurance.

[05:55] Richard C. Howard: Yeah, that is great, and I highly recommend you book to anyone that is interested in this. For me, much more familiar with the industry and agency piece than the Congress piece. I was wondering if you could elaborate on how you might people think of lobbying. And we've talked before how lobbying can mean things that maybe a lot of companies aren't familiar with, or maybe they're lobbying and they don't even know they're doing it. But maybe we could talk a little bit about that and talk about how it applies to Congress and maybe some of the other areas to keep companies safe and give them an idea of what and how to proceed there.

[06:30] Gene Moran: Sure there have certainly been some high profile lobbying errors made on the part of a few people not too unlike other industries. We see it sometimes in the financial world, in the healthcare world, sometimes in union activities, people can disappoint. And in the lobbying world, sometimes when it happens, it tends to get some traction in the news because it can look like there was money involved in personal gain. I will say that lobbying is an industry that is subject to a reporting regime. Unlike most others, Congress mandates that we file reports that disclose what the relationships are. So if I represent a company, I have to report that I represent that company, and what sort of issues I'm working on, and the fact that there is compensation involved. What we often see in the defense world, and in Washington in particular is this concept of shadow lobbying. So those are lobbyists. Those are people who are conducting lobbying activities that maybe they haven't reported correctly, and it's often out of ignorance of the law. It's very common for former military officers who have great experience, or any former executive in government who has great government experience, to want to help an industry partner help the government do better. And they might wind up communicating with senior people about how to get somebody on the radar. When you start communicating with senior people above the rank of seven in the military, that is lobbying, and it is a reportable activity, many companies don't comply with that reporting regime. It's to their detriment, really, because if they were found out, there are penalties that can be imposed. They are as much as $250,000 per instance. There's no reason not to report your communications activity. Lobbying is about education. It's about making sure people have relevant facts. It's about helping decision makers make decisions based on those relevant facts. I'm a believer in it. I have no fear about reporting with whom I communicate and whom I represent. There may be some in any industry who don't play by the rules. I'm a rule follower, and it works out for me and for the companies I work with.

[09:21] Richard C. Howard: Yes, I agree. I always try to be as cautious as possible. And I think that a lot of people listening to this because we have a lot of whether it's retired military officers that are kind of in the business development realm somewhere. Or even companies that are SDG. OSB owned. Or have veterans that are working for them. Doing what they would call business development. Those are talking to some of those senior leaders. I think they'd be surprised to find out that they actually may be lobbying. And they have some reporting that they need to adhere to.

[09:49] Gene Moran: Yeah, I talk about it a little in the book, and not to focus too much on lobbying. But a business developer speaking to a general officer is a lobbyist. That is the law. And it's been clarified up to the Supreme Court level a number of times. So it's not something that you can choose to identify yourself as a lobbyist or not. You're either participating in those activities or you're not.

[10:14] Richard C. Howard: That's great, we'll get off the subject. But you've heard it here if you're listening, everyone that is a reportable thing if you're talking to someone at that level and just to kind of stay on within the industry agency, congress piece of this. You also mentioned certain categories of people within there. I think a lot of, especially companies that are new to doing business with the government, often they have a hard time identifying who the decision makers are, who is just maybe a user of their service or their product. They might not even know that there needs to be a requirement generator. But I thought maybe it would help to talk about how you would classify the categories of individuals. I know you had four categories, I read in the book. Do you want to talk about that a little bit?

[11:02] Gene Moran: Sure. I use the term customer constellation. We want to sometimes think of our federal customers as one person. One person who makes a decision and one person who writes us a check, so to speak. It's never one person. There are people in each of those three rings industry agency in Congress who have different levels of input into the decision. And I categorize them as gatekeepers, those who you need to get through to get to people and they may or may not be helpful depending on how you treat them. There are influencers those who can influence a decision, there are enablers those who can enable a decision and then there are few actual decision makers. And those actual decision makers do exist in industry agency and Congress. Even for your one thing, you may not know who they are, but they do exist. And I try to get companies, I collaborate with companies to help them map and recognize who these people are, what the message is for those people, how to convey the message, when to convey the message, and then do it in a sequenced way so that over time they're much, much more efficient about their engagement with the federal customers. Yes.

[12:24] Richard C. Howard: No, that's smart. Engagement is something that a lot of businesses struggle with, knowing who to talk to. How do you get your foot in the door? What kind of outcomes can they expect? I was wondering a common listener to this podcast are either companies that are going after Sibbers or currently on SBIR phase one two, but one. I think complaint that I hear from companies that are going after those type of contracts is hey, we want to phase two and it went nowhere. Or hey, how do we turn this small business innovative research contract into a large contract that's sustainable over the years. How might that generic company that has the silver phase two? What should they be thinking about as far as industry agency, Congress and an engagement plan that could potentially leverage their phase two, a longer term, larger contract?

[13:22] Gene Moran: That's a great question. There are hundreds of thousands of companies in this predicament. And I'll use the comparison of the there's a television show on the Discovery Network called Gold Rush where you see people excavating acres and acres of land in Alaska and Wyoming and Montana in the search for gold. And they, after combing through acres of dirt, come up with specs and ounces of gold, single digit ounces of gold. Sometimes that's where I see SBIRS. You are a speck of gold in this landscape that the government is mining. And that program exists to help the government eliminate bad decisions or bad investments. They want to sprinkle a little bit of money around to a lot of different places and see what comes up. And in most cases, nothing will come up. Those that make it from SBIR phase one to phase three, it's rare to get through phase three. It doesn't mean it doesn't happen. You have to recognize that that's a developmental area. I don't mean to sound harsh, but it's not meant to be a sustaining methodology of funding new activity. Sustainment occurs when you become part of a program of record, when there is an approved requirement or validated requirement that acknowledges the need that's been voiced from the field level. So you have a need, and then a requirement. That requirement then results in a decision to resource that requirement. And that is when you find yourself in the budget or your program in the budget may not be your specific company name, but the program that you're supporting is budgeted. When it's budgeted, that means the executive branch wants to put resources on it. Now, the Department of Defense has a multi year process to develop that budget. And they are absolutely convinced that they have come to the only right answer when they've gone through all of their lengthy process about what should be in that budget. Well, it goes through the White House Office of Management and Budget and then over to Congress. Then Congress gets to have their mark on that budget request. It is a budget request, which is an input to the legislative process. The legislative process for defense is an authorization bill and an appropriations bill. Congress makes their mark. So there's another opportunity there for companies to tell Congress what maybe the Department of Defense didn't tell them in their request. And it's an opportunity to have an equal footing. This is a right enshrined in the First Amendment to the Constitution that you can approach your government and you can find throughout any of the defense bills marks of small dollar value and very large dollar value, pluses and minuses that are made to that budget request. So ultimately you want to get into that part of the game. And I use the game not as a pejorative. It is a complex process, but a very learnable process, and many companies are just playing at the lowest end of it without any real recognition or appreciation that there's a much bigger playing field out there that they have every right to play on.

[17:13] Richard C. Howard: That's interesting, because I think at least most of the companies I speak with, I would say when you say they're operating at maybe a lower level, it's rare to find one that really even understands the requirements process or that there are different individuals they should be working with outside of Congress. But often a company may give up after talking with someone who may think maybe on the government side, I'll use the Department of Defense. I think that is their requirement person. And so maybe if it was an Air Force civil they were on and an upcoming budget did not have a chunk or something in there for their contract or the service they're offering, are you saying that there may be an opportunity for them to also go to Congress and go that route to maybe.

[18:04] Gene Moran: Yeah. You've identified two issues. I think I speak to company presidents every week who cannot correctly identify where their funding comes from by budget account and by budget line, number or activity. And it's just essential that you understand stand where your money is coming from. What I'm pointing out in the passage of the budget request into Congress where it becomes legislation, that is an opportunity to participate the same way you do with a program office. You're allowed to communicate with your members of Congress, your senators, the professional staff on the defense committees. They actually want to hear from you, especially when you have a better way to build the mousetrap. If you can save money, if you can document that you are doing something unique and that you're not able to penetrate the big bureaucracy, it is not difficult to get audiences in that part of the process. So I encourage companies to use the entire playing field, use all three rings of the circus and make some noise.

[19:20] Richard C. Howard: Yeah. And you have some great information in your book about messaging and how some of that could work too, which I think people would find useful. I am conscious of the amount of time we've been on here because I want to pivot slightly here or maybe a little bit more than slightly, to something else that you have another book that you have out, which I think is aimed at helping service members transition from the military. Could you talk a little bit about your newest book?

[19:47] Gene Moran: Sure. Make Your Move Charting Your Post Military Career is targeted at military members who are on the cusp of transition out of active duty or maybe have been out of active duty and in business for a couple of years since I retired from the Navy. Now a number of years ago, I've been through two careers since then. I've got some perspective on this. I've learned a lot. I'm a successful entrepreneur. I can save people some time and frustration by helping them identify in their own makeup, what might they really want to be doing and how might they go about it. The idea here is that many people make decisions about that first position coming out of the military and they find out two to three years into it that they might not have made the right choice. And I see this over and over again and I came to recognize it as a universal issue and I thought, I can write about this. And so I did. A beautiful part about the book is that I am connected with an organization called Freedom Fighter Outdoors. All of the proceeds from the book will go to this organization. They are about providing very unique outdoor opportunities for injured veterans. And by outdoor opportunity I mean sport fishing off the coast of Florida, sport fishing off Montauk, Long Island, hunting expeditions, things that help people sort of get out of their day to day issues, whether they're dealing with a medical injury or a psychological injury and they just get a chance to get away and have a different perspective. I'm super proud of the association with that group and I think anybody transitioning out of the military or in a life transition post military could get something out of this book. It's not a checklist, it's more about how to look at your own experiences and see what are they telling you about where you should go.

[22:06] Richard C. Howard: Oh, that's great. I know I can speak from experience. One of the hardest things that I've had to do is transition out of the military and I think I would have liked to read that book before I left. It might have helped me not take a wrong turn. I took a slight six-month wrong turn and then got into this where I'm much happier. So I think anything helping the vets in the charity also that you're associated with is great and I looked into that. So I encourage everyone to listening to pick up a copy of that book or maybe get one for a friend if you know someone transitioning. Gene, we've come to the end here. But before we go, I wanted to let first everyone know that if you want to contact Jean on your company, I'll put all the details in the podcast notes. But do you have anything you want to say either about your company or any parting words to mainly small businesses that are listening to this looking to sell to the government for yours?

[22:59] Gene Moran: There's a bigger playing field out there than you know you have every right to participate on every square inch of that playing field. It's not difficult. It is a very learnable space. I'm happy to have a conversation with anybody who would like to learn more about it.

[23:16] Richard C. Howard: All said, thanks again, Gene, for coming onto the podcast. Again, all your information will be 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. 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.

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