Shots On Goal (Podcast Transcript)

                         [01:12] Richard C. Howard: Hey, guys, Ricky here with Dodcontract Academy. Thank you for tuning into today's podcast. So today I want to change a little bit from what we're usually talking about, whether we're interviewing a company that is succeeding at selling to the government and to the US. Military or maybe a subject matter expert that is helping us talk about, like in our last episode about GSA or other transaction authority or some of the intricacies, I guess you could say, of federal sales. Hey, guys. Ricky here with DOD contract academy. Thank you for tuning into today's podcast. Today I want to talk a little bit about engagement because, you know, I spend a lot of time on the strategies and tactics involved with identifying opportunities early and influencing and how important it is to have relationships and set up meetings and conversations. But all that being said, everything that we talk about in the podcast and with our students at the DOD Contract Academy, at the end of the day, you do have to take shots on goal if you want to win. So that's very important. And what I mean by that is formal engagement, formal response with the government. So I don't want to give the impression because I do talk about spending a lot of time in the pre-selection phase of engagement with the government, but eventually you do have to put a proposal together and engage on a solicitation, typically, right? Unless we're talking about a sole source contract or upselling a client that you already have, a government client that you already have.

                        So let's talk about some ways you can officially engage. They don't all have to be proposals on solicitations, but if you spend well, let's talk about one first. If you spend a considerable amount of time responding to RFIs and sources saw having conversations with the program managers and maybe the requirements. People on a certain effort, right, in an attempt to influence the solicitation, Influence the people buying to purchase from your company. Often the best you're going to do is maybe have them adjust some of the requirements in the Solicitation that's going to come out. Right? So maybe you've convinced them to include certifications that the company needs or potentially set it aside if you're pretty good at this for a woman owned small business or service disabled veteran owned small business. But if you do all that work, you have got to track the opportunity when it comes out and you can do that in a couple of ways, right?

                         You can pay for a bid match tool and get notified automatically when things come up. But even with that, if I spend a lot of time on a certain effort, you better believe that I'm in Sam.gov and some of the other sites checking on a regular basis to make sure that I am not missing the Solicitation when it does come out. And there are a lot of companies that have done this. They've responded to RFIs, maybe they and that's all they did, right? And then the Solicitation comes out. They didn't even respond to it. So that was time wasted. You have to know when the solicitation comes out and then you actually have to put a proposal together and submit on it.

                         Now with the proposals I always recommend, if you're not a proposal writer or you haven't been doing this for a while, go and get some help because the proposal, unlike RFI as a source of salt the white papers and we'll talk about that in a few minutes. The proposal is exacting. The proposal is yeah, sure, there's a little bit of art form involved with it, but there is a lot of following exactly the rules that are set forth by the contracting officer in the Solicitation. So basically if you miss something that they're asking for in the solicitation, once your proposal goes in, they can discard it. And especially if they're getting a lot of proposals, they're just looking for reasons not to have to review another proposal. So you want to make sure that you are hitting all the areas that are required in the proposal. You're not putting in additional pages. If there's a specific page count, you need to stick within that because they'll just take if it's a 25 page limit and you give them 28 pages, they're just going to lop off the last three pages. They're not going to review them. They can't because then they would be giving you, I guess, an undue amount of opportunity to win that the other companies didn't get that followed the rules and did 25 pages. So that was going to either disqualify you or extra pages could potentially just they won't read your synopsis. So you want to make sure you are following the rules there, get some help if you need it.

                         Now that's not to say that there isn't a more subtle aspect to the proposal process because there is so often you're going to have the direct requirements and that's something that you can get at by putting together a requirement matrix to ensure that you hit all the points that they're looking for. But typically there's also a more subtle aspect to writing a proposal, really hitting the nuance of what the contracting officer was getting at. When they put that together, the solicitation together and of course they're putting that together with guidance from the program managers and the engineers and whatnot. So you want to also have that level of understanding. So again get help if you need it but you do have to engage on those solicitations, especially the ones you've been influencing. Now let's talk about other ways you can formally engage because these engagements are what are going to lead you to be on contract with the government. Right? Our FiSan source of thought is those are engagements. When you're putting those responses together you're officially telling the government hey I'm interested in this. Yes you are influencing potentially the solicitation that's going to come out. But let's talk about some other things you're doing.

                         When you respond to an RFI or a source of thought you are potentially creating a relationship with the program manager or contracting officer and that's really what your intent should be, right? So I've said before you need to getting meetings with the people that are in charge of making purchases is the name of the game. So you submit a request for information or response to RFI or source of thought. A lot of times companies aren't responding too much to these. So you know I'm sending that in and then I'm requesting a meeting within a couple of days of that or a week. Hey, did you get the response? Just wanted to see if maybe we could sit down and give you our presentation on what we think this effort looks like. A lot of times that's going to be met with optimism and they'll ask you to come in. So at that point they're not restricted yet. When the solicitation comes out you're probably not going to get meetings with the PM and the contracting officer. Not always but typically at that point that's when the handcuffs are on. So we're before that. So that's going to help you. You're engaging. You could potentially get in the office and by the way if you're one of only a few companies that can really solve the problem that the contracting team is trying to solve, this could lead to a sole source effort. Right? You might be eight A, you might be a service disabled, veteran owned small business. Maybe you're a Silver graduate. I mean there are lots of ways that you're disadvantaged in some way.

                         There are a lot of ways that a contracting team, an acquisitions team can get to a company without a full-blown competition, simplified acquisitions. I mean, there are a lot of ways. So potentially what you're doing is you're getting to a faster or more direct contracting route by submitting on one of these marketing things. The other thing is, let's just talk about responding to an RFI source of thought versus just you reaching out to maybe a program manager that, you know, works on something related to what you're doing. Typically when an RFI source of thought is coming out. We know. And I'll put my government head on. Typically when that's going out. I know that I have a requirement that I need to solve. Or sorry, a problem that I need to solve, a requirement to solve it and that there is funding that I either have or is probably going to be available to solve that problem. And those are really the three things that need to happen on an acquisition side, on the government acquisition side, in order for us to put a company on contract. If you just reach out to someone because you have a good idea, that's great, they might agree that it's a good idea, but without funding, without a requirement, it's not going to go anywhere, right?

                         There are certainly places to engage with your good ideas, the SBIR program for one. But by and large, one thing I like about the RFI and the source of salt is that there's usually funding and a requirement that are backing that up because nobody's going to put that together. That is a lot of work. No one's going to put an RFI together and send that out unless there is a real possibility that that is going to go on contract. A few things can happen there, right? There could be funding that's programmed and they could get reprogrammed if that happens. There could be maybe they're trying to solve a problem and they're not sure if there's a solution out there. They put an RFI out, they get nothing back or they get nothing back that really hits the bill. So, I mean, there's certainly instances where you'll see an RFI go out and it doesn't turn into a contract, but it's much, much more likely than just a cold call with no real research to back it up. So those are some examples of engagement and I always when I'm looking at how I'm conducting business development with the government with my target customer. Whether it's the Air Force, the army, or Department of Energy or Department of Transportation. Whoever it is. I want to make sure that not only am I setting up calls with my customers. The people that I'm already on contract with and ensuring, hey do they have everything that we need? Do they know anybody that may need what we're providing?

                         You know, I'm always looking for different potential. Well, you get we'll talk, we'll have another episode about killing elephants versus going after chasing squirrels. Kind of depends on what you're selling, but if there are big efforts out there that my product or solution can engage on, I want to know about those. So I spend some time researching those and making sure that I can set up meetings with those program managers and contracting officers and see how we might fit. But I've also got to have these RFI sources on and potentially solicitations in my at least my weekly or daily checks for engagement. I want to make sure that I am officially engaging on something continuously because that's going to lead to some of these contracts. So hopefully this is helpful. I just want to make sure that when you're out there doing your business development, you do keep that in mind. It can't just be conversations. It can't just be influencing through other means or research. You have to engage. So I always break it into those two buckets RFI sources sought and then on the solicitation and proposal side. Which is that shouldn't be a surprise. Just make sure that you're tracking the RFIs and sources of salt that you're engaging on because those typically turn into solicitations and you want to be there engaging on that and capitalizing on all of the good work that you put into influencing and then hopefully winning that contract.

                         [12:37] Richard C. Howard: Great, thanks again for joining me this week. If you're interested in more learning, more, going through some of our in-depth instruction and coaching, you can contact us here. And if you're a sales professional and you're looking to be certified in defense sales and gain our recommendation and reference, once you complete all of our requirements, then you can also go to Dodcontract.com and go to our certification tab and you can apply for our certification program. We'd love to have you, love to talk to you. Don't forget to like and subscribe to this podcast and take care.

If you enjoyed this episode, you can also check out GSA Deep Dive w/ Judy Bradt, CEO of Summit Insight LLC where she shared her amazing wealth of knowledge when it comes to federal contracting and GSA, when you need a GSA schedule and how to use it once you have it.