This is a guest post by Eileen Kent, The Federal Sales Sherpa.
1. Reach out to a Procurement Technical Assistance Center who can help your connection register with the federal government – it’s free, and SAM.gov is the site. If you want to learn more about it, listen to this episode of my blog talk radio show. It’s not rocket science – but it’s the first step a company needs to take first before approaching anyone in the federal government.
2. Find basic training if you’re dabbling in the market and doing it yourself. For a small investment (often under $100 and sometimes free), attend a few SBA-sponsored local events or PTAC-sponsored local events, or listen to some of my connections’ webcasts, podcasts, and webinars (including The Federal Sales Sherpa Show).
3. If you’re serious about this market, purchase one-on-one training from federal sales experts who have “been there/done that” – and can customize the material for your business and your services. This is only for those wanting to stand up a team member – or hit the ground running. It’s refreshing and time saving to hear a non-government sponsored training – because an expert giving you the training will tell you the realities of what it truly takes to win federal contracts.
My training is called, “The Federal Sales Game-How to Play to WIN!” but others have something similar. You and your team need to learn the difference between the goals of the contracting officer and your customer on the inside – the END USER – who will need what you sell. You need to find and capture their attention, imagination, pain, needs, and perceived solutions. You also need training on clearly understanding contracting vehicles. What is a GSA Schedule, IDIQ, BPA, GWAC? What are set asides, 8(a), SDVOSB, HUBZone, EDWOSBs? Know the difference and understand the power of having these contract “bridges” or partnering with someone who does.
4. Build a strong capabilities statement, with provable, quantifiable best values. Follow this document up with several past performance/case studies ready to present in a capabilities briefing, stand-up field meeting, or webinar.
5. Perform a competitive analysis of the data, which is available at your fingertips WITHOUT BUYING A SUBSCRIPTION. Know how to use all the tools available to you that can uncover which agency buys what you sell, from whom and with what contract vehicle, so you know who to approach, what to say and how to differentiate yourself from their current provider.
Only buy a subscription when you understand the data you’re looking at and you plan to DO something with the intel uncovered. One client of mine just got a renewal for a subscription which is $20k a year now for them. Stop the madness! Wrap your head around the intel and stop living in it. It’s time to take that intel and DO something with it, such as make decisions about which contract vehicles (like GSA, Seaport-e, GWACS and such) to keep and which to drop.
6. Build a federal sales action plan focused around the 3-5 agencies who buy what you sell. Stop stumbling around the public bid sites and randomly bidding on contracts you think are “perfect for us.” Start developing relationships and finding the end users and program managers making decisions about purchasing like-products/services as yours and execute that plan.
What do I mean by execute? Simple. Call. Email. Ask for directions. Call again. Email. Email. Call. Email. Visit. Present. Follow up. Call again. Check in. Follow through. Ask for referrals. Email., Call. Share an article or a whitepaper. Call again, and again, and again. Develop comfortable relationships with federal clients who start to share with you what’s really happening, and whether or not they need you now or later. If they don’t need you now, who would they call on if they were you? This is a long-term process of relationship building and you can’t hire a 100% commission sales person or a consultant to do it for you. This needs to be someone who is involved with your company – invested. You need the A-Team out front. Customers don’t want to talk to someone who represents you – they want to talk to YOU.
7. Train your team on proposal writing and have a standby proposal consultant ready to help if you have a sudden need to respond to an RFP/RFQ. But understand the process so you don’t waste a dime on misunderstandings between you and your proposal team. You need to have a strong bid/no bid process so you don’t waste a minute on a loser. You need to understand win themes, evaluation criteria, the past performance you need to submit which fits the opportunity perfectly, the technical, and more. If you don’t, get training and find a strong proposal team. Put this statement on your wall: We Only Write Winning Proposals.
About the author: Eileen Kent is The Federal Sales Sherpa and helps companies one-on-one with training on the federal sales game, a deep dive competitive analysis on who buys what you sell from whom and with what contract vehicles and then she builds you a custom federal sales action. If you’re serious about this marketplace and ready to hit the ground running, contact Kent at 312-636-5381.
