Capitalizing on FY24 Federal Contracts

Welcome everyone to today’s webinar, Capitalizing on FY24 Federal Contracts. My name is Chloe Norwood, and I’m the Field Marketing Specialist at VisibleThread.

I’m thrilled to introduce Jennifer Schaus, principal of Schaus and Associates to all of you. Jennifer, how are you today?

Hey, Chloe. I’m great. It’s wonderful to be with you guys today.

Yes. Wonderful to have you.

So, before we begin, I’d like to just do a few housekeeping notes. First, I would like to note that our Optimize podcast Intellect. Our founder insights episodes are hosted by VisibleThread CEO, Fergal McGovern.

Episode one, finishing strong, passing the baton for business success. In episode two, two MVP moms, a league of their own, inspiring victories in Business and Life are available now. There will be a q and a session at the end of this webinar. Feel free to submit your questions into the q and a box. The slides and recording of this webinar will be available after it ends. And I will hand it over to Jennifer now.

Great. Thanks, Chloe. And thanks everybody at VisibleThread for inviting me to speak, again here in your webcast series.

And thanks for everyone that took time out of their day.

Good morning to those on the West Coast and good afternoon to everybody on the East Coast. If you’re in DC, it’s a beautiful sunny day here today.

So let’s go ahead and get started. We’re gonna talk about, fiscal year twenty-four federal contracts, and happy New Year. The fiscal year started on October first, so we’re, just a couple weeks into the, the system here.

I’ll go through our agenda, which is pretty self-explanatory and pretty easy.

And let me just tell you a little bit about us. We are based in downtown DC.

I’ve been in the federal contracting sector for about twenty years, and I’ve got the gray hair and the wrinkles to prove it. We primarily work with product service and software, firms. And typically, these companies are established businesses already revenue generating. I’d say more than half of our clients, qualify as or are, in fact, large businesses as defined by the SBA.

And some of the services that we provide are listed here.

As some of you may know or may not, we’ve got over six hundred plus complimentary government contracting webinars on our YouTube channel.

It doesn’t cost you anything to subscribe to the channel. We’ve got a variety of topics covering everything from all parts of the FAR, all parts of the DFARS, all parts of any of the FAR supplements for the departments and agencies that have those.

We also have topics on GSA schedules, proposal writing, basically everything and anything related to government contracting.

Some other services that we provide, we put on some events and conferences throughout the year. If you want to find out about those, you can subscribe also free, to our newsletter.

Advertising opportunities in that newsletter. Again, the newsletter doesn’t cost you anything. If you hop over to our website at the top right-hand corner, I think it is, in bright yellow, it says, subscribe to the newsletter. So, again, you’re welcome to do that.

Okay.

So just a quick, when we speak to large audiences like this that are, you know, two hundred plus, in attendance and the webinar is being recorded, and so we never know who’s going to listen to the recording or who’s attending the live, presentation.

We try to tailor the content to those that, are not familiar at all with federal contracting to those that, maybe have a couple contracts under their belt. So, bear with us as we try to have something for everybody here. So federal contracting, really, what are we talking about? We’re talking about selling to the world’s largest purchaser. We’re talking billions of dollars on an annual basis.

And what makes this market so unique, and I’m going to talk a lot about data today, so there’s your spoiler alert, is that there are so many, free or complimentary, whatever you want to call it, public websites that have data about past purchases, the companies that won those contracts, the dollar amounts that those contracts are for, what the government purchased, where they purchased, how they purchased.

You can even get into pricing on some contract vehicles.

You can look at future purchases, so acquisition forecast.

There’s no other sector out there like it. So, if you have all of this data, you can easily maybe easy is not the right word, but you can equip yourself with using that data to make good and smart decisions.

So, as I’ve got here, you can leverage the historical data to look at again, competitors as well as potential partners.

And just keep in mind that that data is out there and it should be used. If you’re not using the data, then, you will not be successful in this market.

And you also need to know the rules. So, the rules are going to be understanding the FAR, the Federal Acquisition Regulations.

These are the procurement policies, and regulations that the federal government must abide by when doing business with vendors. So, there are fifty-two parts of the FAR, and they range in topics from, subcontracting to market research.

So, if you want to, I’ll say, reverse engineer and understand how the government conducts market research when they are going to purchase, insert whatever your product solution or software is, conduct market research when they are getting ready to purchase widgets or software or IT services or more specifically cloud services or health IT services or, medical products. Whatever it is, they need to, again, abide by the FAR. So, you don’t need to be a government contracts attorney, but you should be familiar with what the FAR is. We’ve got a link on our website to all the components and the parts of the FAR.

And the most important piece here is that relationships matter.

So, everything above that last bullet point can level the playing field. Everyone’s going to have access to the same data.

Everyone has access to all of the information that’s out there, all of the knowledge, again, levels the playing field. What’s going to set you apart from other businesses are the relationships that you have.

Okay. As I mentioned, we are a couple weeks into the new fiscal year. It runs October first to September thirtieth. So, you want to understand, when, how much, where, all of these different aspects of government contracting, that the government is purchasing. So, again, it’s public knowledge. Go and get it. Use it to your advantage so that you are proactive and not reactive.

You need to understand the buying cycles as well. So, in q four, which is going to be, July, August, and September, that’s the federal q four, that’s when we’re going to see most of the spikes in purchases.

So, the government has a use it or lose it purchasing, methodology, we’ll say.

So, they need to spend any dollars that have been allocated via the federal budget during that fiscal year. Otherwise, the next fiscal year, those dollars will be extracted or removed from their budget. So, again, this is a lot of times why we see the largest, purchases or the big spikes in purchasing in that q four.

So, you want to make sure that you’re positioned for success in q four by having contract vehicles and some other, components and strategies in play for federal contracting.

As I noted here, I just want to understand the buying process.

Again, understand who is influencing the procurement.

That should be you. But you also really want to understand the players. What’s the difference between a contracting officer versus a program manager, versus the OSDBU or OSVP?

Also, the National Defense Authorization Act, that comes into play every year. You should be cognizant of that and how that impacts defense spending as well as various regulations.

K.

And, so the better that you can understand your client and putting yourself in their shoes, the more successful that you’ll be. And some of this I’ve, already spoken to.

And, yes, the federal government is risk averse, meaning that they want to do business with entities that they know, they like, and they trust. And there are ways if you are a small business or if you’re a new business or if you’re not a known entity, that you can there are strategies that you can use to make the government more comfortable with you.

There are strategies that you can use to make yourself, more credible, more trustworthy, to then make it easier for the government to purchase from you. You also want to, keep in mind all the partners, competitors, sometimes we call them competimates.

And I’m sure somebody out there, one of my colleagues in the government sector has coined that term.

But keeping in mind that just because you think a company is providing the same exact product, service, or software, or solution that you are, doesn’t necessarily mean that they are a direct competitor.

Footprint in a different department or agency than you do. They may have a different relationship. They may have a slightly different skill set. They may have different certifications.

Their business may potentially be for sale. I mean, I guess we all are for the right price.

So, there are ways that you could potentially form a joint venture. You could subcontract to them. They could subcontract to you. There could be mentor protege, programs. There’s a lot of different ways to be strategic in government contracting to, either reduce your competition arrangement with them to keep them somewhat out of the competition so that, each of you is going to win something.

And just other things to keep in mind. And we’ll talk about them later in the presentation.

I also because a lot of what I’m going to talk about today is, related to data and the data that’s available in this sector, I just want to bring your attention to GovSpend. GovSpend, has incorporated data.

They purchased FedMind, which is a company in twenty-one. And so now GovSpend has a platform that allows you to get access to, not only federal, but state, local, and education markets. So, the point is that you should be using data to make decisions. And so, looking at past performance, a lot of times when we hear the word past performance, most companies are thinking of it in relation to themselves, their own past performance.

But you should also use it to understand your customer and understand how they are potentially going to purchase in the future. So, one way to do that is to go back and look at fiscal year twenty-three. So that just ended on September thirtieth, so, about a month ago. And I just pulled some data from, the one of the most recent blog posts, about federal contracting on the GovSpend website.

So, you can see here, who the top purchaser, purchases, and purchasers are from the last several fiscal years. I would highly encourage everyone and anyone who is either entering the federal market or already in the market to go back before what I call the COVID contracting era. So go back to even maybe twenty eighteen, fiscal year eighteen, fiscal year nineteen to look at the trends. Because for some companies and some departments and some agencies, you’re either going to see spikes or dips during the fiscal year twenty and fiscal year twenty-one, based on the mission statement, of that department or agency.

So, if it was medical related, then you’re probably going to see some spikes in purchases. So, the main suspect there, obviously, HHS, but some other departments and agencies may not have spent as much, due to, again, that COVID contracting era. So, if you’re looking at data to make decisions and use it as kind of a predictive analysis tool, which I highly encourage you to do, you want to make sure that you’re getting a full snapshot and not just what happened during COVID, or not just what happened even last fiscal year. So, keep in mind the external factors that impact the numbers, things that are happening in the world, money that the military is using for countries outside of our own, and those factors.

So, the top industry curves, again, this is fiscal year twenty-three. And keep in mind, that the Department of Defense is always ninety days, so you’re usually about three months late in reporting. And that’s on purpose just for security reasons. So, even keeping in mind let me just go back to that last slide.

So even though you’re going to see navy and army at the top, those numbers might change slightly, simply because, we’re going to have to wait until the end of December, beginning of January to get the full snapshot for anyone, reporting within DOD.

So those numbers will most likely go up for both. And, again, we’ll have to wait until January, first part of January to see the actuals.

And keep in mind that will also impact, what we see here for the top industry codes. Because let’s say DOD is purchasing, something that’s related, say, to r and d or something, one of these top NAICS codes that, that may blow some of this out of the water. But again, this is just these are averages and, you can use this data to decide, you know, if you were in, let’s say, this top, NAICS code, there’s obviously going to be a lot more competition there than there will be if you go kind of further down the list.

So, keep that in mind, but, again, use the data to determine where you will have the path of least resistance.

Place of performance doesn’t really matter as much anymore. I mean, it certainly, can impact, the sale if you’re there physically talking to program managers and, influencers, for the solicitation.

But because we live in such a, remote, environment and people are able to work without being physically in an office or physically on-site, just, keep in mind that, just because, let’s say, you live in California or Texas that, you know, that’s not going to exclude you from competing for a contract that’s happening in Virginia, Maryland, or somewhere else that you’re not located in.

You can cross this with the NAICS codes as well as the top departments and agencies to really, make some, non-assumptions because you’re going to use the data to really get solid answers. But you could say most of the purchases are happening in Virginia. They’re DOD related, and they’re related to that the top NAICS code.

But again, you can drill down into the data to get that information.

Lockheed Martin, Big Pharma’s in there, of course, McKesson, Humana, TriWest Healthcare, Booz Allen. So, the usual suspects are there. Those are typically your big DOD contractors.

And just as an aside, we’ve got a complimentary webinar series that we’ve done on the top forty contractors. It’s on our website under top forty. It’s every Wednesday at twelve.

And then a piece here that GovSpend did on, looking at how many small businesses, won direct contracts, and it looks like it’s almost at twenty two percent.

So, again, use the data. And then if you’re looking for the fiscal year twenty-three report, which will be conclusive and comprehensive because, there’s no, we’re not kind of in a holding period as we are now with, DOD numbers. But that link there is active and, and that’ll take you over to, fiscal year twenty-three. So again, just the importance of data, I cannot stress enough, and making sure that you are targeting a solicitation and not just an agency or not just a department or not just the federal government? If so, then you’re just being reactive and that’s not going to work.

Okay. So, let’s go ahead and dig into, the best practices.

And I’ve got about nine of these. There’s probably I could probably come up with a hundred and nine, but, again, trying to ensure that we’ve got kind of something for everybody here and being, concise.

So, again, use the data to make decisions. It’s public data. You can, go to Sam.gov, FPDS, the Federal Procurement Data System. You can go to USA spending. You can go to some of the GSA sites to look at pricing, to look at vendors.

You can go to Sam.gov, or there’s more than a handful of paid day data aggregators that will, typically charge a monthly subscription to help you understand who is buying your product, how much, when, where all the data that we just looked at from GovSpend.

And in fact, they are one of the, the data aggregators that’s out there. So, shop around. There’s a lot of differences in pricing and platforms and, just depends on what, works for you and your budget, and which, platform is easy to navigate. Otherwise, you can DIY, do it yourself on the public sites.

The main point is make sure that you are using the data.

With that data, then you want to create an actual business plan. And, if you don’t have a product solution or something that you’re want to provide and you’ve, are just thinking about starting a business, then you can use some of that data to reverse engineer and determine who, again, is buying your services or your product, where the path of least resistance is, if you are a small woman owned business, where your chance is going to be the best, what departments and agencies are doing well on the SBA scorecard, and what departments or agencies might need to get their grade up. So, again, use that data to have an actual plan. That plan will keep you accountable.

It will keep you, focused, and you should have a kind of a timeline on when certain, should have metrics in that business plan. So, month one, we’re going to accomplish x, y, and z. Month two or by quarter or however it is. So just make sure that it’s, actionable and measurable.

Contract vehicles.

Keyword here being strategic.

There are many contract vehicles that are out there.

GSA schedules are the one that, typically come to mind for the average government contractor. However, GSA has many flavors of contract vehicles, and they’re also not the only game in town. GSA schedules are only used about ten to twelve percent of the time in federal contracting. And more than half of the vendors on the schedule, sixty percent, in fact, six zero, have zero sales through their schedule. So, somebody either sold them something that they don’t need, which certainly happens out there, or a company decided that they had the idea of build it and they will come, which is not a strategy. You need a relationship in place for these, vehicles to work for you.

So, there are also department and agency wide contract vehicles.

You’ve got Navy Seaport e, NASA SEWP, DHS Eagle.

CHESS is the army contract vehicle, and the list go on and on and on. So, again, use the data to understand who your ideal customer is and what contract vehicles do they use.

By having a narrower focus, you will be more successful because then you’re not responding to a hundred different things and being, reactive.

Okay. Number four.

We’ll talk now about set aside designations. And these are, also you want to focus on being designations are check boxes that the government has goals to meet these requirements.

And so, your reference point here, I would direct you over to the SBA scorecard. And this is, again, public data that you can use to understand which departments and agencies have done well with meeting their set aside goals and which perhaps need to bring their score up.

And you want to also make sure that you understand all the requirements for the set aside designations as well as, you know, is this going to be an asset or a liability? And I’m specifically talking about eight a because the eight a certification, and I don’t know every single detail about the eight a certification, and it’s not my area of expertise. So, if questions are coming in on eight a, I might end up directing you to a colleague that, can answer those questions. But just know with eight a that this is a certification that once you get it, the clock is ticking for nine years.

At the end of the nine years, you are done toast. So, if you decide at the end of those nine years that, your business, that you’re going to close your business and open a new business doing something completely different, completely different business name, headquartered in a different state, different tax ID number, you can then not apply for eight a under that, new business. It’s you’re tied to the business owner.

So, it’s once and done. And you want to make sure that when you get that eight a certification, that you’ve got relationships, in your pipeline kind of queued up that once you get that, it’s more or less a layup because the person that you were speaking to at department of, insert whatever department you want here, has told you that, yes, they want to purchase from you, but, it needs to be, set aside for eight a. So, if you get that certification, then, you’ve got a pretty good chance of winning the contract.

So again, make sure that you’re doing it not just as a build it and they will come, but that you’re doing it more for strategic and tactical, reasons.

A lot of companies struggle sometimes with marketing, and this can range from everything from cosmetic, to your actual content, and simply having an online presence. And so, I’ve got a couple things listed here. So, if somebody goes to your website, does it look professional? Does it look like you’re running your business out of your basement, out of your garage? Or does it have a feel of, hey this is really a government contractor that’s got past performance, that has contract vehicles, that has set aside designations, and it’s clear to understand exactly what they do. It’s easy to contact them.

Or is it disorganized? Does it not have anything on the about us?

Does it make it hard to contact you? Or does the contact us just take them to a Twitter or Facebook page, where you’re selling more retail products versus having an actual LinkedIn presence, a LinkedIn business page that has a nice blurb about what you do? Does your company have a newsletter? Do you have any videos that either demonstrate your product or are more of a q and a with, kind of a fireside chat where you’re talking to perhaps an interviewer that’s asking you about, your capabilities, your past performance, your current success, and where your company is going.

Does your auto signature screen government contracting? Does it have a link to your contract vehicle pricing? Does it have your logo for your SDVOSB?

Does it have a link to your website, to your LinkedIn business page or whatever it is? Again, make sure that you make it easy for people. People meaning potential partners, prime contractors, the government, whomever it is, to understand what you do and to find you.

Is there an easily downloadable capability statement on your website or is it, you know, impossible to really understand what you do? Are your top NAICS codes listed on your capability statement? Is your SAM record current? Is it compliant?

And newsletter and videos, those may be a little more advanced or sophisticated. But, even if a newsletter goes out once a month, to list any of your current contract awards, those can be helpful.

And then the physical aspect, showing up in jeans and flip flops like you’re Mark Zuckerberg?

Are you making eye contact? Are you do you have a strong handshake? Are you clean? Are you presenting yourself like somebody that’s credible that you would want to do business with, that the government would take seriously? Again, the government is risk averse. So, the more professional and put together you are, the better.

And are you attending the events? Are you members of associations that where you’re going to have opportunities to interact with the government?

Keep these things in mind, especially if you’re looking at doing business with, as a subcontractor to any of the primes. If you go to their website, we just featured, CACI or CACI last week.

In one of our slides, we also list, the events, and associations that the company, belongs to. And they make it very easy on their website. They’ve got a list of, like, the next six or seven trade shows or conferences that they’re attending, their booth number. It makes it very easy for you to find them and interact with them.

Are you attending matchmaking events either, put on by local chambers, by your local PTAC or Apex Accelerator.

Again, these are opportunities to meet and talk to the government, and I would encourage you to go and attend those.

And even if you’re not, even if there’s not a specific opportunity, for the department or agency that maybe is going to be there, at least it’s a way to somewhat practice your pitch, your kind of three-minute, elevator pitch, or at least do it with, maybe a neighbor or somebody, a family member, a friend that’s not in your industry. And see if when you make your pitch to them, do they understand what it is you do? If not, then you probably want to go back to the drawing board. And, again, just simplify it. Put it in in easy terms that anybody would understand.

And again, networking and these events is really kind of where it’s at. But again, you want to show up, in a very professional manner.

And all of this will, in some ways make it easy for the government to find you and purchase from you. But again, on your website, in your auto signature, in your capability statement, does it stand out? Is it easy to extract this company is in providing cloud computing services? Or is this company providing janitorial services. And I need to contact, Otis at, you know, Otis at a b c company dot com, and he’s going to be the best, janitorial provider that we’ve ever had. And he’s on the GSA schedule, and he’s also service-disabled veteran owned.

Or, you know, are you using a font that’s hard to read or a font that’s, you know, eight point in size? Again, make it easy to understand as well as purchase from you.

And number nine, which is the last piece here of our best practices, is that you should always be focused on continuous education.

Healthy minds is a strong mind. And the more you know about the rules of government contracting, as well as industry news, are you signed up for gov exec, DefenseOne, FedScoop, Defense Media? I mean, there’s so many different, publications out there. Are you signed up for your own, targets, public affairs, notification? So within, all the departments and agencies, they’re all going to have a public affairs office, and you can usually sign up for, news and alerts, with them. Are you getting those notifications?

Are you signed up just for the local news or your industry association news? So, the more you can stay abreast of this information, the more educated you’ll be about the market. Is the company that you’re trying to subcontract with, have they gone through a merger and acquisition? Have they spun off their government division?

What’s happening within that company? So, if you’re laser focused and you’re signed up for the Google alerts for those companies, has their stock price recently plummeted because they, I don’t know, lost a contract with the government or, something popped up with false claims act or whatever it is. So, and I’m not just talking negative. There could be some positive, happenings as well.

Again, mergers, acquisitions, anything that’s going to impact the business, you should be abreast of.

I’m sorry. We do have one more ten. Discipline.

And this goes in anything in life really. If you’re going to be good at it, you just really need to get out there and have grit.

And whether it’s this industry or another industry or we’re talking about professional sports or anything in life, a new hobby that you’re trying to, perfect, you really need discipline doing it day in, day out, living it, breathing it, giving up making sacrifices, giving up, doing you know, taking a vacation or going somewhere with friends.

But instead, of the players and influencers. So, discipline is key. Obviously, I’m not, probably telling you anything that you don’t know. But if you really look hard at the companies that are winning, that are let’s say, that started out as you did, what really puts them over the top is just these good habits day in, day out.

And you can have good habits for, you know, a month, two months, three months, but, that continual, grind and grit is really what’s going to get you there.

Okay. So, let’s avoid some pitfalls here. And these will be, somewhat like what we just went through on best practices, but sometimes it is, good to be cognizant of some pitfalls.

So, again, use that data to be proactive about the market and not just responding to every solicitation that you see. You’re not just going to every event. Be laser focused on what you were good at and where you’re adding value and what it is you’re bringing to the table.

Again, being laser focused, be known for being the best providing the best janitorial services or the best cloud computing services or the best health IT services with a focus, on, military health or whatever it is, and be known for that. Again, a lot of this is just going to come down to determination and hard work and working smart and using data to make decisions and not just feelings or, or, let’s say, instincts.

Having a process and methodology in place, whether this is a process for, how you kind of run your day. You spend the first, you know, hour or two, that you set those hours in the day aside for, calls, or you set those hours aside for reviewing opportunities, or you’re doing, outreach, or that’s when you go to certain meetings. You should also have a process and methodology for when you’re deciding to pursue contracts or not, meaning solicitations.

Also, same thing on the pricing. Like, what is your methodology? What is kind of the method behind your badness on how your business operates?

So, make sure that you have that in place. Companies that don’t have the methodology or processes are usually ones that are just randomly, acting and don’t have, something standard in place. I’m not saying that you need to be robotic.

Sometimes something drops out of nowhere, as far as the solicitation and you need to pursue it.

But by having a process in place, then you’ll be more successful. And that will, also help with your kind of quality control.

The designations, meaning the set asides, the eight a women owned, HUBZone, veteran owned, all of those are great, but you want to be strategic in how you use them. And same thing with, contract vehicles.

And he gets a red convertible, and he gets a cute dog, and he’s deciding that if he drives around in his red convertible, and he puts on some, let’s say, aviator Tom Cruise sunglasses, and he’s, driving around with, the car, the dog, the sunglasses. He thinks he’s going to easily pick up a woman.

These are just kind of marketing tools, but when it’s going to come down to getting something solid, you’re really going to need to have some substance.

And substance in, government contracting is really going to equate to past performance and your capabilities, and those should be obviously tied together. So, the check boxes are just kind of the cherry on top. So, let’s say this guy is a great guy and he’s, you know, he’s got a good job. He owns his home.

He’s got a nice relationship with his mother, his family.

Great. Then the car, the dog, all of that are just kind of the icing on the cake. They just add to this person.

So same thing here. The government is not typically going to contact you because you are, woman owned or because you are, eight a certified or because you have a GSA schedule.

They certainly can help and can add a little bit of credibility to your presence. But what it’s really going to come down to is can you perform on this contract? Do you have the capabilities? And does your past performance speak to those capabilities that the government is looking for?

So, make sure that when you get these, set aside designations or you get certain contract vehicles that it’s for a reason that it ties to the opportunity that you are pursuing.

Okay. And then just, leveraging tools and then if anybody has questions, I think you can start typing them in now.

I think there’s a dialogue box for me. It’s on the right-hand side.

So, again, data’s always changing. So, as I mentioned, the, DOD is three months late in their reporting. So, the data is dynamic, and so you want to make sure that, that if you are, I would highly encourage you to use a data aggregator, one of the paid ones, because, it can be a very manual effort going to Sam dot gov to look for opportunities and look at historical, data, over the years, particularly if you are selling to DOD because of the delayed reporting.

And you also want to use data for benchmarking where you know, if you look at pricing, let’s say, on GSA schedule just to get an idea of where certain companies, have their pricing for services or products that you’re providing. Are you kind of falling in line with, with these prices?

That should as kind of a separate note, if you are considering getting onto, let’s say, GSA, you should do that homework upfront, to make sure that, that this will be a profitable venture for you.

If not, then, you perhaps you want to go elsewhere. But you can still use that data just to really get a general understanding of where a company’s, pricing is. The website for that is going to be buy dot g s a dot gov. That’s for services. If you’re selling products, gsaadvantage dot gov.

Again, use the contract vehicles and designations to your advantage.

Don’t have the build it and they will come. Use that SBA scorecard, which you can find on the SBA site to find out who has done well or not well in meeting their, small business designations.

And they’re also going to have the information on how the primes did. So, the let me just go back here. So, the SBA scorecard, the goal for the federal government to award, contracts to small businesses, I believe, is the twenty four percent. And then thirty six percent is the, we’ll say, general goal for subcontracting. So, that number is larger there, obviously, on the subcontracting side, which means two things. Number one, more companies are probably going to go that route of subcontracting.

However, you do not need to subcontract.

You can sell direct to the government, even if you don’t have a contract vehicle, even if you’re not certified as, let’s say, woman owned, betronone, or any of these other designations. You just need to read the solicitation. If you meet the requirements, then write a response, write a proposal, particularly if you’ve had a relationship there with the, the issuing agency.

Okay. Past performance.

The government I had a quote in a deck that I used a couple years ago that was, directly from the government stating, and I’m going to paraphrase here, that, it’s not that we don’t have enough, women owned, veteran owned, eight a, and HUBZone companies. It’s that we don’t have enough companies that have the past performance that can meet the requirements.

So don’t let, hey, I’m woman owned and eight a firm, be the first thing out of your mouth. They don’t care. The primes don’t care. The government doesn’t care.

What they care about is that you can do. They don’t care about your red convertible. They don’t care about your cute dog. They want to make sure that you are credible, that you can perform on the contract. So, focus on that.

Be laser focused. Go get some experience.

And this is not something that happens overnight. Selling to the federal government being successful is a long-term game.

And you need to know the rules of the game and put yourself in the shoes of the government.

So, again, focus on your past performance and your capabilities and, what it is you’re bringing to the table.

Again, everything else is, equal. Everybody has access to the same data.

Everybody still has the same twenty-four hours in the day. What’s going to set you apart from another company, let’s say, that has the same NAICS codes, that has the same contract vehicle, that has the same pricing, is how you’re interacting. It’s the how.

And I’ll say how in, you know, all capitals and highlighted how you’re interacting, how you’re presenting yourself to, on behalf of your business, to the government, to the primes. Do they want to work with you? Do you call when you say you’re going to call? Do you send the information that they want in the format that they want?

These sort of things, will certainly add up and set you apart.

Do you understand the market? Do you know, anything else about the business? Do you know who the CEO is? Are they publicly traded? Who are the SBLOs within the company?

What’s the mission statement of the department?

Have they been in the press?

Has their budget been cut? Has their department or agency gone through any major changes? All of this. So, you again, you just want to really stay abreast of the information that’s out there to be successful, in this fiscal year.

Some conclusions.

Content is king. Again, use the data. Relationships are key.

And you really, really need to be laser focused. That’s usually where most companies fail is that they try to be everything to everybody. There are enough companies out there you can partner with that if there’s a component of a proposal that you cannot fulfill, work with somebody else.

And there’s, plenty of, ways to find these companies. And then just, as I’ve got here, rinse and repeat. Just do it over and over and over.

That is all that I have. I’ll stay on this slide and, I’ll wait for Chloe to come back and join us and see if there are any specific questions that I can answer in the fifteen minutes that we’ve got left.

Yeah.

So, we do have a few. Sure.

So, I would first, determine what it is you are bringing to the table. What is it that you do? Be very focused, and then go into, Sam dot gov and all the other databases to look for opportunities. Look at the companies that have won those contracts. Go on to their websites. What associations are they members of?

Where are they showing up in the news if you sign up for, Google News alerts, where are they attending matchmaking events, where are they presenting, these sort of things, then I would start to also join those same associations, and, and reach out to those companies. That way, follow them on LinkedIn, connect with their, main point of contacts on LinkedIn with a message.

Yeah. And your LinkedIn, connection should always, always, always, come with a very specific message on why you’re contacting with them. So, find the companies that are being successful. Look at the associations and organizations that they belong to, the industry and that’s, I would say how you would start building relationships.

Next question from Sue. What strategies do you recommend being more credible and more trustworthy?

Sure. So that’s, typically going to come down to your past performance. So, think of it just, reverse the situation here. Let’s say you need to hire, somebody to help you with your, bookkeeping or your finances, or let’s say you bought a new car and something’s wrong with it.

Are you going to take it to somebody that, stops you on the street and says, hey. I can help you fix your car that doesn’t even look like a car mechanic. Or are you going to go somewhere that, says, you know, over, you know, fifty thousand customers served each year. And we specialize in Mercedes or whatever it is you’re driving.

So be very focused on what it is you’re doing and just build up your past performance even if it’s not with government or, or prime contractors. If it’s a contract with, let’s just say, your local church or an association or, state and local government or, university or educational system, I would focus on, on that. And past performance is past performance. At the end of the day, it will count for something.

Jennifer. If a small business is just starting in the government space and your main clients are still corporate, how do you balance your online presence to speak to both?

Yep. So, I probably should have put some examples here of some good, company websites that, you know, maybe in the about us, there’s, you know, a drop down that says, or who we serve, you know, a drop down that says, commercial or national accounts or however you term your commercial business and then another drop down for federal, and speak specifically to federal. You know? And if you’re a subcontractor to any primes, I would highlight that there on the federal side until you start having direct contracts with the government.

Next question is from Rachel. What is PTAC or ATAC?

Yeah, I should have mentioned this for how to build relationships as well. So PTACs are procurement technical assistance centers. We have a video on our website, what is a PTAC.

And PTACs, there is one in every state. They are partially funded through SBA and Department of Defense, and their mission statement is to help, companies that want to sell to the federal government.

They may do something with state, local, and education, but for our purposes today, let’s just say they’re focused on federal.

They sometimes are co located with a university, so that they can have access to training rooms or auditoriums for instructional purposes.

And they’re typically comprised of a lot of volunteers.

So often I’ll teach classes at the Virginia PTAC, and others on GSA schedules or government contracting marketing. But they offer, training. They offer one on one counseling. So, if you are new to federal contracting, I would say this is probably your first stop to make.

And now that you know the acronym PTAC, they’re in the process of switching over to rebranding as Apex Accelerators.

Apex is not an acronym for anything. It’s just Apex, you know, the top of the pinnacle.

But, again, same functionality. Some states will have more than one PTAC. Just depends on, the number of government contractors and the demand in that state.

But they’re oftentimes complimentary or very, very, very minimal fee to, you know, attend their events or work with them. We’ve got a list of all the PTACs on our website, segmented by states. You can easily find, where yours is.

They’re a great resource also, I should say, for matchmaking events and conferences where you’ll often find government and prime contractors. So that’s another great way to start building relationships.

And then we have one last question. What is the best way to contact the agency contracting officers?

Okay. So, I’m going to give you some tough love here. There’s probably no need to contact the contracting officer unless you’ve got a question about the solicitation that’s out.

So, if you are, interested in a particular procurement that’s coming up, then you’re you probably want to be reaching out to program managers.

Now I’m just, interpreting this question as assuming, that the person that wrote it is interested in the solicitation and, you know, perhaps when it’s coming up. But if you’re looking at, something a solicitation on Sam dot gov, there’s usually a q and a period, and the contracting officer’s name, email, and phone number will be listed there. That’s how you can contact them.

If you are looking at acquisition forecast, so every department and agency is required. I’ll kind of put in quotations because they don’t all abide by this, but they’re required to post what it is they’re going to purchase, basically, their acquisition, forecast. So, I’ll tell you who does a great job here is DHS.

They will have a spreadsheet that says, here’s the solicitation number.

Here’s the contract vehicle that we’re using, if any.

Otherwise, it’s just going out for full and open competition. Here’s the contracting officer’s name, phone number, email address. Here’s the NAICS code that it this tie to, in the quarter, you know, q one, two, three, or four. And those are fiscal quarters, fiscal year quarters, that the opportunity is coming out. So that’s where you can also get the contracting officer’s, name, and number, but there’s really no need to contact them again unless you’ve got a question about the solicitation that’s out on the street and maybe this person does.

So Okay.

So, one last question from Stephanie.

She says, you mentioned GSA Advantage. Can you state, the other one something close to regarding leveraging tools? It was something you’ve stated earlier.

Sure.

I think what I was talking about just, data and benchmarking and looking at other, companies and their pricing.

So, GSA Advantage, again, this is just one little slice of government contracting. But if you go onto the GSA Advantage website, if you’re selling products, or software, that would be your, starting point to look at who are other companies, who are some of the other companies. Again, this is very narrow, piece of the pie that are selling similar products and cert products and, and software, and what kind of price points are they at? If you’re selling services, so you’ve got job titles, labor categories, LCATS, whatever you want to call them, those the pricing for that could be found on buy, b u y, dot g s a dot gov.

So, g s a advantage dot gov for products and software, buy dot g s a dot gov for labor.

Okay. Perfect. Jennifer, do you have any last thoughts, any departing thoughts?

That is all that I have. I want to thank everybody for their time, and just remember that data content is king. Use the data to, to get you where you want to go, and make decisions based on data. Again, thanks, Chloe. Thanks, everybody at VisibleThread, and thanks everybody who joined us today.

Yeah. Thank you, Jennifer, for, sharing your expertise with us today, and thank you everybody who has joined us today for this webinar.

As I said in the beginning, both these slides and recording will be available after this webinar is over.

We will email them to all registrants, and it will they will both also be available on our website.

Once this, webcast ends, a survey will pop up. I would love if each of you would take the time to fill out our survey. We’d love to get your feedback. And thank you everybody for joining us and have a wonderful rest of your day.