Federal Sales Mindset (Podcast Transcript)

                         [01:12]: Hey, Richard here and thanks for listening to the Government Sales Momentum podcast. Today we're going to be talking about what it takes for a small business to sell to the government. I just wanted to dispel some myths that are out there and really what you need to be looking at in order to properly set yourself up for government sales. So first and foremost, the timelines for government sales are a little bit longer. In some cases a lot longer than commercial sales. Typically if you're thinking about selling to the government, you need to plan on a twelve to 24 month timeline before you're on contract with the government. Now there are certainly exceptions to that. If you sell, for instance, products that are if you sell tools or if you sold kind of when I say low dollar products, products that are under $10,000, you could potentially be selling those a lot faster within a couple of months. However, if you are an It services company, if you develop software, if you're looking at larger contracts, if we're talking about anything really over $10,000, the timeline for that is going to be a little bit longer. And there's a reason for that now not to dissuade you.

                         Those contracts can be very lucrative and they can be very stable as compared to some of your commercial clients, but it just takes a little bit of extra effort to get there. So mindset, it's going to take commitment and it's going to take consistent engagement. You're not just going to register to sell to the government or get a GSA contract and watch the sales rolling. That's not how it works. So once you have the mindset of, hey, this is going to take some time, but it could be a very profitable arm of our business, then we can talk about some of the initial steps right so first you need to be registered to sell to the government. Now you can register through Sam.Gov and there are some things associated with that. I'm not going to get into all the details of what registration is. You could certainly reach out to us and we can talk about that. But you're going to need a Duns number, you're going to need a cage code and the site will walk you through how to get a lot of those. The next thing you're going to be thinking about is what type of small business am I? Are you qualified for some of the certifications that are out there that can give you an advantage in bidding on contracts? Some of those certifications and I'll do an episode on these but let's see services disabled, veteran owned business, right? And that's what my business is. If you have a woman owned, if you're a woman owned you could register for the woman own small business certification and each of these certifications are associated with a certain percentage, usually between 3% and 5% of all federal sales. Discretionary spending is going to be set aside for those types of small businesses. A very powerful one is eight a there's a process to register for that.

                         You'll do that through the Small Business Association but it makes it a lot easier for the government to provide sole source contracting options for you. There's also Hub Zone and there's some also certifications that you can self certify as like minority owned, small business, things of that nature. So once you get your certifications down, once you are registered to sell to the government, next thing that you're looking at is putting the capability statement together which is essentially a one page-marketing document. And the reason you put that together, it's kind of an industry standard. It's not typically going to sell your business. That's usually. As an acquisitions officer for the DOD, I certainly never put a company on contract because of their capability statement. However, I can tell you companies that met with me, if they didn't have one, it told me that they either were brand new or really didn't understand the process. It's an industry standard, you need to do it. It should be one page again, we'll do an episode just on capability statements and the type of information that's going to be in there and you can find a lot online too. So this is all to say, you're getting yourself set up to sell to the government. You understand what the timeline is going to look like and now you need to have a plan, right? Really that planning starts before the certification. But the first step is does the government buy what you sell? Right? And almost always the answer is yes. I used to say the only company that came to me that I couldn't find a purchase for or a requirement for was a company that sold cannabis and of course federally that's illegal.

                         However, since I have been saying that opportunities actually just popped up for cannabis, in the research realm, one of the agencies was doing some research associated with that. So even there we're seeing some requirements and some opportunities. So typically the government buys almost everything. If you think about it, that makes sense, right? Federal government is the single biggest purchaser of goods and services in the world. If you think just about the Department of Defense, they're not just buying weapons and aircraft and the maintenance trail that's associated with those. But if you think about it, every military base is kind of like a mini city. So everything associated with a regular city, whether it's food or the BX, which is kind of like a store, they're selling clothes and they're selling soap and different products. They have golf courses and bowling alleys and movie theaters and police and hospitals. And so whether you're in pharmaceuticals or you're selling hammers and nails or you're construction or you're providing It services or admin services, which just about every organization needs, government's probably making purchases there. The key is to really find out which agencies are buying what you sell, right? So before you go out there and you get a GSA contract vehicle or you put your plan together, especially as a small business, it's really critical to understand the one or two agencies that you're going to focus on and really goes deeper than that. You want to know the agency you're looking at the sub agency. So if it was Air Force, the DOD would be the agency, the sub agency would be the Air Force. And I keep using It services, but we might look at Air Force Lifecycle Management Center within the Air Force? So you see we keep drilling down to which agency makes the purchases and we can review historical spending that's all publicly available. Then we go to the sub agency. So we say, okay, Air Force is where we're going to focus because either we have a network there or we've sold them before or they're just making a ton of purchases in the area, in the industry that I'm in. And then we're looking even further who really has acquisition authority or who has the authority to make purchases. Because the government is a huge place, but it's really only a very small percentage of offices actually have the authority to purchase anything major purchases. So it's really essential to understand whom you are actually targeting, who actually has the authority to make a purchase, or else you could be wasting your time if you're setting up meetings and whatnot.

                        Once you know that now you have at the beginning, I would say, of a game plan. This is how now you're going to start going after some of that work by focused to whom you're selling to. And now you're going to identify opportunities before they become requests for proposals, which is how the government will compete, typically a contract, the government will have requirements and funding and now let's say to build a building. Now they're going to put that out there and typically first in the form of an artifact source, say, hey, what companies out there can answer this problem? Who can do this type of building? And there's going to be certain requirements associated with that. And then you can respond back, you raise your hand, hey, we can do that. And by the way, maybe you're a service disabled, veteran owned business. So you can recommend that set aside. You're going to suggest different things that you would do for that building based on what our buy sources ask for. And then eventually that turns into a request for proposal and that's the government officially saying, hey, we're going to do this. This is exactly how I want you to put a proposal together, if you can handle it. And then they'll review that and then they're going to make their decision. And of course that's the timeline, right, from an RFI or a forecast to becoming an RFP and then making that decision and hiring the company that could be 18 months, right? So it's a long time. That could also be a $10 million contract, right? So potentially a big contract over a period of time. But it's really essential that you're focused, you're influencing requirements on that, hopefully creating a relationship with the acquisitions team ahead of time and then getting to that final contract. Some other things that we need to think about so that really covers registration, what those timelines look like. Another thing that you may want to consider is what your team looks like right now. So if you're a small business, it's just one or two of you, three of you, and you don't have commercial sales, you need to be prepared for how you're going to sustain over that timeline when you're trying to get especially your foot in the door for the first time on a government contract. If you're already set up and you have strong commercial sales, that's great because that can sustain you and you can have somebody dedicated to the federal piece over that initial timeline where you're trying to get your foot in the door.

                         Now there are a lot of strategies on how you're going to sell to the government. A big part of its teaming and subcontracting. There are programs to sponsor new technologies with small businesses that can be actually a little bit quicker than that timeline I talked about. There are a lot of different opportunities; it's a lot of different strategies. But at the end of the day, selling to the government is a relationship game and we'll talk about that in future episodes. But in order to build some of those relationships, a lot of companies give up before they get there because building a relationship with the government is a lot different than trying to build it with a commercial company, right? So a lot of times you just can't go up and knock on the door or you don't even have the phone number to call, in some cases to figure out who you need to talk to. So developing those relationships is going to be critically important, and we'll cover that. But I just wanted to get into this for this episode. Just talk about what it takes, what the mindset needs to be, a lot of the myths out there. Like I said, hey, I'm going to register for the government. I'm going to start making sales. And typically not the case. A lot of companies go out and they just start writing proposals on RFPs. It can work now and then, but most companies that are consistently selling, that are not what they're doing. And honestly, in a lot of cases, the acquisitions teams have a pretty good idea which companies are qualified to go on contract before that RFP ever goes out. They need to know that companies can handle the problems that they're trying to solve. So knowing that, knowing another thing, if you're thinking about a GSA contract vehicle that can be a great mechanism for you. A great contract vehicle, a great way for the government to hire you. However, if you go out, that's going to be an investment of time and probably money, and the government is not just going to hire you because you have that vehicle. If you go out and spend that time getting GSA, you need to know the work is not just going to come to you. That's a mechanism and that can inspire trust and confidence with the government for your company. But you want to make sure that the organizations you're trying to sell to actually use that vehicle substantially to really validate you going after that vehicle at all. So just a couple of things that we want to talk about. We're always here to help. Any questions you have, feel free to reach out and we can talk about it at dodcontract.com. Great. All right, well, have a good day.

                        [13:08] Richard C. Howard: Hey, guys, Ricky here. 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 to 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'll 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.

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