Get ready to win contracts with these effective steps that will help you establish connection with your target client!
WHY DO CONTRACTORS FAIL?
In the book entitled ‘Mastery,’ Robert Greene talked about the seven deadly realities that people have. One of these realities include laziness which tends to be what most new or unsuccessful contractors and consultants do.
In this case, written below is what the book says:
“We all have the tendency to take the quickest, easiest path to our goals but we generally manage to control our impatience; we understand the superior value of getting what we want through hard work. However, this inveterate lazy streak is far too powerful. Discouraged by the thought that it might take months or years to get somewhere, they’re constantly looking for shortcuts.”
If this statement will be translated into the federal marketplace, people who are just new in this industry tend to directly jump to the traditional model of winning contracts.
To give you an idea, this is what people do in this model of winning contracts:
- They register their business or pay someone to do so.
- They’ll bid for different types of contracts.
- They just hope and pray they win.
- The cycle continues.
Because of following this, most people won’t be able to take advantage of the unlimited time and resources that this marketplace provides. So, in order to help, written below are effective steps to win contracts.
WINNING APPROACHES
1. Learn about contracting.
In order to really leverage the government marketplace, you need to understand what is government contracting and how it works.
This includes understanding the govcon lingo because most of the time, people will just use acronyms for different agencies and things needed when talking to others.
Besides, learning the marketplace will really make you seem knowledgeable which in turn will help you speed up the process in dealing with different individuals including contracting officers, small business specialists, and other contractors.
2. Prepare your company.
A small business certification will not offer you contract opportunities. Rather, you need to prepare your company to receive projects by having your capabilities in place.
Consider that your capability statement acts as a resume for your business so you need to fix your capability statement and make sure that all information in that piece of paper is accurate and the same as the information you provided in any other government contracting database.
3. Build a target market list.
There are different agencies and vendors in the government marketplace so instead of catering to all of these, just focus on a few by building a target market list.
With this, you need to research for agencies that buy products and services that are under your NAICS code for the last two years. You can also add more specifications depending on your location and other factors.
From this research, you can then put all the information together and create a forecast or target market list which you can use for later purposes or further research.
4. Establish rapport.
One thing that made the traditional model unsuccessful is due to the fact that it didn’t encourage contractors to build rapport with their target clients before trying to sell them anything.
With this, you need to understand that the agency or its decision-makers won’t give you any project if they don’t even know you and your business.
Instead of just sending bids directly, choose to call them, go to networking events where these people are present, or communicate with them in-person.
Also, make sure that you tell them what specific projects you’re looking for so that when that same opportunity arises, they know that you’re the one to call.
5. Build a team.
In most cases, different projects require different specifications and in order for you to start doing it, you might need a group of people to help you.
With this, you may need to go to a different govcon database to look for other contractors and work with them.
6. Strategically bid projects or negotiate.
If you are lucky, you might have people trying to offer sole source contracts. However, even with this, you still need to be up-to-date on different contract opportunities that your target clients have by visiting different databases and bidding or negotiating to contracts within your industry.
7. Maintain the relationship.
You might have already done the other steps but you still need to continue strengthening your relationship with these people. This way, you continue building your name in this marketplace for your long-term success!
RESOURCES
If you want to learn more about winning government contracts, then be sure to click the links below:
BASICS Building blocks to win federal contracts! (government)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jqfX2ZBg2Ck
Build a Target Market List using FPDS -Federal Procurement Data System
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gUbTyb2h7as
Capability Statement Do’s Don’ts Resources and more
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=paUgQSU5v6c
How important are Government Conferences and Events in 2019
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ATPx93aTTI
Negotiating a $5 million dollar contract dos and don’ts
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fXj_oSdNKb8
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