A win begins with a customer relationship.
Customer Relationship Management (CRM) systems do not create sales, people establishing relationships with federal customers do. CRM systems do not write proposals, people do and often in an unstructured, chaotic manner.
Services are sold through relationships in the commercial and federal sectors. In federal sales relationships are even more important because most federal customers are extremely risk averse; more so than in the commercial sector.
Except in rare circumstances, you will not make a federal services sale unless you have a strong relationship with the customer. To win you must have a customer relationship when responding to Requests for Proposal (RFPs) published at FedBizOpps.gov. Companies spend thousands of dollars writing large, complex proposals in response to public service RFPs and invariably lose because they did not have a relationship with the customer. They believe they can win merely by writing a proposal and the federal government fosters this perception under the illusion that they are holding a competition when a public bid is posted. If there is competition, it will be among two or more companies that have established a relationship with the customer well in advance of the bid publication.
During the sales process sell them what they want, not what they need. Sell them what they need through contract modifications if what they want isn’t a full solution.
Various authors on selling services emphasize that customers will choose the familiar, the satisfactory, and the path of least risk. This is particularly true in the federal market. Almost all federal program managers are supported by contractor personnel who replace the staff that their counterparts in the commercial sector would have.
Their career advancement and compensation depend on the performance of their contractor. They are not interested in your company; they are interested in themselves and their problem. They will not look to make a superior choice; they want to avoid making a bad choice.
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