Federal Sales
Although We Don't Have the Magic Bullet, We Have Something Close
By Richard White
Jul 31, 2006, 11:56

Many of our Federal Sales Academy seminar attendees are new to the federal market. They attend our classes with a hope that they will find the Holy Grail (i.e., they will be told that making cold calls is not necessary). Our students are looking for magic bullets such as the following:

• There's a central federal government location where one can register and then automatically receive orders.
• If you have a GSA Schedule contract, your company will automatically receive orders.
• Pound on Contracting Officers about their failure to meet their small business goals and you will win business.
• You should bid blindly on Requests for Proposals published at FedBizOpps
• Consider contacting your Congressperson or the agency's Small Business Specialists in the government for assistance in winning federal business.

Searching for the Holy Grail is the norm because almost everyone hates cold calling; no one likes rejection. Owners of small businesses typically hate making them and have difficulty finding anyone, either internally or in the job market, who likes to make them. Unfortunately there isn't a Holy Grail or magic bullet and companies without federal relationships have to make cold calls to get in the door. In short, they need a call list of potential buyers.

Although Public Bid Data Isn't a Magic Bullet, It is Close

For companies new to the market, public bid data and the subsequent "awarded to" data provide the best information available for developing a call list. The data is available for free at the federal government's public bid web site, FedBizOpps. But as the saying goes, you get what you pay for and it takes work to take advantage of this "free" data. Bid and award data are not tied together and buying history data is not available by buyer. Fedmarket.com has a solution that works well and, yes, we charge for it. It is called FedBuyingIntelligence and it is based on both award data and original solicitation data culled from FedBizOpps.

The bid announcement process goes as follows. A public bid is posted at FedBizOpps with a solicitation synopsis. To varying degrees, the synopsis contains a summary of the scope of work for the project. The complete scope of work is included in the actual contract itself (the document that you have to wait months for if you request it under the Freedom of Information Act). The original solicitation document is the only document that contains a meaningful description of what the government is looking to buy (other than the contract itself). The award document in FedBizOpps shows the date of the contract award, the dollar amount of the contract, and the name and address of the company receiving the contract.

FedBuyingIntelligence marries these two pieces of information together and allows you to search the database using product/service codes or keywords to describe what you sell. Search results are provided by agency and Contracting Officer and include full contact data for the official buyer.

In short, we tell you who bought what, when, for how much, and from whom. But again, the contact data is for the official buyer, not the end user. If you sell routers, you can find out which Contracting Officers bought routers. Then you have to get on the phone. But the time saved resulting from using FedBuyingIntelligence to find end users is large compared to conducting Internet research from scratch.

FedBuyingIntelligence is the most powerful sales tool in the federal market. It searches five years of public bid data and tells you "who bought what." Buyer contact data, including the buyer's telephone number and email address, is provided in a downloadable spreadsheet.

The most powerful sales tool available to government contractors.

If you need help with any other product sales, call or write as follows: (888) 661-4094 ext 8 for sales@fedmarket.com.