Sales people entering a new market always ask: "Can you give me contact data for the people who have bought what I sell"? In the federal market it's not always easy to answer this question. Contracting Officers and their representatives, called Contracting Specialists, can be identified by the products or services they have purchased in the past. These "official buyers" or "purchasing agents" represent the end user--the agency or department requesting a product or service--in contract negotiations. The contracting officer is the official point of contact between vendors and the government.
Finding End Users
The contact data for end users, the person making the purchasing decisions for complex products and solutions, is not readily available to the public. You have to find out who they are by word of mouth, telephone research, Internet research, or by looking at organizational charts and directories. In addition, there can be more than one federal official responsible for making purchasing decisions for a large buy. Often, you have to surmise who the end user is by their title; a Human Resources Manager probably buys recruiting services or software, for instance.
Contracting Officers know who the end users are but may be reluctant to tell you. A typical conversation with a Contracting officer might go like this:
You: "I see from my research that you awarded a contract on May 11, 2005 for $ 500,000 worth of Cisco Routers to Acme Reseller, Inc. Who was the end user in your Office of the CIO.
Possible Answer: "John Brown is at this telephone number and his email address is ...."
More Probable Answer: "I don't really know and I would have to dig out the contract to find out." You: "I would appreciate if you would do that and call me back." Contracting Officer: "I'll try but I can't promise you anything due to our overwhelming workload in this office." (Translated, don't sit by the phone.)
You: "But I thought that the contracting officer is the single point of contact for vendors and that your job is to promote competition."
Contracting Officer: "You are correct on both counts but that doesn't mean that I can answer end user questions for the thousands of vendors out there." (Translated, end users get mad when I give out their name and contact data. They already had Cisco routers and just wanted some more and really don't want a deluge of vendor calls.)
Like everything in government, the issue of whether the Contracting Officer is legally required to give out an end user's name is gray. You have the legal right to request a copy of the contract itself under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) and then wait anywhere from one to twelve months for a response. By the time you get the contract, the end user will have ordered another large batch of Cisco routers. Yes, federal officials violate the 20 working day response time in the FOIA law as a routine matter. Alternatively, you can do the practical thing and either beg the Contracting Officer to help you or call the CIO's Office and ask them. Who ever said that making sales is easy? Just like the commercial sector isn't it.
The bottom line is the feds have all the cards so you have to find a way to play their game. Trying to force them to give you contact data is counterproductive.
What do you do when Contracting Officers stonewall concerning identifying end users? Select the large awards that represent exactly what you sell and that you are intensely interested in as opportunities. Contracting Officers will usually tell you who won a contract and the contract number when an award document cannot be found to match the solicitation that you are interested in.
The request copies of the contracts under FOIA. Be very selective in making FOIA requests because the contract may not arrive for sometime and Contracting Officers can become annoyed with FOIA requests. You don't want to annoy the people you are selling to.
The federal government has over a thousand buying organizations. At the very least use solicitation and award data to narrow the list of agencies that you want to target. Then go on the Internet to look at organization charts, directories, and program descriptions to find end users for the targeted agencies.
Contracting Officers will usually tell you who won a contract and the contract number when an award document cannot be found to match the solicitation that you are interested in.
Public Bid Data as a Sales Tool
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, www.fedbizopps.gov. 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 as well. It is called FedBuyingIntelligence and it is based on both award data and original solicitation data from FedBizOpps.
A public bid is posted at FedBizOpps using a solicitation document. To varying degrees, the solicitation document contains a summary (or synopsis in government speak) 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 bought, 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.
FedBuying Intelligence (FBI) is the most powerful sales tool in the federal market. It searches five years of public bid data and tells you "who bought what". Contact data including telephone number and email address is provided for each buyer in a downloadable spreadsheet.
The most powerful sales tool in the federal market.
Fedbuying Intelligence (FBI)
searches five years of public bid data and tells you "who bought what". Contact data including telephone number and email address is provided for each buyer in a downloadable spreadsheet.
