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GSA Schedules
- Webinar: GSA Schedules 101 - Demystifying GSA Schedules
What is a GSA schedule and why do I need one? Get your answers here.
Federal Sales Training
- Webinar: GSA Schedules 101 - Demystifying GSA Schedules
What is a GSA schedule and why do I need one? Get your answers here . - Federal Sales 101: Winning Government Business
Fedmarket's most popular course, eight-years in the running. Whether you are new to the marketplace or a seasoned veteran this class will jump start your sales endeavors. - Webinar: Selling to the Government from Your Own Backyard
Take 90-minutes and walk away with new approaches to selling to the federal marketplace locally.
Sales Tools
- Federal Sales Book Series
Get on the "inside" track with the Federal Sales Book Series by Richard White.
Articles
- The downside of GSA Schedules
GSA schedule contracts are an ideal vehicle for selling products and services to federal vendors. This is particularly true for small- to medium-sized businesses that cannot afford to obtain more than one multiple award schedule contract... - GSA the World's Biggest Customer
The most confusing aspect of a GSA proposal is the requirement to disclose your discounting practices. GSA uses the disclosures to negotiate a discount equal to or better than the best discount you have extended to your commercial customers... - Obama and Federal Sales
Your crystal ball is as good as mine. Mine says the following will happen to federal contracting under the new Obama administration. War spending will go down, slightly impacting DOD contractors negatively... - Learn to Play the Federal Sales Game Like an Insider
How do you play a game where the rules are stacked in favor of insiders? Learn to stack the deck for yourself or don't play. Playing in the federal market is a game in the same sense that selling in the commercial market is a game... - Comparison of Federal Multi-vendor Contracts
It is difficult to be a successful federal contractor without having a multi-vendor contract. The basic types of multi-vendor contracts are summarized below... - Are Federal Bids Wired?
A common perception about federal public bids is that they are "wired," implying that the bid is set up or rigged to favor a particular company... - Let the Light Shine In
A huge problem that newcomers face when trying to enter the federal market place is that it is enormously difficult to find end users (the person with money who needs what a company is selling)... - Small Businesses and the Federal Market
Knowing your customers is the key to sales success. This is true whether you're selling to public or private organizations... - Developing a Federal Sales Plan
How early should you identify a sales opportunity in the federal market? The answer is that an opportunity must be identified before anyone, including the customer, knows that an opportunity exists... - Small Businesses and Federal Sales
The following question often surfaces at our seminars, "What procedures should be followed by small businesses eager to participate in the federal market?" The answer to this question is that a small business should implement an aggressive federal s... - Improve Your Proposals: First, Deconstruct the RFP
The proposal writing process starts with the Bid/No Bid decision. Ideally, a yes decision will be based on what you know about the customer from sales efforts carried out well before the Request for Proposal (RFP) is published... - Don't Get Stuck as a Subcontractor
Small businesses need to get their first federal contract to become part of the club of insiders - those companies with contracts - that the federal government favors when it buys products and services... - GSA Schedules and Small Businesses
As reported in earlier installments, the federal government's use of multi-vendor contracts to buy products and services is steadily increasing... - Call Your Area Military Base and Get a Tour
When I was sixteen years old, I remember driving to Selfridge Air Force Base outside of Detroit to go pick up some groceries for the family... - Running into Old Friends in City Procurement While Teaching in Michigan
A funny thing happened to me in Warren, Michigan, during the break of my Winning Government Business class for Detroit at the end of September of 2004... - Do You Want To Win Government Business? Do Not Respond to "Public Request for Proposals"
When I started selling to the government, I thought it made sense to see where all of the opportunities were being posted. I found a great spot online: Fedbizopps.gov. I could simply search by word, agency, procurement type, dollar amount, location... - Getting Embedded in Government Sales Circle
One of the keys to success in the government is to develop a strong relationship at an agency. My contention is to take it another step: you need to become not just an insider, but embedded... - Now's the Time To Sell To the Government, Now's The Time to "Get Real"
Some people sell with enthusiasm, others are more laid back. The best sales technique is to be yourself - a human being looking to help government employees by making their job easier and following the rules... - Formula for Government Sales Success Depends On Many Factors, But The Number of "Impressions" Each Week is The Manager's Key
Business owners are constantly challenged with the issue of what to expect from their government sales executives in terms of time management, goals and actual results... - Top Ten Mistakes, Relationship Killers and Wastes of Time
Should your company try one of the approaches outlined below while trying to do business with the government, you will end up at a dead end and will have a seriously demoralized federal sales team. My Top Ten List of Mistakes is as follows: 1... - How Can You Kick Out the Incumbent?
Companies with Key Relationships on the Inside Are Winning Government Business. How Can You Kick Out the Incumbent? Understand Your Customers and Solve Their Problems... - Disaster Response and Recovery: Is There an Opportunity for You to Help?
While the politicians and department directors argue over what went wrong during the Katrina disaster, savvy contractors are becoming more and more embedded in the agencies... - Interviewing Your Potential Federal Client is Much Easier Than Selling to Your Client
Sales executives tend to rush into the offices of federal end users and contracting officers and start performing the dog and pony show... - Selling IT: Sales and Marketing Basics
Company managers new to government sales often view governments as bureaucratic bodies from another world, imbued with strange and mysterious procurement rules, rules designed to confuse and even intimidate... - Selling IT: Business Development
In our newsletters, we talk a lot about the importance of advanced knowledge -- knowing about an agency, its people, its nuances and, most importantly, its program goals... - Finding and Selling to End-Users in the Government
In past installments, we talked about finding the "right" agencies, namely the ones that are interested in buying your company's products or services... - Selling IT: Marketing IT to the Government
In this article, we define marketing as activities to make the public, official buyers and end-users aware of your company and your products or services... - Selling IT: Teaming to Win Government IT Sales
Government buyers often look for "complete solutions" off of multiple award schedule contracts, such as the General Service Administration's Federal Supply Schedules (FSS)... - The Realities of the Federal Market
Let’s say you’re a medium-sized information technology company from a Midwestern city and your commercial sales are flat... - Commitment and Focus in Federal Contracting
In the last installment you learned about some of the realities of federal sales. In this installment you will learn about the need for commitment and focus to overcome the inherent barriers to entry. First, you must commitment to the market... - Making the Sales Call to Federal Government Agency
Companies new to the market ask us, "How do I find potential buyers to call on." Finding potential buyers can be difficult and will be the subject of the next several installments in this series... - Business Development - The Key To Federal Sales
In an earlier installment we said that you will chase your tail if you lack a laser-like focus in the federal market. Business development is the process used to identify potential buyers (end-users and official buyers) for your product or service... - GSA Schedules from the Vendor's Viewpoint
Imagine that you have been doing some aggressive selling at a military base near you. The end-user thinks you're the answer to his prayers and wants to get you onboard quickly to solve a major program problem... - Doing Business with Prime Contractors
We are frequently asked by small or medium-sized businesses whether they should attempt to sell directly to federal end users or sell to prime contractors through subcontracts... - Entry by Small Businesses into the Federal Market
Small businesses often have a limited sales budget. For those located outside the Washington metropolitan area, selling inside the Beltway is too expensive and the competition too intense -- even if the sales dollars are available... - GSA Schedules and Sales Costs
We have previously discussed that a business may have to invest $25,000 to $75,000 (in terms of sales costs) to obtain a GSA Schedule... - Selling to Government Cardholders
A number of important changes came out of the federal Procurement Reform Era of the mid 1990s. Perhaps the most significant of these was the emergence of widespread government credit card purchasing... - Small Purchase Government Market Segment
In this installment we talk about small purchases, defined here as government buys in the $2,500 to $25,000 range. We've touched on this subject in past installments. This time we devote an entire installment to it, and get into a bit more detail... - Focus and Commitment Necessary in Doing Business with Government
Throughout the series we've talked here and there about "focus" and "commitment", a couple of words that are easy to toss around: "You've got to be focused." "You must be committed... - Publicly-Advertised Negotiated Procurements
The publicly-advertised negotiated procurement market segment is a new world for companies that have not bid on negotiated procurements using requests for proposal (RFP) procedures. Responding to RFPs is unique for several reasons... - Multiple Award Schedule (MAS) Government Contracts
Overview of the Process The General Service Administration's Federal Supply Service (FSS) operates the federal supply schedule program. The program leverages the purchasing power of the U.S... - Teaming for Large Government Contracts
Government contracts are getting bigger. Requirements that were once performed under, say, six to ten contracts might now be performed under only one... - Women-Owned Business Contracting
Congress has established a 5-percent government-wide goal for awards to women-owned small businesses (WOSBs). Yet year after year, federal agencies fail to meet this goal. In fact, in 2001, the government awarded just 2... - Minority-Owned Business Contracting
In the prior installment, we talked about women-owned business contracting. This week, we discuss the 8(a) Business Development Program and the Small Disadvantaged Business Certification (SDB) Program... - Federal Acquisition of Foreign Supplies and Services
Throughout this installment series we've tried to unravel some of the tangled rules and conventions of government contracting. There is perhaps no topic, however, that is a better candidate for unraveling than today's... - Countering the "World's Biggest Customer" Argument
The problem most companies face when trying to argue that GSA's prices should be higher than your Most Favored Customer is that GSA will almost always say: "We are the world's biggest customer, and we should have better than your best price even if ... - Feeling Restricted by the Number of Labor Categories That GSA will Award?
Small companies are often handcuffed by GSA's requirement that a labor category cannot be offered to GSA until such time as it has been sold and you have an invoice to document the sale... - The Next Two Years in Federal Contracting
The Next Two Years in Federal Contracting: Some Uncertainties and Business as Usual The next two years in federal contracting will be uncertain in the information technology and defense system sectors and business as usual in others... - Selling in the Federal Marketplace
Up until the actual close of a sale, selling in the federal market is essentially the same as selling in the commercial market... - Comparing Bidding Strategies for IDIQs and Public Bids
Our experts have preached for years on end that companies should be exceptionally cautious about bidding on single award, public bids... - Acronym: IDIQ Contract
Companies new to the federal market often find the alphabet soup of acronyms like IDIQ to be madly confusing. As defined by Wikipedia and shortened here: IDIQ is a contracting acronym meaning Indefinite Delivery Indefinite Quantity...
