In This Chapter

The submission of your proposal is not the end of your marketing efforts; it’s just a milestone as the process of getting this specific government contract goes on and on. The next major milestone is the contract award, but you can and should do some specific things between now and when the government decides the winner—actions to enhance your chances of being that winner.

The material in this chapter tells you how to influence the decision-makers, including the customer community as a whole, as it provides a checklist for actions to consider taking.

Let’s be clear: this book does not advocate or suggest in any way that you overstep the bounds of acceptable business practice. Law, ethics, and regulations provide strict boundaries on your actions. You must know these boundaries and stay well within them. As you already know, this book contains no legal advice. Always rely on your legal counsel and other sources of guidance (as described in Chapter 3) if in doubt about what behavior is appropriate and legal.

Using back channels, professional networking opportunities, and advertising are several ways to market your company’s capabilities. Let’s take a look at each.

Back channels are the unofficial communications that take place independent of the formal communication modes. You need to know of these channels and use them to present your company and its subcontractors in the best possible light.

One way you can use back channels is to enhance the name and face recognition of the people you’re offering for this opportunity. Chapter 12’s discussion of the proposal drivers shows how important it is to ensure that the program manager-designate has positive name and face recognition with the customer. In the best circumstances, you have already achieved at least some modest success toward this goal. Now, using back channels gives you another opportunity to enhance that individual’s standing with the customer.

What might a back channel look like? How about sponsoring a golf outing for your company, your subcontractors, and individuals from your customer? Or attending, in some numbers, the retirement ceremony for a senior member of the customer staff? If you’re marketing to the military, the ceremonies marking any changes in command also offer great opportunities to get positive exposure. Using back channels can be helpful to your company, not only for this contract opportunity but also for future ones as well.

In terms of the rules of the FAR and ethics, you must be careful to remain well within the procurement rules. For example, avoid unseemly familiarity at critical times, especially with the individuals you know are in a position to influence directly the award decision. Staying within these lines while accomplishing your objective of promoting your company requires not only discretion, but also experience. When in doubt, refrain from anything you feel may be taken to be undue and inappropriate attempts to influence immediate decisions. And of course, consult competent and relevant legal advice.

Nothing prevents you from seeking, or even making, opportunities to “show the flag” for your team’s case. Professional meetings are a neutral ground on which to rub shoulders with your customer. But first, avoid the appearance of overstepping the bounds of regulation and ethics by simply asking a pre-emptive question.

Let’s say you’re at a meeting of the local chapter of an engineering society and you know that Wally Johnson is a government employee and an engineer at your customer’s local facility. Before you embarrass yourself and Wally, open the conversation with, “Hey Wally. My company is in competition for the left-handed framazoid program at your agency. I want to make sure you’re not involved in any way with that selection process. If you are, I know I can’t really speak with you about the procurement.” This, then, clears you to proceed with a conversation with Wally. It also establishes that you know the rules and have actively taken care to avoid breaking them.

With that out of the way (assuming you get a “No, I’m not” from Wally), you can go on to at least discuss how your company is approaching government work in general, what great people are there, and how well qualified your company is to meet the customer’s needs.

In the nation’s capital area, opportunities abound for all manner of professional meetings. Just about every interest group has a professional association. Some of these are primarily lobbying groups, and others are aimed at improving industry standards and practices. See Appendix B for a brief list of these. These are illustrative only. It’s impractical, and even impossible, to begin to list all these groups. These groups exist throughout the country, and even throughout the world. A quick look at a search engine such as Google will yield professional associations in your area.

Beyond regular attendance, consider sponsoring a table at a banquet or committing to a booth at a trade show. All these keep your name and face in the mind of your customer, and all are perfectly legitimate under the procurement rules and regulations.

In the Washington, D.C., area’s media market, residents are accustomed to seeing lots of advertising for the various (usually the large) government contractors. This advertising falls into two categories: institutional advertising and opportunity-specific advertising.

The media these large companies use include mass transportation ads, newspaper ads, radio ads, and television ads (particularly cable TV, focusing on the local markets in Washington, D.C., Maryland, and Virginia).

If you’re a small business, you undoubtedly lack the budget to participate in anything similar in scope to the advertising described here. Just be aware that it’s legal and ethical, and then adjust your thinking to cover advertising that’s corresponding but is small enough for your company and its business partners to handle. If your target population is largely engineers, for example, consider buying a page in the local engineering society’s newsletter or paying for an ad on their website. If your target is management personnel, do the same for their local society’s publications.

This type of advertising strives to place positive thoughts and images in the subconscious minds of its audience. These often stress the benefits of a company’s work, especially those companies providing national defense products. The ads emphasize positive images, such as strength, safety, dedication to principle, and value for the government dollar. Institutional advertising does not focus on a specific opportunity, but on the good things your company and your subcontractors do. For example, if you sponsor a local basketball team or a summer recreation league softball team, put your logo on their uniforms and arrange for a picture of the team wearing these uniforms to appear in the local newspaper. The end-of-season banquet and awards ceremony is always a good photo opportunity.

Competition advertising is quite different from institutional. It’s much more specific in that it sharply focuses on a single opportunity and especially on those opportunities with only two remaining competitors for a single award. The United States Air Force Tanker Refueling Program, the subject of an intense competition between two gigantic teams, each with a gaggle of super-large defense industry contractors, is a good example. Each team of giants touts the benefits of its solution, and by pointing out their differences, the undesirability of the competition’s solution. This competition has been going on for years now and at one point seemed to have been over at long last. But the loser protested and had its protest upheld. So the competition remains open through at least another round of proposals, orals, and Best and Final Offers (BAFOs. If you’re a betting soul, take the side that says when the competition heats up again, these ads will magically reappear.

Part of a good post-submission marketing program is to proceed as if an award to you were imminent. This is the same optimistic philosophy that states, in your proposal plan attachment “02 Proposal Development Schedule” (see Chapter 12), you will end with the scheduled date for the victory party. Why create a plan unless it ends with a victory party? If you don’t have a dream, how are you going to have a dream come true?

Let’s say you’re the challenger in a recompete situation. Let’s assume further that it’s a support contract, and you’ll need about 50 new employees for your team, not including the ones you’ve chosen who are already either on your payroll or committed to you by a letter of commitment. Your team is striving to unseat the incumbent contractor, and you know the time between award and contract start is very short. Here’s where your preparations to begin actual program execution (sometimes called a “rolling start”), comes in with three good effects on your own team and on the customer community:

The Least You Need to Know