In This Chapter

Now that you have an idea of the critical elements of success in winning government contracts, you’re ready to start taking action toward that win. The process of writing proposals to respond to a government contract opportunity is a long and winding road—as in expensive—so we devote several later chapters to the details necessary to help you navigate that road. For now, let’s look only at the highlights of some initial steps you should take as you set out.

This chapter focuses on several important things to do from the get-go. We discuss building relationships with customers and gaining an awareness of your competition. You must do a lot of sleuthing of your customer and competition before you and your team can identify a specific target to market your products or services to. This target is called an opportunity.

Once you identify an opportunity, you need a marketing plan to put into writing how you’re going to work with the customer, even though you might not yet know of a specific opportunity the customer will offer. Then, you need to start identifying potential staff to work as a team committed to getting the contract.

You need to cultivate relationships with your customer. What kind of relationships? Both good and long-term ones. But what do these qualities really mean?

Good relationships mean having positive name and face recognition with your customer. Good relationships mean your customer has faith, trusts in what you say, and relies on your word being your bond.

Good relationships don’t happen overnight; the best ones are built not only over the long haul but also in advance of the identification of a specific opportunity. Building these relationships is neither easy nor cheap, so be prepared to invest your dollars in this effort. The ability and willingness to spend money to build these relationships are the true marks of commitment.

What is the size of your investment as measured by time and money? That’s a valid question. The short answer is, “It depends.” I know that’s not very helpful, but it truly does depend on the size of the customer, the size of the product stream you hope to capture, and your own resources. In an urban myth, a business leader observed, “I know that half of my advertising isn’t paying off. The problem is, I don’t know which half.” Similarly, you’re going to have to use that old reliable business judgment to decide both when it’s the right time and place to start and when it’s the right time and place to stop building relationships with a specific customer.

As you develop relationships with customers, you have a number of choices for places and occasions to meet the customer. Some are official events where you, your customer, and even your competition congregate. Others are informal occasions, such as birthday gatherings or going-away celebrations for individuals at the customer’s organization. Receiving these invitations tells you that you have a good relationship! Here’s a short list of some likely venues:

At any and all of these occasions to meet with the customer, let common sense be your behavioral guide. Dress appropriately. Refrain from discussing specific topics that the government person could find out of place in the workplace. And, of course, avoid heavy drinking and other behavior you might regret the next day.

You must know the competition for the type of products you wish to sell to the government. Usually, this information is readily available from the competition’s public documents, which give you easy access to the types of products it is already providing to its government customers, with the exception of any classified contracts. Your competitors’ sales and marketing people are always eager to tout their company’s products, so plenty of information should be available on the companies’ websites and in any publicly accessible marketing materials.

You also have access to information on government contracts your competitors may have secured when you take advantage of the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA).

FOIA opens up government documents to the public. Sunshine is a great disinfectant, and provides public access to public documents, without the requirement to justify the request. Early in the Obama administration, the new president ordered a turn-about in the mechanics of agency compliance with the Act by changing the default from favoring non-disclosure to favoring disclosure. Under the now-current rules, agencies must present convincing reasons for failure to comply with a FOIA request. Find more information about FOIA in Chapter 8.

Most companies are not particularly skilled at employing FOIA to their greatest advantage. Most companies are not satisfied with the results obtained by trying to get good information on the competition, and on the processes of the government. So after you and your company reach the conclusion that this game is not for amateurs, you will probably want to engage one or more fee-for-service companies to provide more specific information about your competition.

These companies are the professionals, and can achieve much better results for you, because of their experience and expertise. For example, you may be able to obtain a copy of the current contract in hours, rather than in either months or not at all. See Appendix B for references to these companies.

As a Boy Scout responsible for managing waterfront activities, you learn this sequence for rescuing another swimmer in trouble: reach, throw, row, and go.

The first thing you try is to reach your hand to the swimmer. If that doesn‘t work, throw a rope. Next, go after him in a rowboat. Only as a last resort do you swim after him. This sequence starts with the simplest, most basic, least costly, and most readily at hand. You risk something important, such as your life, if and only if everything that’s less risky has failed.

Similarly, with competitor knowledge, start with the simplest and least costly source, such as newspapers, professional journals, advertising of all types, and personal contact you can easily do. Move up to using more sophisticated and costly methods, such as your own Internet searches, and as the last resort use professional services. This is not to downplay the value of these services, but you should see what’s readily available for free, or nearly free, before you move up to more costly methods.

When you identify a specific target to bid on, you’ll need to create an opportunity-specific marketing plan. At this point, you may not have a target identified and might need the advice offered in Chapters 7 and 8, on targeting a specific customer and a specific opportunity. You are probably not ready to put together a full marketing plan tailored to one opportunity; however, at this early stage, you should know what goes into a plan and even start developing a basic template. This will keep you from being caught off guard at the eleventh hour when you do need a plan and find yourself having to start from scratch with no template and no forethought.

We provide a sample capture plan in Appendix C so you can see how these elements are fleshed out to form a strong capture plan that you can customize for a particular opportunity.

You will want to develop a capture plan template for the type of market you’re in and the types of products you sell or services you offer. Do an online search to find templates for “capture plans,” or for “marketing plans.” The difference is that a capture plan focuses on a single opportunity, and a marketing plan may focus on a broader field, such as a set of opportunities.

KnowThis.com (www.knowthis.com) is a useful site that focuses on marketing basics. This site includes about 50 different plans for a variety of industries and products, so you are likely to find a sample for your type of business.

Until you have a specific customer and opportunity in your sights, you might wonder how much time you should spend on a capture plan and what you should do with the template or rough plan you put together.

Do spend a significant amount of time on this plan. A good plan prevents you from being unprepared, for example, for the release of the solicitation. Realize, however, that the capture plan is a living, evolving document. You’ll develop an initial version and then revisit the plan often, revising it accordingly. When you’ve begun to execute a specific capture plan, you’ll find that a few minutes each week or so will verify that you really are getting smarter about the information in that plan.

Chapter 6 focuses on how to assemble a winning proposal team, outlining all the roles that you must fill from top management down through every aspect of the management, technical, pricing, and proposal creation processes. For now, start thinking about how you will staff your team.

Every company that goes after government contracts faces this question: do we use only in-house (permanent) staff or do we outsource some of the work using temporary resources? This question is especially important to government bidders, partly because preparing winning proposals often requires a large effort, and you may not have enough people on staff to handle it or at least not enough people who can take time away from their regular jobs. So the ultimate question you need to ask within your organization is, “What is the best way to invest our company’s precious Bid & Proposal (B&P) dollars?”

The question is the same for both small and large companies. The answers range from keeping proposal preparation totally in-house to outsourcing the entire proposal preparation process.

Few companies choose only one or the other strategy; most fall somewhere in between these two extremes. The question becomes, “What is the right mix of permanent resources and temporary resources?” The decision of where your business should be along this spectrum depends on two factors:

Because every solicitation is different, and every company is different, there are no immutable rules for determining the best mix of permanent and temporary staff. But we can look at what these factors entail and how you might make your decision.

The difference is dramatic between companies with a steady workload for proposal creation and those with workloads that swing wildly from almost no activity to such a high level of activity as to require a great deal of work on nights and weekends to meet the solicitations’ delivery schedules. A simplifying description of the differences is to look at the variance in the level of workloads.

Let’s assume your goal is to develop $40 million in new business during the next year. Let’s further assume that you usually have a 50 percent win rate and that you usually bid on contracts either in the $5 to $10 million range or in the $20 to $30 million range. Arithmetic tells how many bids you will need to win to reach your goal, and by applying your recent experience to the ratio of wins to bids, therefore how many bids you will need to submit. Your recent experience should help you estimate the quantity of skills and personnel hours needed to get the work done.

Although business development goals help define the quantity of effort you need to prepare your proposals, the frequency with which proposals hit your desk is also important in determining whether you require outside help. A company bidding on a large number of smaller contracts may be able to spread the effort so that the permanent staff has the ability to handle all of its proposals. In contrast, if your company submits proposals for a few large programs with gaps of inactivity between proposals, using temporary resources is often the best answer.

For many companies, the issue of whether to use temporary resources (and if so, how many) is not clear cut. Given the uncertainty of solicitation releases, for example, it is impossible to predict the timing of proposal talent. Consequently, you may have good luck in the release schedules, so you can then reach your goals using only permanent staff. However, when too many opportunities arrive at the same time due to simultaneous release dates, the only solution may be to use temporary resources.

The use of temporary resources is an excellent methodology to manage surges in solicitations you plan to work. The ability to ramp up to meet demand as well as to ramp down when demand slows is a cost-effective way to manage your B&P dollars.

Use mostly permanent staff solutions when …

Use mostly temporary staff solutions when …

Nearly all federal bidders (excluding small businesses) maintain some level of a permanent proposal staff. In the case of those firms bidding large opportunities infrequently, the permanent staff may be just for proposal coordination and to provide an “institutional memory” that temporary resources cannot provide. A more common situation is for a firm to maintain at least the staff needed to pursue just one medium-size proposal at a time. This typically includes at a minimum a proposal manager, technical writer, editor, and combined coordinator/desktop publisher/graphic artist. A few robust divisions of Fortune 500 firms still maintain large departments with 30, 40, or more personnel.

Some companies, even large ones, with modest business development goals choose to use little temporary help in the belief that they can achieve their goals with permanent resources only. Sadly, many of those companies could grow faster and achieve greater profits by using temporary assistance to bid and win additional programs. This is always a tough judgment call, usually reserved for top management.

The Least You Need to Know