In an effort to diversify our business, both clients and offerings, Kyle and I have been hard at work developing business in the public sector – federal, state and local governments. It can be very rewarding because there are certainly some big fish to be caught. However, selling into the government marketspace has the reputation of being a very long sales cycle for a variety of reasons: register as vendor, scan the daily flow of RFPs (requests for proposal) for suitable projects, assemble responses, questions and answers, and tracking addenda to the offerings, etc. One of the dark arts of this process is determining what projects are and are not good fits for the company. At first, in addition to responding to RFPs, we were sending out unsolicited proposals to agencies that we felt would be good prospects for the services we had on offer.
But I’m getting ahead of myself.
The absolute very first thing we needed to do was to register ourselves on SAM.gov, the System for Award Management and self-certify as a Small Business. Small businesses must self-certify their size and socio-economic status on the System for Award Management (SAM.gov) website to be eligible for federal contracts set aside for small businesses. We had already gone through a small business certification process with the State of Oregon through the Certification Office for Business Inclusion and Diversity (COBID) so we felt pretty certain that we would qualify under any federal terms.
Once self-certified, we continued the registry process on SAM.gov. All businesses must register on SAM.gov to be eligible to bid on federal contracts. This involves providing details about the business and obtaining a unique entity identifier, or UEI. One thing we quickly came to realize is that the government has a thing for TLAs (three letter acronyms). We were very fortunate to have a guide shepherd us through these processes, a fellow by the name of Glenn who was assigned to us through the GCAP, or Government Contract Assistance Program, a program funded by the Department of Defense to encourage small businesses to seek out opportunities to work with the federal government. Glenn is a retired contracting officer with the Army Corp of Engineers (CoE) and later with the Bonneville Power Authority (BPA). Glenn has an encyclopedic knowledge of the ins-and-outs of contracting with the government.
On SAM.gov, we explored the various Socio-Economic Certification Programs. Small businesses may qualify for socio-economic certification programs like the 8(a) Business Development Program for disadvantaged businesses, Women-Owned Small Business (WOSB) Program, Service-Disabled Veteran-Owned Small Business (SDVOSB) Program, and HUBZone Program. These certifications allow many businesses to compete for set-aside contracts. We didn’t qualify for any of these programs.
Once our registration was complete, we began to search for contracting opportunities on SAM.gov and resources like the GSA Schedules and Governmentwide Acquisition Contracts (GWACs). While we found several that were close fits, and even submitted bids for quite a few, we failed to win any contract awards. It was about this time that we began our partnership with Textmetrics, whose product is indeed a great fit for the needs of several agencies. Armed with Textmetrics, Glenn encouraged us to get ourselves on the GSA MAS (General Services Administration Multiple Awards Schedule), a process that is still ongoing, but one that has opened new partnerships for us, some that we would not have imagined just a few months ago. The GSA MAS grants access to GSA Advantage, which is essentially the Amazon.com for the federal government. The government vets vendors through this process and negotiates all terms and prices so that all of that heavy lifting is already done and agencies can simply order what they need.
But I think I will leave it here for now. Something tells me that I will have much more to write about this process and our new partnerships.
