Federal Compass - Waypoints

Have you ever wondered how well-known businesses achieve that notoriety? In business, expansion is necessary for survival. Whether that expansion involves customer acquisitions in the same market or new markets or adding or changing products or services - businesses must change to accommodate the market's needs. For those in a government contracting business development (BD) role, continual growth and company expansion are imperative, not only for the company but for job retention. Even though you may order (too many times a day) from Amazon, they still have competitors trying to infringe on their market share.

Landing B2B or B2C contracts in an ultra-competitive market can be incredibly challenging. Landing
federal contracts (B2G), however, can feel like scaling a mountain over and over. While your pursuit
process starts with grand ambitions, it can easily spin out of control quickly and leave you with stale
business development efforts – or even cause you to miss an opportunity completely.

Everyone brings something unique to the table. Maybe it is knowledge or expertise of a specific subject, an outgoing personality, an innate ability to strike up a conversation, or an analytical and data-driven mindset. No matter who it is, that person brings some sort of value to the table. While value differs in the eyes of the beholder, it is defined as having relative worth, utility, or importance. How it satisfies your team's needs is up to you.

As the largest procurer of goods and services in the world, the United States Federal Government opts to outsource its needs rather than satisfy them internally. Why? Because of the unique and technical specifications, they require in order to accomplish their missions. With the government turning to federal contractors to satisfy their needs, they require anyone who does business with them to abide by their strict guidelines and regulations. If you have ever seen the movie War Dogs, this is why guidelines exist and compliance matters.

Creating an identity as a business and adhering to it is an extremely difficult task. You want to provide a wide range of services, but you know that straying too far from your core competency can weaken your ideal offering. So you adopt a gradual expansion of your offerings and dip your toes into new markets. After several years of implementation, are you the same company you were before? Do you have a new company identity? Have your initial goals been met and are your new goals the right ones? 

If you own or run a government contracting business and are looking at the possibility of selling in the
coming months or years, then you may already be worried about all the things you need to do to prepare. There are countless articles about ways to maximize valuation by cutting costs, focusing on key customers, and presenting your financial reports in the most positive light. But as much as presenting
an ideal financial picture may increase the potential purchase price of your businesses, having disorganized and incomplete records for buyers (and their lawyers) to review can undermine even the best financial projections. Most of these articles will suggest that you perform “due diligence” on your own business, but they don’t really tell you what that means. It remains some sort of time-consuming mysterious ritual performed with the help of overworked executives and expensive lawyers. While that may be mostly true, here are some practical tips on what you can do to get started.

When talking with nearly any federal government contractor, there seems to be a love/hate relationship with the 8(a) program. Some will say it helped propel them and gave them the guidance and boost they needed in order to achieve the level of success they have today. Others will say that it was the best nine years of their business's life but have since struggled to repeat that success.

 

The government says they love doing business with small, disadvantaged businesses. To an extent, this is true. However, outside of doing business with them, those smalls often fall to the wayside and are unsure of what comes next. Winning 8(a) contracts is great, but there is little support outside of those set-aside contracts. Once that nine-year limit is up, it is as if you are thrown to the wolves to fend for yourselves. Some succeed while others falter. Before going through with your 8(a) certification thinking you are about to open a goldmine of opportunities, these high-priority items should be taken into consideration. Because once you become certified, the race against the clock is on. 

With each new year comes new opportunities and new goals. Some goals are more short-term and can be achieved throughout the year. Others require smaller milestones to be hit throughout the year in order to reach your much larger ones. If you are still in the process of laying out your goals for 2023, the important thing to keep in mind is to be realistic. If your current federal revenue is $90M but you want to hit $210M, is that a realistic number or not?

 

 When companies plan out their year, one element that they often overlook is their internal processes. It is so easy to continue on with normal operations because they worked well enough to grow the business, so why not keep them going, right? The old, "if it ain't broke why fix it" method can only work for so long. "We grew revenue by 4% last year, we should see another year of 4% next year." But why? Why not make some minor adjustments to increase that 4% to 6%? Why not increase growth AND revenue?

 

Maybe this is the year to enhance some existing processes to hit all of your goals and check off smaller milestones to help get you to where you want to be in five, 10, or 15 years.

You have taken the plunge and are ready to get into federal contracting. Excellent. Have you identified who buys what you sell? Have you identified what you are going to sell to the government? Have you registered on SAM.Gov? Lots of questions out of the gate, but for how fruitful government contracting can be, it can be just as convoluted and confusing.

You recently won a federal government contract. Excellent! Time to write it on a sticky note, add it to Microsoft Excel, and email everyone internally and let them know they need to start tracking it...right? If this is how you manage your contracts, there is room for improvement.