Federal Compass - Waypoints

Once a contract has been awarded, what happens next? It might seem like an easy answer: complete the work and get paid! Although that might be correct to a certain extent, there is a lot more that needs to be accounted for and it all starts with having a strong capture process. From the very beginning, your legal team needs to get involved, your contract manager(s) will need to step up, and your capture management process should have decision gates and ways to measure success. You mean government contracting is not as easy as people make it out to be?!

In today's technology-dependent world, there should never be a time when you say that you cannot do something because your software lacks functionality. Let us be real, we can order a pack of cookies, hand towels, and "try on" a pair of sunglasses without leaving the comfort of our couch. There are some very powerful software solutions out there, and when it comes to looking for a new one, you should have a list of criteria that needs to be met. If you are settling for less, you could be setting your team up for failure.

When is the last time you wrote a capability statement? Better question, when is the last time you UPDATED your capability statement? Your capability statement is your opportunity to make a great first and long-lasting impression on the government. Why are you the team for the job, how do you help them, and what have you done that makes you the best fit to accomplish the task? It is not so much who you know or what you know, it is what you can do.

When it comes to doing business with the federal government, some businesses are better at it than others. For those in a great position, it may be due to the fact that they have decades of experience and understand the intricacies of the federal government. For those who are getting started or struggle to win, it may be because they are directing their efforts in the wrong places. Doing business with the government is not easy, and when it comes to winning, it becomes even harder. The core elements of finding success as a federal contractor, focus on where your customers are and what they want. Stop focusing on set-aside statuses.

Set-asides are powerful boosters for small and disadvantaged businesses, but at the end of the day, the government wants someone who helps them accomplish their mission. If that means going with a contractor who does have a set-aside, great. If that means going with a contractor who does not have a set-aside, so be it. If there is one thing for certain in federal contracting, it is that there are no guaranteed contracts.

Change, to some degree, is something we all struggle with. Whether it is changing our hairstyle or adopting new software, there will always be some apprehensions to change. One of the first elements that come to mind when thinking about change is "why". Why would I change? Why do I need to change? Why does our company need to make this change? Why can we not just keep the same process, it is working fine.

Thinking about selling a federal contracting business? This rewarding experience does not happen overnight. It does not even happen in a matter of months. Before thinking about what will happen once the sale is complete, there is a lot that goes into this often long and arduous process.

Whether you are seeking inorganic growth opportunities or strategic partnerships, situational awareness is the key to identifying potential pathways. These types of relationships and acquisitions often spawn from a specific need, and when that need becomes a pain point, inorganic growth can stall, and teaming partners can become strained. When trying to identify these potential opportunities in the ever-crowded field of federal contracting, it can often feel like searching for a needle in a haystack.

The overall value of a federal contractor's pipeline is not based on quantity, it is quality. This sounds super simple and like it would be a no-brainer, but you have probably fallen victim to the "win anything" mentality more times than you would like to admit. High-dollar opportunities help drive revenue, but when revenue is sacrificed for company identity, it creates chaos in the pipeline and pushes companies into an environment that is difficult to change.

There are plenty of questions that federal contractors have. How do we win more federal dollars? How can we grow and expand into new markets over the next decade? While these are great and important questions to ask, but they address a much broader approach. The questions you should ask of yourselves should help bolster your internal strategies to understand where you are positioned and where you are headed. Rather than ask why it is taking so long to expand into new markets, analyze if you can expand into that specific one, are there better ones, and if not, is there a pool of teaming partners who could help. You can ask broad questions but the answers provided should paint a much more detailed picture.

In today’s fast-paced world, something that we often do not take the time to do is look at ourselves in the mirror. Taking a moment to reflect on who we are, what we are looking for in life, and where those few gray hairs could have come from often gets lost in the shuffle. Unfortunately, the same can be said about federal contractors. Finding opportunities, submitting RFPs, analyzing data, talking with teaming partners, working to grow the business itself, there are a ton of moving pieces and taking the time to reflect often gets overlooked. Taking the time to discuss and reflect on the past can say a lot about where the company is heading. When overlooked, the future trajectory may look much different than it did several years prior.