A client called me recently to let me know that they “haven’t had much luck” generating sales under their GSA contract. Curiously, she went on to say that she recently lost a bid because “a competitor got lucky” and won it instead. Sadly, it’s not the first time I’ve heard this sentiment. It made me consider the nature of luck in business development and government contracting. What exactly is it? Is it real? Or is it merely an excuse for our own shortcomings?
Read MoreTopics: Government Contracts, Government Sales
After winning a GSA contract and uploading their price list to GSA Advantage, many GSA contractors are excited to access the myriad of RFP’s (Request for Proposal) and RFQ's (Request for Quotation) posted in GSA’s eBuy system. While it is a boon to many a firm, you can spend all of your time responding to these opportunities with little to show for it. So let's answer the top questions you should ask before responding.
Topics: Government Marketing, Attracting Federal Clients, Federal Marketing
Have you encountered an agency who wants to buy professional services from you, but doesn't know how to buy services off GSA Schedules. To help you and your clients understand this, we have prepared this brief whiteboard video entitled, “How do Agencies buy Services through our GSA Contract?”
Topics: GSA Advantage, GSA Pricing, GSA Sales
New GSA Contractors often ask about selling items that are not listed in their GSA Schedule contract. These are known as Open Market items. You can sell such products or services to agencies under a GSA Contract order, but you must clearly inform the customer that the items to be sold are open market. This is an important concept to understand and new contractors often have problems with the GSA reviewers/auditors if they do not handle this correctly.
Topics: GSA Contract
Do the sentiments in this email haunt you too?
Companies seeking to generate GSA sales, or government sales in general, often make the same mistake…they do what they are told!
Read MoreTopics: 3. Federal Marketing
I received a call from a woman who told me she and her husband were starting a business and they would organize as a women owned small business (WOSB). I won’t say what line of business they were in, because they seemed to have a unique niche scoped out and they may enjoy a first mover advantage. I think they are on to something, but they were really in the very early stages of development.
Read MoreTopics: 1. GSA Schedule - All about
TurboGSA has been analyzing GSA sales information for some time now … trying to better understand which contractors are succeeding, and more importantly, what do differently from those who fail to generate contract revenues. We look for tactics and strategies that work for effective GSA contractors.
Due to the vast diversity of industries, products, services and competitors, this is a challenge to say the least. Strategies and tactics that work for one schedule may not work for others. For example, sales and marketing tactics used to sell products under the Hardware Superstore are quite different than the approach business developers might take in selling management services under MOBIS Schedule 874.
While looking at the data, we wondered how many contractors actually understood how successful they are compared to their competitors. So for this whiteboard, we present GSA contract revenue data in tiers so you might better understand if you were doing well, or if there were opportunities to improve.
Read MoreTopics: 3. Federal Marketing
According to a report published in PC World yesterday, the large technology contractor CA was sued by the Department of Justice for failing to comply with the price reduction clause of its GSA Contract. According to DOJ, this violated the False Claims Act. CA has had a GSA Schedule contract since 2002 and last year sold $118,784,945 under its GSA IT Schedule 70 contract.
Topics: GSA contract renewal, 2. Manage a GSA Contract, GSA Contract
Have you ever thought this? You have a great solution to an agency’s problem, but the solicitation contains a few odd requirements. And maybe the language suggests it is wired for someone else. It’s not necessarily for any underhanded reason, such as an agency trying to steer the job to a particular vendor. Often, it is simply because the agency has already talked to another firm’s representatives and incorporated some of their ideas.
Topics: Government Marketing, 3. Federal Marketing
Before you start the process to extend your GSA contract for another five years, you need to understand the renewal process and and begin preparing well before the official process begins.
