Stop Chasing RFPs; Focus on Deal Creation

Market Connection released its excellent 2012 Federal Media and Marketing Study, which presented facts and figures on how senior Federal decision-makers and employees obtain their news and information.  The purpose of the report is to aid subscribers in designing  federal marketing campaigns and selecting media outlets that are appropriate to the buyers preferences. I really like the demographics of the report, as 82% are aged 45 or higher, which suggests that these respondents are likely to have lots of authority or influence in their respective agencies.

Numerous  federal marketing experts such as Mark Amtower have been encouraging government contractors to increase their use of social media for several years now, and for good reasons.   Social media marketing helps you connect with agency users and buyers, establishes your firm as a thought leader, helps build brand, and generate leads.

Many government contractors remain skeptical about the value of social media in federal marketing.  Others are uncertain about how to use social media to improve B2G marketing even while many smart federal contractors are using social media to increase marketplace awareness and generate leads with great success.

GSA has recently done some soul searching to determine why so many of its vendor partners (a.k.a. GSA contractors) are failing to thrive under its GSA Schedules program and what can be done to help firms better succeed. It could not come at a more opportune time as a perfect storm of numerous firms entering the federal market are encountering outdated business assistance programs.

For years government contractors have been using traditional marketing techniques to gain the attention of Federal clients.  Email blasts, direct mail, conferences and exhibitions, brochures, advertising have all been used to varying degrees of effectiveness.  But about ten years ago, the effectiveness of these traditional methods began to decline.  And in the past few years, their effectiveness has declined precipitously. But what has caused this decline?

ABC - Always be closing… it’s a famous sales mantra.  But in order to close more government sales and obtain Federal contracts, you must first generate significant number of qualified leads.  And you cannot develop a significant amount of Federal sales leads before you first attract agencies to your firm.  This process of acquiring prospects, converting them into leads, and making them your Federal clients is known as the sales funnel and all deals begin with filling the top of the funnel.

Traditional methods for generating Federal leads include trade shows, seminars, direct (junk) mail, email blasts (spam) to purchased lists, internal cold calling, outsourced telemarketing, and print and media advertising.  These outbound methods are where firms push out the message to the four corners of the country hoping that it resonate with that needle in a haystack. Those techniques are very expensive…and are far less effective than they used to be, especially in Federal marketing, for a number of reasons.  First, Federal employees, like all of us, are inundated with marketing interruptions an estimated 2000 times per day.  In order to cope, Federal buyers have constructed creative means to block those messages:

Do any of these thoughts ever cross your mind?