The Federal Buyer’s Journey

Many contractors face the challenges of determining their place in the federal market and identifying how to pursue business. An important step in figuring this out is:

• understanding how federal agencies buy,
• who is involved in the process, and
• how this impacts your marketing and business development strategies.

Too many firms mistakenly believe they should concentrate their efforts on responding to RFPs issued by agencies. Companies scour bid identification services such as FedBizOpps and eBuy for opportunities they might be qualified for and then spend time submitting proposal after proposal. This is called chasing RFPs, and it’s usually a waste of time and money.

Some companies do okay using this approach, but most firms just spin their wheels while never winning much. Most businesses would be better served by getting involved far earlier in the federal buying process, helping agencies to understand the current problems or emerging challenges, and then creating possible solutions.

To do this, though, requires a better understanding of the entire federal buying process, not just proposal writing. The federal buyer’s journey entails complex federal acquisition regulations and processes because the government purposely adds redundancy into the process. It wants many people looking at this and making sure it’s the right thing for the agency.

The Course

We developed a course that will help you understand the entire federal buying process so you can adapt your business development, sales or marketing efforts to get involved much earlier in the process. The first thing covered is what constitutes a federal buyer. You see, a federal buyer is not one person. Rather, it’s a collection of people coming together to make a buying decision. We cover the people involved who constitute the federal buyer.

We also discuss the buyer’s journey common to all organizations, whether it’s us in the corporate world or buyers within federal agencies. Then we’ll take a dive deep into the Federal Buyer’s Journey and what makes it so unique and different from our business-to-business experiences.

inally, we’ll discuss the elements of a Go to Market strategy that will help you win more federal contracts. It really doesn’t matter whether you sell complex products, professional services, or engineering services. A comprehensive Go to Market strategy will help your offering succeed in the federal marketplace.

View the course outline for Understanding the Federal Buyers Journey.

View the course outline for Understanding the Federal Buyers Journey.