Many firms obtain a GSA Schedule to gain an advantage in the government market. Companies put serious effort into acquiring the contract but unfortunately, less effort into training sales, marketing, and business development reps on how to use it effectively.  The results are sadly predictable.  Too many either languish in the lowest sales tiers, barely meeting the required $25,000 per year sales criteria to maintain the contract.  Worse, many others fail to reach even that threshold.

Research Your GSA Competitors

I understand why companies think government contracting seems so complicated.  They have been told to take a few simple steps, and then contracts will roll in. The most frequently mentioned 10 best practices for winning government contracts include:

The federal market is huge, and thousands of contracts are issued every year that has a value in the hundreds of billions of dollars. The bid packages used by the government usually contain a set of documents to which a bidder develops a responsive proposal. The four main types of solicitations are:

You submitted your offer to GSA many months ago, and after a protracted period of waiting, you finally got your GSA number.

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?