GSA Schedules have been a popular contract vehicle for large and small businesses alike, but in recent years, small business has grown its share of GSA schedule sales significantly since 2013. That year, the height of sequestration, cutbacks, and reduction of wartime spending, the small business share of GSA sales was 32%. For fiscal year 2016, that had grown to 43%; sales have grown from $11.4 billion in FY2013 to $13.5 billion in FY2016. Remarkable!
Read MoreTopics: 1. GSA Schedule - All about
GSA has modernized its multiple-award schedule vehicle for human resource services to address contract redundancy and streamline the acquisition process for such service offerings.
Read MoreTopics: 1. GSA Schedule - All about
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.
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:
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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:
Read MoreTopics: Government Marketing, Government Sales
You submitted your offer to GSA many months ago, and after a protracted period of waiting, you finally got your GSA number.
Read MoreTopics: GSA Contract, GSA Sales
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
