Since 2009, thousands of small businesses have weathered the economic storm by taking advantage of federal programs designed to channel federal contracts to small firms.  Two of the more valuable programs include the GSA schedule program and the Simplified Acquisition Procedure program. 

If you’re fortunate enough to have been awarded a General Services Administration (GSA) contract, you should be pleased. After all, only about two percent of firms that work with the government hold a GSA contract. While this is an achievement, most executives now ask, “What’s next? How do I get a piece of this $39 billion pie?”

SBA has posted a free online course called,   The HUBZone Primer.”   The HUBZone program is designed to help small businesses ‐‐in certain urban, rural, BRAC, Indian reservation, and difficult development areas outside the U.S. mainland – to gain access to federal procurement opportunities. HUBZone areas are typically areas of low median household incomes or high unemployment, or both.  There are some 6,000 small firms certified in the HUBZone program.

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.

As some of you may have discovered if you recently tried to update your GSA supply catalog, you may get a notice that UPC codes are required on products listed under certain SINS when uploading to GSA Advantage. 

I wrote a guest blog article for Vistage, a leading peer advising, private mentoring, and executive development firm with a nation-wide clientele.   The article discusses the benefits and challenges of federal contracting and outlines five key programs for landing federal work:

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 firms come to us seeking to obtain a GSA contract. We always explore the reasons why a business wants to obtain a GSA contract, to make sure it makes sense for them.  The most obvious reason is that small businesses are seeking to obtain more sales from Federal agencies and believe a GSA contract can help. But digging deeper, at times we find that a GSA Schedule would not be appropriate for some firms. However, we often hear many good reasons why the company is seeking a GSA contract.  Here are ten reasons frequently given for why they are looking for a GSA contract.

Impressive

I came across a terrific graphic on the nature of women-owned small businesses (WOSB) filled with many statistics.  One outstanding fact is that female ownership in small business increased more than 20 percent between 2002 and 2007, compared with a 5.4% increase in male-owned businesses.  Explore the graphic below to learn more.

Many of you may have spent a lot of time in the past few weeks playing games with your children or grandchildren.  Or perhaps some of you are kids at heart and received some of your own games during the holidays.  Many of these games were probably electronic PlayStation, Xbox or Wii games.  But what about the good old fashioned board games.