Top 7 Questions about eBuy Opportunities 

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. 

Have you ever thought this? You have a great solution to an agency’s problem, but the solicitation contains a few odd requirements.  And maybe the language suggests it is wired for someone else.  It’s not necessarily for any underhanded reason, such as an agency trying to steer the job to a particular vendor. Often, it is simply because the agency has already talked to another firm’s representatives and incorporated some of their ideas.  

How Small Businesses Use Innovation to Thrive in Federal Contracting

I recently read an article in USA Today about how federal agencies are coming to realize that small businesses are innovation hubs whose creativity allowed them to deliver better solutions more cheaply.  The article discusses how NASA used a small, 40-person firm, Honeybee Robotics, to develop a robotic lab assistant for the Mars Curiosity Rover.  Some very important lessons can be learned and applied to small businesses seeking federal contracts in other industries.

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.

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.

This is a presentation given by GSA at their May 2011 Expo. 

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.