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[Music] so the big question is this how do small businesses like yours who feel like you're doing all the right things and going to all the right events reach the federal buyer in a way that helps you win more contracts that is the question and this is the place to get your answers my name is neil mcdonnell welcome to the govcon chamber of commerce [Music] okay let's get started at some point when trying to sell to the federal government someone's going to ask if you've done your homework what they're really asking is if you've taken the time to learn about their agency that's what i'm going to talk about now first though this content is brought to you by the govcon chamber of commerce the only organization dedicated to the success of all small businesses in the federal space with members from guam to the us virgin islands in every single state in between each year roughly 125 billion dollars is awarded to small businesses as prime contractors our vision is to double that number by helping small businesses truly understand the process for success small businesses are the backbone of america and by helping you succeed further in government contracting we'll be strengthening american communities my name is neil mcdonnell and i've been where you are now i've been a small business owner for 20 years building two successful firms selling to the federal government i've won subcontracts with small and large federal prime contractors i've won prime contracts with defense and civilian agencies i've done things right and i've gotten things wrong the one thing missing though for me then and you now is an easy to follow process that will lead to predictable success that's my commitment to you i'll provide the process if you accept responsibility and don't blame others you'll find you have the control to change your future government contracting is not a secret it's just a process in the govcon sales process includes bd capture and proposal writing look for another video to see my introduction to the govcon sales process the first step in business development is to do your homework to develop your agency knowledge that's what we'll talk about here specifically how to uncover agency's strategic goals and objectives the main challenges they face and how they typically buy all agencies in most program offices set strategic goals and objectives the goals are typically tied to goals set by higher headquarters for example the department of navy would align their strategic goals with the goals set by the department of defense goals tend to be long-term typically included in a five-year strategic plan objectives are almost always annually based for example what are we doing this year what are we doing next year etc goals focus on the what what do we hope to achieve objectives focus on the how how will we accomplish our goals goals are tied to the department or agency's mission in order to accomplish that goal a set of objectives is tied to each goal because goals exist to give direction and set priority there's no need for metrics on goals but objectives are very tightly tied to a set of metrics which allow them to be used to measure progress towards a specific goal as a small business you must do your homework and that begins with learning about an agency and what they do both their mission and vision as well as their goals and objectives you can learn this easily off the internet from an agency's website as well as through advocates such as small business specialists at your target agency you'll often see agency challenges tied to their strategic goals one of the best ways to learn about an agency's challenges is to review their strategic documents in fact this is an easy way to prove to them that you're doing your homework on their agency i'm going to show you how to identify challenges by using the national geospatial intelligence agency's technology strategy document for may 2020 right from the start they're telling you their challenges in his opening message vice admiral sharp here the director of nga lays out some challenges that communicate the dire sense of urgency they have he also points out that this technology strategy document will guide nga as they improve the state of their current technology think goals and objectives here a few pages later in the document we find a findings section there are seven findings laid out that give us insight into the challenges they face for example in the first finding here they talk about continued service disruption outages and login issues think about how you might help them if this is your core competency go a few pages more in the strategic document and you'll see what i consider a goldmine for doing agency homework 20 pages that describe the problems nga is facing and the challenges that come with those problems let's look at the first three sections that you see here on each of these pages at the top we see the key initiative title and description this is helpful for you to quickly see if there's an alignment with your core competencies next on the page is the problem statement nga clearly states that the current decentralized approach creates operational challenges that's great that's the problem from a high level let's go ahead now and look at the next section on this page to see the current state challenges this section explains the impact of the problem further clearly laying out for you the answer to what keeps you awake at night in this section you can see a challenge nga faces is personalizing their user experience i work with a company who specializes in user experiences and personas i would advise them as part of their bd efforts to discuss the challenge with the customer and perhaps share how they've addressed it with other dod agencies another important part of business development is to learn how an agency buys first if and most importantly you want to find out if they buy what you sell this is straightforward you using fpds or now it's in sam.gov you can also ask a small business specialist or contracting officer at an agency but don't waste their time make sure you've tried to do the research yourself second learn what contract vehicles are used do they typically create stand-alone contracts or do they use gsa or oasis there are thousands of contract vehicles out there but each agency will have three or four favorites make sure you know what they are finally try to learn their procurement process or life cycle there's a standard process across all agencies which is great but each will have their own way of communicating that internally and to those of us in the industry let me show you two examples here the coast guard defines their approach really well in their recent contracting and procurement annual report here you can see a page i copied shown that they start with an internal procurement planning process or conference to define the world of work in preparation of creating those procurement request packages in this document the coast guard lays out how the procurement life cycle begins and how it moves through to the rfp you can also reach out to the head of contract activities at the coast guard and ask them to clarify anything that is confusing after you've read their document let's go ahead and look at another one this one is from usda and it's awesome in its visualization of the road map any given procurement goes through the reason this is valuable to you is that you can use it in discussions with agency stakeholders to learn the current status of a given opportunity i recommend small businesses i coach that they use these road maps like this as a checklist during their capture process so remember government contracting is not a secret it's just a process i've walked you through part of the govcon sales process related to developing agency knowledge when you think about doing your homework make sure you know an agency's goals objectives as well as their current challenges and how they buy what you sell if you found this content valuable others will too please give it a thumbs up so they can find it if you'd like to connect with me personally do so on linkedin make sure to sign up for the govcon chambers email list at .gov we often do free training webinars and interview federal buyers for you the email list is how we let you know about these opportunities finally please consider becoming a sustaining member of the govcon chamber of commerce i'm neil mcdonald wishing you great success