Ways to increase revenue for your small business for Government

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the u.s federal government is the world's biggest buyer and what does the government purchase from small businesses well pretty much everything everything from business consultants to construction to bottled water to computers to clothing if you're a service provider maybe an accountant or a translator or an engineer the government purchases just about every service there is if you sell a product i can tell you that many people make a good living as a middleman selling products from computers to bottled water to the government no matter what you sell you can probably sell it to the government if you know where to look so have you avoided government contracting because you thought it was too complicated well it's true that you need to learn the system but it is a system and once you learn it you're good to go and the contracts can keep coming year after year the good news is that you can learn the system yourself without the need to pay a consultant there are a huge number of government websites that provide all of the information and market intelligence you need to get started and win government contracts and this information is all free but you have to know where to look for it there's no magic to this in this video i'm going to walk you through a bunch of different government websites and resources and show you exactly how to access the information you need sound like what you're looking for click the subscribe button and let's get started federal government contracting is big dollars the federal government spent about 500 billion dollars on contracts last year and more than one quarter of that was contracted with small businesses that's over a hundred and thirty billion dollars a year that goes to small businesses and that money has to go to small businesses large businesses cannot compete for that money now each year the government sets goals for contracts to be set aside for small businesses and for businesses in certain categories set-asides means that only those kinds of companies can compete for those kinds of contracts and each year the sba releases its procurement scorecard which shows how well the government did in meeting its its goals and what i'm showing you here is the fy 2019 procurement scorecard i'm on the sba website and this is the fy 2019 federal procurement store card now check this out small business contracting went from 90 billion in 2015 up to 132 billion in 2019 small disadvantaged businesses received 35 billion in 2015 and that increased to over 51 billion in 2019 so there have been big increases in contracting dollars going to small businesses over just the past few years when we compare the goals with how they actually performed we see only one area where it didn't meet its goals and that's hubzone so hubzone certification might be something to put on your radar because in past years there's been an increase in the number of contracts in any category that was lagging behind its goal now this is the website that gives you all the details on the federal small business contracting programs i'm at the sba.gov website under federal contracting and here you'll learn all about the women-owned small business program service disabled veteran-owned program 8-a program and the hubzone program now 8-a is the name of the government's program for socially and economically disadvantaged companies let me show you some real interesting 8a numbers note that the number of 8a firms has been declining at the same time the federal a day contract dollars has been increasing and as a result the average revenue per firm has tripled if you qualify for eight a certification i think this is a great time to get into the federal marketplace now i mentioned hubzone certification to qualify for hubzone certification your principal office must be located in a hub zone and at least 35 percent of your employees must live in a hubzone so we start at the hubzone map website and to get here i just googled hubzone map and we enter an address do a search and in this case we're going to see that this address is in a qualified hubzone now in addition to contracting directly with the federal government you should also consider being a subcontractor to a prime contractor in fact that's how many companies get their start in federal contracting when a large company gets a contract with the government they are required to subcontract part of the work to small businesses now i know that some consultants will offer you a list of large prime contractors but i'm going to show you how to get that list for free yourself you go to the beta.sam.gov website we go under data bank here are the showing the reports for contract data and under report type i click static there are a whole bunch of interesting reports here here are the small business goal reports but here are the top 100 contractor reports and you click here and you'll get that list yourself so here's what that file looks like it shows you government-wide and for each particular agency who are the top 100 contractors and the amount of money they received that year so let's see how you would use this information i went to the website for a large government contractor i'm going to click on opportunities and then procurement and contracting and we can see they list current requests for proposals they have a whole bunch of them if you do graphics and technical editing support they have a rfp right now i am going to come over here and click on small business so here's their vendor registration link you'll always want to register with the company as a small business here are helpful small business links here they're providing a bunch of contacts and organizational charts with contact information they'll pretty much always list a bunch of it events and you should definitely attend the events where the company is to get a chance to meet the people on this page they tell you what their goals are and they tell you their contact information the name the telephone number and the email address now within the organization there are several different levels you need to know about there's the small business specialist the program staff and the contracting staff and government prime contractors will always have a designated person for you to contact it shouldn't be hard to find the small business specialist is not a secret you see i just poked around the website and found it pretty easily contact this person send her a capability statement that you've tailored to show what you can do for this company now the small business specialist is your initial point of contact but they're not the ones who make the contracting decisions so you talked with the small business specialists and you asked them to make introductions to the contracting staff and the program staff so you can make the right connections then you talked with the contracting staff and the program staff to get more information about their requirements because the more information you have the more competitive your proposals will be now this website is fpds.gov and it is a goldmine of information on government contracts this website provides the details on all contracts awarded so you can use it to find out who is buying the products and services that you sell and you get this information at the level of the individual contracting officer that's making the purchase you can search by the name of the contracting organization and see a list of all the contracts they've issued or you can enter the name of your competitor and see all of the contracts they've won and the amount of each contract so let's say you're interested in a service contract you can see when the current contract expires so you know when it will be up for re-bid you you may find a contract that's expiring next year and so you can start now marketing to the organization and developing that relationship so that you're considered when they re-bid the contract so how does this work in practice let's say you find a contract you're interested in that's expiring soon you you can call the small business specialist for the organization and you do that and you say you get her answering machine so you leave her a message saying what your company provides but you say i see that last year your office issued five contracts for this and one of those contracts is going to be up for renewal later this year i would like to sit down with you and get a better understanding of your requirements and see if i might be able to help you with that here's my number please call me this shows them that you've done your homework i know what you buy i want to be one of your options for this the small business specialist job is to find options so she's going to want to talk to you then when you speak with the small business specialist you asked her to make introductions to both the contracting staff and the program staff and then you speak with them and you ask for more information about the requirement now i'll enter a search to show you what the results look like so there's a huge amount of information here and you can search by the size of the contract by the type of the project it is by the way the contract was awarded did they use a particular small business program did they use gsa schedules you find out how the individual contracting officer is making their purchases and you can see their schedule so you know when they'll be buying again you can also get a lot of pricing intelligence from fpds to help you price your bid so the work you're interested in is most likely a continuation of a previous requirement you can find the previous contract here fpds will tell you who won the contract and how much they're being paid then you can call the contracting officer and ask them has the scope of work changed that will give you the information you need to price your bid let me show you a bit more about the information that's available here fpds lets you drill down and see the results of each individual funding action and as you can see there is a lot of information about each and every funding action that is issued now there is another website usaspending.gov and some people like usa spending but personally i prefer to go to the actual source data which is fpds hey folks if you're getting value from this please hit the subscribe button that really helps us keep bringing this free content to you so the next website i want to show you is beta sam it's beta.sam.gov and there's actually a huge amount of information on beta sam going through it all would take a whole another video but for our purposes right now what i want to show you is that beta sam lists the contract opportunities so i click contract opportunities here and hit search and what you see here is well they're showing here all of the contract opportunities but you can filter it by a whole bunch of different criteria in fact you can add additional filters beyond the ones that you see right here now there are a few important things you can do in beta sam first you can specify your search criteria and set up a saved search and have the results of that search emailed to you each day if you find a solicitation you're interested in you can add your name to the interested vendors list and then if the contracting officer is going to have a pre-bid meeting they may only invite the companies that are on the interested vendors list so that's why that's important also if you find the solicitation you're interested in you should definitely add the solicitation to your watch list then when they release a modification or add additional information you will receive an email notification and that is really important if you're planning to bid because typically there are changes and you want to receive immediate notification of the change now you can definitely use beta sam to search for upcoming solicitations and you do that here under type of notice but often if you come across an opportunity at the solicitation stage you're already late to the game so i would encourage you to also look for sources sought you want to find opportunities at the earliest stages where it's still possible to work with the government to shape the opportunity in your favor and note if you don't find the opportunity until the solicitation is released you may not have enough time to do all the research and everything you need to put together the best possible proposal on the other hand if you find out about the opportunity earlier and sit down and talk with the small business specialist six months out you have the time to get an understanding the requirements and you have the time to do the work you need to prepare a winning proposal for example many times you may need that time to contact subcontractors or suppliers and you'll probably get a better deal from your suppliers better pricing compared with waiting until the last possible minute and contacting them for last minute pricing when you're up against a proposal deadline so please start early and look also at sources sought not just solicitations now i really want to encourage you to attend matchmaking events where you can meet government buyers and normally there are lots of these events and you can find them easily with some simple web searches looking for matchmaking events or industry days right now of course there are fewer events and they're virtual but still they do exist and i would encourage you to attend them because these meetings are a great way for you to start meeting people and make yourself and your capabilities known at these meetings you speak directly with small business specialists and contracting officers and learn about upcoming contracting opportunities both directly with the government and as a subcontractor to a large government contractor and also be sure to attend any pre-bidding meetings or walk-throughs or any other events that might be going on basically take every opportunity you can get to speak directly with people and build those crucial relationships now i mentioned at the start that there are people who will help you with all of this for free now this organization here is ptac and they are a fabulous resource and their help is free ptac will help you get registered to do business with the government and they'll help you get certified they'll help you search for contracting opportunities and they provide workshops and matchmaking events that help you connect with government buyers now the sba also has offices across the country and they also are here to help you but if you're really just starting out then i would go to ptac first before the sba so if you're now ready to get started this website sam.gov is where you register your company to do business with the government and i have a whole video devoted to how to get registered check the notes below for a link to that video so thanks for sticking with me as you can see there's tons of competitive information available for you for free as well as resources to help you get started hey folks if you got value from this please like the video and hit the subscribe button it really helps us to build the channel and keep creating these free videos for you and leave a note in the comments if there are any deep dive topics you'd like me to cover in future videos thanks for watching and i'll see you in the next video [Music]