Good teaming partners are like parking spaces in an office building’s parking lot. The closest ones to the building get taken by those diligent souls who arrive to work before 7 am and have half their day’s work done before their colleagues roll in at 9 am. If you are one of those people who come in after 9 am but before the lunch break has started or morning meetings have ended, you might have to circle around the lot to find the spot that’s furthest away from the door, the one that no one wanted.
The key to success is to start the teammate identification process early, so that you don’t find yourself teaming in the 11th hour with companies that will bring you no closer to winning than bidding by yourself.
Marketing to the Government is very different than marketing to commercial customers. With most commercial customers, you can wine, dine, and entertain them. Not so with the Government. If you do, there are two outcomes: Government personnel will either start avoiding you outright because they will know that you don’t know how to work with the Government, or they might be corrupt and accept your gifts—and when that gets out in the open, you will lose your job, and your company will lose Government business in a big scandal. It’s simply not worth it.
Competitive analysis is your measuring stick against the rest of the world. To use a boxing analogy: your form may look impressive when you are boxing a punching bag, but it cannot hit you back. There are also no surprises and no unknowns. Ultimately, to see what you are made of, you have to be pitted against an opponent. Your capabilities, in and of themselves, may be impressive, but would they stand up to your leaner and meaner opponents? Let’s look at the reasons why you should mind your competitors and predict their possible actions; what you need to know about your competition; how to find this information; and how to put all the pieces of the competitive analysis puzzle together to exploit your competitors’ shortfalls to you advantage and outdo them through strategic actions.
I used to be so scared of flying that I would sit on a plane and breathe in a bag to deal with an anxiety attack. I forced myself to travel for business, but each flight was such a high-stress event that I would feel depleted, as if I had run a marathon. I felt as if I had to hold the plane in the air by sheer willpower the entire flight.
Workshop in 1.5 weeks: Foundations of Federal Business Development.
September 11, 2012, 9.00am-5:00pm, Rockville, MD. Gain understanding of the Federal Business Development (BD) lifecycle, and learn how to navigate the U.S. Government marketplace, perform strategic BD planning, market analysis, federal marketing, pipeline development, opportunity qualification, and maximize your Pwin. Only 4 seats left: www.ostglobalsolutions.com/federal-business-development-training.php
Change is nothing new in our industry. For many of us, it is a constant reminder that the Government is always trying to improve their processes and save money. IDIQs have been around for years and anyone that has worked a few proposals has heard the term and the horror stories that remain in the wake of a company working one. IDIQs are like a distant rich relative – we want the spoils that they can bring but do not want to deal with the hardships that must be endured.
