How To Bid For Government Contracts

With a 400 billion dollar per year combined military and civilian appetite for all manner of services and commodities, the US government is actually the single largest buyer of goods and services in the entire world. Fortunately, for small US businesses, the government has a statutory obligation to reach out to certain categories of business owners. The stated goal is that 23 percent of all contracts should go to woman, small disadvantaged businesses, those located in Hub Zones, and those owned by disabled veterans. Many firms large and small actively seek out these types of companies in order to partner with them in the competition for lucrative government contracts. The Obama Administration’s 800 billion dollar Stimulus Package promises to offer a wealth of new opportunities for businesses of all sizes. There is no time like the present to put your business in the proper position in order to be ready to bid on the forthcoming government contracts.

     Getting a head start on these new bidding opportunities coming just around the corner also means gaining an understanding of the new trends implicit in the proposed changes to come.  There can be no denying the fact that many of the old manufacturing sector jobs that were shipped overseas have been lost forever. Nonetheless, led by the US government under the Obama Administration a new Twenty-first Century economy is destined to take shape in the coming months. The question that we must all begin to ask ourselves right now is, just what innovations can we expect to see in the near future? Here are just a few probable developments that you may want to keep an eye on.

• Expect the New Economy born of the Obama Stimulus Package to be a vastly greener economy, opening up new avenues to bid for contracts in green technologies and creating a whole new sector of green jobs.
• Expect wireless technology to move into the forefront of innovative technological change. This is sure to have an enormous impact upon marketing; putting an even greater emphasis upon Social Media and mobile technologies, and also broadening the prospective pool of consumers across a wide spectrum of industries.
• Websites shall become the new business card. Without a website of your own, don’t expect to be taken seriously in the Twenty-first Century marketplace. As a matter of fact, the government will not even do business with you today unless you have a website. Before you get ready to bid for the new government contracts, make sure your website is up and running.
• All of this is sure to create a new emphasis on optimum customer service. Expect to see a greater demand for a higher level of professional care, no matter what business that you are in. More than ever before companies will have to make sure that they keep their employees up-to-speed with the demands of the new marketplace. Proper training will be vital to this new reality. One bad customer service experience can become very expensive in the long run.

     Once you gain a focus upon what opportunities may lie ahead to bid on contracts in the new Obama Administration Stimulus Package , now it is time for you to take the proper steps to make sure that you are in the right professional position to answer RFP’s (Requests for Proposals) once they are issued. First you want to make sure that you have a well-written and comprehensive company profile detailing just what it is that your company does, at what capacity and with how many employees. You might also consider having your company’s profile put on Linkedin.com and on Wikicompany.com’s worldwide business directory as well. SEM firms can help you with a complete package of SEO; optimize your web pages, drive more traffic to your website, and develop links for you as well. Often they have a full service writing staff that can do press releases for you, help you with your proposal, and write your company profile.

    Even though your small business may have a great sales volume and may be a spectacular performer within your particular industry, still this alone will not be enough for you to win that lucrative government contract. Although bidding on federal contracts is intended to be a democratic process and President Obama has promised to bring more integrity and transparency to government, still this can be a rather daunting process if you come into it unprepared.  This is where the difference between one proposal and another can resemble the difference between being represented by a huge law firm with unlimited resources, and simply relying on the earnest efforts of a court-appointed lawyer. You have to do your research. Bidding on government contracts is a process, and you should not expect to be successful unless you learn the process and position yourself ahead of time. Often you have only a short period of time to act as the bidding process can sometimes last no more than a couple of weeks. You cannot expect to win unless you know how to play the game.

   The Small Business Administration is the first place for you to begin. At www.sba.gov you will find all the necessary resources that you will need to begin the process of putting yourself ahead in the game. In an upcoming series of articles, I will take you through the process of registering your company with the Central Contractor Registry (CCR), all the way through writing a bid proposal that will make your company stand out far above all the rest by helping you avoid the common pitfalls that many small businesses often fall victim to.

Author/Publisher T. S. Aschenge is a Freelance writer who lives and works in Atlanta Georgia. Visit his company website I CAN WRITE THAT 4 U! at:http://www.okwriteit.wordpress.com/ and his Blog at: http://ifnealstreetcouldtalk.wordpress.com/