Government contract?

[jrod31]

does anyone know where or how to bid on government contracts? people have said that small business owned by women get easier help.

[amg2000]

I sell an ebook on how to get contracts with the U.S. Military. PM me if interested.

Brian

[silversurfer]

This is what I do in my day job. I respond to RFPs from government agencies.

If you're talking about the federal government then look at what your company does, what you have proven experience doing (the government will almost definitely not be your first customer) and most of all, who you know who has government or related contracting connections. Look at who you know where and start the ball rolling, trying to determine what contracts will come up in the next few years.

Here is a story from my biggest proposal:

One rule of thumb is that by the time the public request for proposal hits the streets, it's impossible for a company to write a proposal and win the work. I've seen open periods as short as two weeks. I worked on a $400 million contract my former company won in 2005. Around 2002 or so our CEO was golfing with a director of an IT department in the US Military. The director mentioned problems they had with a contract and named it. Our CEO gave him guidance on how to handle the problem contract and suggested consolidating about 8 contracts together into a monster contract. Then our CEO spent a year contacting friends in the agency and collecting research on these offices and contracts. One thing I did was offer presentations as part of a user group to IT people IN THAT DIVISION. Get it? I put myself in front of these people and I asked them questions about their projects. I had friends I could call to ask questions. People who could be on the decision team had our logo pens.

A year after the golf game we had 50-100 pages of analysis of this agency. About that time or 6 months later the director tells out CEO that they will be combining all the contracts into one monster contract. My CEO invites representatives from the current contract holders out to lunch over a period of a month. He makes some friends. The representative from Martin Marrietta (names changed to protect the innocent) calls him back after a few months- the gossip on the street is that this will be an 8A contract. 8A is a small business set-aside. Martin Marrietta wants us to form a team. We are the prime contractor and they are the sub. They get 49% of the business and we get 51%. We start weekly meetings with Martin Marrietta. I, SilverSurfer, start writing sections of a proposal such as: Systems Engineering, Database management, networking, project management, network security, etc. 150 people rewrite their resumes to reflect information requested in the RFP.

Roughly one year and 9 months after the golf game the RFP comes out. Our proposal team goes into 11 hour days. They take and edit to shreds the 60 pages I wrote and combine it with all the other material taking great pains to ANSWER THE QUESTIONS IN THE RFP. I correct their edits. They re-edit. We create graphics. We have consultants who are retired from that agency review our proposal and use or reject their comments.

We turn in a completed proposal the day before it's due. Only one other team gets a proposal in. The agency, seeing that isn't enough competition EXTENDS the open period another 2 months. That is enough to allow two more teams to turn in bids on the proposal, but neither team has any real connection to the agency or the work and there's no way someone with no understanding of the players involved can win against a company that knows exactly what they're looking for.

My former company won, earning roughly $200 million over 10 years. They hire an additional 100 people or more. they rent a second office building.

That is government contracting in nutshell. Be a prime, be a sub, partner up, exploit all your intel within the agency, prove through past successes what you're good at. It's not like winning other customers, it's very specific.

There's basically one main place to go for this stuff: http://www.input.com

SS

[gbusiness]

A quick search will reveal that there are many services that can match your company to potential government contracts by industry. While elementary matching of this type can be useful, it doesn’t always shrink your prospect pool sufficiently to find a perfect match for your business and get an edge on your competition.

Some companies – such as BidNet – go beyond this basic matching and offer a summary of vital information , access to full bid and RFP documents, special agency notes, related links and data, and have the ability to monitor upcoming opportunities that have not yet become government RFPs (including pre-solicitations). A service that tracks bidding competition as well as winning bid information will give your company the greatest competitive advantage, bringing you that much closer to closing in on the right government bid.

The additional data available from a premium bid matching service will help you quickly decide how to treat each government RFP or bid. This results in usable business information, rather than simple, raw content that requires hours of work to sort through. Having highly-specific, tailored business intelligence about a bid or RFP greatly increases your chances of finding a perfectly-matched bid. A Request for Proposal or government bid, properly sourced, can often be such a good match to your business that you’d swear it was written with your company in mind.

[gbusiness]

here is the adress for bidnet government contracts

[gbusiness]

here is the link for Bidnet Government contracts services.... very helpfull, as I said !