Business Government Contracts

Printers large and small learn how to treat customers.  Selling is requisite to gaining new business.  Relationships are paramount.  Pricing is based on what the customer is willing to pay. And when it comes to minor disagreements, the customer is always right, and if the relationship is sufficiently deep, even the cost for fixing the problem can end up in the next job. 

GPO is different.  To be precise, GPO is contrarian to everything printers know about selling customers.  Gaining new business has nothing to do with selling.  In fact sales persons need not call.  Relationships don’t count.  Pricing is not based on what the customer is willing to pay, but on being the low price among other responsive, responsible, and qualified bidders.  In fact the GPO customer is not always right, and there is no eye wink allowance to add the cost for fixing a problem into the next job.  Rather, what defines and controls the relationship are the rules, regulations, paperwork and red tape.  Dealing with the Federal Government and its GPO is not easy for novice want-to-be GPO printers.  Having the skill to read and understand the subtleties of solicitations, specifications, contract terms, quality assurance guidelines, paper specifications, terms and conditions, and more is just the tip of the iceberg. 

Instinctive decision making, commercial sales experience, good business sense… all have no place in the GPO marketplace.  Working with the massive, complex and convoluted GPO is different.   By not accepting this difference printers can expect burned fingers, work accomplished out of scope, reduced prices, and even rejected work.  Some printers try to compensate for a lack of knowledge through over-caution.  This, too, results in excessive production costs, paper bought at higher than necessary prices based on misinterpreted specifications, and frustration throughout the operation.  . 

That’s why the majority of the 400 active GPO vendors use a government print management firm that provides full representational services, accurate information, market intelligence, past price histories, and access to all available GPO solicitations.  With a government print management firm at your side, you receive assistance with paper work handling, specification interpretation, proposal preparation, bidding process management, the production process, change order negotiation, invoice preparation and collection, and cutting through the government red tape.

What potential hazards await inexperienced printers attempting to do GPO work?

One hazard comes from a lack of understanding as to who is the actual customer.  Is it the Federal Agency (such as IRS, Air Force, or Interior) whose printing job is being procured?  Or is it the GPO which is actually procuring the printing job?  The answer is that the GPO is the customer of the printer.  Acknowledging this then brings forth a second question.  Should a printer call on the Federal Agency directly?  This answer is a bit more difficult, as some printers do call on the Federal Agency and attempt to influence the specification writing process.  These printers feel that this activity gains them an advantage in the bid process.  The truth is that often times the work accomplished by the sales persons who attempt to gain this advantage is often for naught, as GPO will rewrite the specifications to allow for maximum competition.  More likely than not, the sales expense generated by calling on the Federal Agency is money that could be better spent for real sales efforts in the commercial marketplace.  Even then, when a job goes out for bid, printers that see that the specifications were written to favor a particular printer will often request that GPO take a second look at the specifications to make them more competitive and to issue an amendment before bid opening. 

Another hazard comes from a lack of understanding as to the nature of the relationship.  Is it the right thing to do a requested favor for the GPO buyer or for the Federal Agency?  For example, when a printer has won the job and the printer is asked to move up the schedule, is it OK to do so without compensation?  The answer is that the printer is entitled to fair and just compensation for anything that the printer does on behalf of the GPO or the Federal Agency.  Favors done for GPO on jobs for which printers do not receive just compensation represent money lost as GPO cannot return favors.  Whenever GPO makes a change to an initial print job request, GPO is required to issue a change order, unless the printer waives its right to be compensated for the change. 

One of the most frequent hazards comes during the bid process.  Printers neglect to acknowledge bid amendments, which are changes to the initial bid solicitation that must be acknowledged by bidders in order for bids to be accepted by GPO.  In other words, if an amendment is not acknowledged, the printer is not awarded the job, no matter how low its price or how capable its abilities.  The problem is that amendments are not always handled by GPO bid services and are not always posted on the free GPO bid site.  Seasoned government print management companies obtain amendments, ensure that these amendments are in the hands of their clients in time to be understood and acknowledged prior to bid opening.  This is the only sure way of getting amendments. 

Finally, there is the hazard of paper work.  And there is a lot of it.  The GPO works on the premise that if there is no paper work, or if the paper work is defective or incomplete, payment cannot be made or proof of claim cannot be substantiated.  A clear trail of all paperwork is essential.  All changes must be justified.  All billings must be exact with the appropriate attachments.  The GPO only pays for what can be documented as having been previously approved by an authorized GPO representative.  A Federal Agency representative – someone from the agency that has requested the work – may not be an authorized representative.  No job is finished until the paper work is done, and doing the paper work properly is the only way to obtaining payment and not having to pay penalties for misunderstandings. 

Understanding the complexities and subtleties of working with the GPO is critical to winning federal government printing jobs and being successful and profitable with them. V. G. Reed in Kentucky and Graphcom in Pennsylvania know it is important to have a government print management firm as a partner.  They are among the most successful printers for the GPO. Not only do they understand the value of working with government print management experts, they know the importance of maximizing capacity on their own printing equipment.  Printing for the government can fill an important gap for a printer and can generate income that otherwise would not be there.  It is a win-win for the GPO and the printer.

Some call governmental rules, regulations, specifications, process, protocol and procedure red tape or bureaucracy.  To those who know how the system works, it is called getting the job done.

About e-LYNXX Corporation

e-LYNXX Corporation (www.e-LYNXX.com) (888-876-5432) licenses its U.S. Business Method Patent No. 7,451,106 – The Gindlesperger Method – to buyers and third party procurement and system providers through its Patented Procurement Method division (www.PatentedProcurementMethod.com).  e-LYNXX also works with print buyers to reduce their procured print costs through its American Print Management division (www.AmericanPrintManagement.com) and with print suppliers seeking to improve their revenues by winning government work through its Government Print Management division (www.GovernmentPrintManagement.com). Founded in 1975 as ABC Advisors, e-LYNXX Corporation is based in Chambersburg, PA 17201. 

My 5-year-old daughter, when working on a puzzle, knows to glance at the whole picture first, before starting to assemble the pieces. She is up to 30-piece puzzles now, which have gotten quite complex. So, her process is to study the picture, and then find a corner piece to which she then starts adding pieces.

We, as adults, sometimes forget to take a step back and look at the whole picture first when we solve our own puzzles: how to grow our company, how to win a contract, or how to bring in revenue.  This is why, to win more winning government contracts, it is important to step back and take a few minutes to ponder the full lifecycle of business development. This way we can be better at putting the pieces together.

A typical business development lifecycle for a government contracting company (covered more in depth at http://www.ostglobalsolutions.com/blueprint)consists of the following pieces:  

Strategic business development planning is the first step – it is the corner piece of the puzzle. It is necessary because it becomes your beacon when you start looking at a universe of opportunities. Businesses often fall into a trap of working without a plan, or writing the plan once, and then leaving it to collect virtual (and physical) dust while they are engaged in the routine day-to-day operations. The trick here is to stick to the plan that you keep up to date, and avoid jumping at every opportunity that may have nothing to do with the plan but seems attractive at the moment.

Market research is the next step. It goes hand-in-hand with your strategic business development plan and makes the whole planning process somewhat iterative. In order for you to plan, you need to know which vertical markets you are going to go into, and who are your ideal customers. This leads you to more detailed research, which then feeds your planning process.

Pipeline development is the natural outcome of your market research. Now that you know which agencies and which areas you are going to explore, you will need to zoom in further and develop a list of opportunities that you are then going to narrow down further and further as you learn more about them. These opportunities will be in the near term with a request for proposal coming out in 1-6 months, the mid-term – with an opportunity expected to open up in the next 6 months to 1 year, and long term – 1-5 years out. Some of the large and important opportunities may then make it into your strategic plan – and you may start calling them strategic bids or must-win opportunities.

Marketing to the federal government is related to the overall effort of attracting customers to your company, and creating awareness of
your brand and offers. One of our tips will cover marketing in detail.
Opportunity identification narrows down the list to the select few pursuits that you decide to dedicate a significant effort to pursue.  Each of these individual opportunities then enters the capture phase.

Capture management. Capture (yes, it’s what it’s called in the professional business development circles) often is the longest step in the business development lifecycle. It has to do with positioning yourself pre-proposal to win a specific opportunity. A proposal usually has a short deadline, whereas capture may take years. It doesn’t necessarily mean years of someone doing it full time. It means years of deliberate activities all leading you up to the win.  For example, I once ran a capture effort for 2.5 years for a billion dollar plus pursuit, but only spent ,000 on my time and the time of an entire team of specialists during the first two years. It was not until the last 6 months of the capture effort that we had to focus a lot and start spending more money. I will tell you more about capture in one of the other tips.

Proposal management. Proposal management (or proposal preparation) is essentially just that: managing the development of a winning proposal document to deliver it by the deadline. It is an iterative process that usually involves multiple contributors and a set of reviews to check quality and progress. Here are some of the most important characteristics of a winning proposal, majority of which stem from a well-run capture effort:
1. Matching the solution with the customer’s wishes and vision through a solid capture effort
2. Great process that gets you to the deadline without undue stress and allows you sufficient time to polish your document
3. Targeted features and benefits, with a clear value proposition.

BD During Implementation. The reason contract delivery is part of the business development lifecycle is simple: once you have a government contract, the ground is ripe for adding scope (what is called “an up-sell” in sales).

Your people who work on the project with the customer are your eyes and ears if you train them correctly in the capture process. They can find out about the need for additional work, and inform your business developer. Your business developer will pay a visit to the government representative, learning more about the requirements. They can then use this information to submit a white paper or an unsolicited proposal. This may result in adding scope to your existing contract.
Your staff on the ground can also tell your business developers about other requirements they may be hearing about that may not yield themselves to adding scope. These are new additions to your pipeline – but these additions are infinitely more valuable than others because you get to hear about them early, they are from an existing customer that bought from you before and therefore trusts you more, and you already have a relationship.

During implementation, you also generate past performance track record that you can leverage in your next proposal. On the other hand, if you don’t do well, then you get to tarnish your record with the government very quickly – and this record proliferates from this customer to other government agencies through various past performance databases. It is important that once you have won a contract, you do a great job. Do whatever it takes to deliver and please your customer.

So, now you have the big picture, and know how all the pieces of the business development puzzle are supposed to fit together. The next tips for winning government contracts will explore some of the key pieces.  Stay tuned, and don’t hesitate to ask questions.