The great news about the government market? There are a million opportunities.
The bad news about the government market? There are a million opportunities.
One of the biggest challenges for any company in this market (and I would argue in business in general) is choosing what NOT to do. When there are a limitless number of opportunities the choices are harder to make. The fact is, if you dream big enough, hope hard enough, and wish long enough, any opportunity could be the next big contract, the next big customer, the next big partnership. Without a clearly defined filter, everything you choose not to do ends up feeling like a missed opportunity and you waste a lot of time playing the “could have, would have, should have” game.
As a contracting officer, the number of compliant but less than qualified proposals I received was frustrating. Despite my efforts to ensure I would only get proposals from people who were focused on the one thing I was buying, I almost always had some that were just submitting a proposal. I knew within minutes that it would not be a winner, but I had to evaluate it just the same.” This ate up valuable time. If only they had targeted better.
NOTE for the COs reading this, I didn’t realize it at the time, but I was part of the problem too. I used bland, broad and loosely defined words. I didn’t ask industry as much as I should have for their input. As a result, the companies who had not targeted our RFPs actually thought they could win. Bad on me.
At the same time, there was that one offeror who was excited to be able to submit yet another proposal. The RFP sounded just like what they do. They would be competitive on it for sure.
However, the goal is not to be competitive…it is to WIN.
With enough dreaming, enough hoping and enough wishing (and enough time), nearly any company can be competitive. After all, the purpose of an RFP is to compete offerors, right? The catch is that you can be very competitive on every proposal you submit and not actually win anything. And while it is exciting to submit lots of proposals, it’s even more exciting (exponentially more exciting) to win. By targeting your efforts, you will win a higher percentage, and that is exciting indeed.
So how are you targeting? Are you really trying to decide on what not to do instead of looking for things just to bid on? How do you know? Have you considered the possibility that you are just working really hard to justify not targeting?
Here’s a quick rule of thumb to help you decide: when you review that opportunity, if it’s not HELL YES (as in you would be willing to drop everything to pursue it), then it’s HELL NO and you should not waste another second on it. This simple “HELL YES” test has saved me countless hours chasing things that were either completely not right for us, or worse, were ‘not quite right’ and I would have spent days, weeks, or even years trying to make them right. Do you have any of those? We have. And I’m sure we’ll have more.
Before you think I’m on my high horse here, let me point out that we’ve learned this by experience. We do fewer things as a company than we did when I founded Skyway almost 5 years ago. In fact, we target fewer opportunities. Plus, we also turn down a lot more opportunities now because we’ve finely tuned our strategy. Why? Because when I studied the amount of time I was spending on things that might be right for us instead of focusing on things that are right for us, it was appalling.
Now we focus our efforts on serving those people and companies who:
– want to be in the government market
– truly appreciate the insights that a team of former COs brings them
– are serious, not just curious, about targeting and winning contracts
– who embrace our insanely simple business model of
— a Community membership for training and general advice and
— a one flat rate structure for all direct support across all disciplines
– who appreciate our 5 Core Values, 4 Keys, and 3 Non-Negotiables.
You would think that with such a strict list, we’d have a harder time finding clients. It seems counter intuitive, but that focused clarity has actually brought us more customers, and customers who we are uniquely qualified to serve. We are the prize for them.
If you don’t have a set of filters that makes you uncomfortable at how small the market may be, then you’re probably not targeting tightly enough. The great news is that the government market is so huge, you can target ruthlessly and still have more opportunity than you could chase.
If it’s not HELL YES, then it’s HELL NO.