During my nearly 40 years as a Contracting Officer, then government proposal consultant, I have seen some systemic problems on both sides of the contracting desk that continue to plague the federal contracting arena. In Part 1 I talked about some things that, if the government could change them, would make contracting much more successful for both industry and government agencies.
So what are some areas that industry could stand some improvement in?
- Not targeting your government market. An awful lot of new companies are just so excited to be in business that they feel like they can literally do anything. And that’s what they tell their potential government customers. When a small business came in to talk with me about doing business with my agency, the first thing I’d ask them, of course, was “what industry are you in?” I hated to hear the small business respond with: “We can do anything! What does your agency need the most?” (Seriously!) News flash: the government (just like any other customer) wants to buy its products and services from companies who can solve their problems and who are experts in the services they offer. It’s really hard to target your market if your company isn’t focused on its core capabilities. This often results in —
- Losing contracts you could have performed because you are too busy trying to be everything to everyone
- Winning contracts that you can’t perform because (seriously) you cannot “do everything,” at least not well.
- Damaging your reputation due to poor performance
- Damaging your company due to poor reputation.
- Underbidding so you can win the contract, but not being able to perform the contract satisfactorily because you underbid. In today’s environment of more companies competing for fewer contracts, it’s no wonder we are seeing an uptick in the number of contracts being re-competed after just a year due to poor contractor performance. Bidding to win at all costs results in unrealistically low prices due to underbidding. More frequent and sometimes inappropriate use of LPTAs by government agencies drives this as well. While it is always important to be as competitive as possible in your pricing, under bidding can result in your company’s inability to perform the contract satisfactorily or even at all. Poor performance can damage your company’s ability to compete for future opportunities, and isn’t that what business thrives on? Future opportunities?
- Believing all government contracting personnel are lazy and incompetent with bad attitudes. I recently had a client tell me that the contracting officer (CO) for one of his customer agencies was just plain lazy. Not that I thought he was wrong, understand, but I was curious as to why this contracting officer in particular drew his comment since I thought they had an amicable, successful relationship. The CO told him that she was using GSA FSS more now because the process was so streamlined and she “…didn’t want to have to evaluate 26 proposals” each time. Now, being an ex-contracting officer myself, that doesn’t sound “lazy” to me. It sounds smart! I told my client that and he replied, “Not from my perspective! I’m not on the GSA Schedule he’s using!” (We are correcting this situation now, by the way.) But the point is, my client apparently has a negative attitude toward government contracting people that colors his perspective of every interaction he has with them.
This negative attitude can even show up in your proposals – and not just by small businesses. Back when I was still a CO, I lead a source selection team for a $1 billion contract for providing maintenance and special services for equipment for a DoD agency. The contract was a huge, long-term services contract meaning that the government agency and the contractor would have to work closely together over the next several years. Five very large, well known industry members submitted proposals. We had 30 evaluators divided into teams to evaluate the Technical Approach, Sample Tasks, Past Performance, and Price. The proposals were large and complex (about 350 pages for each offeror’s Technical/Sample Task Volumes), so the evaluators had a number of questions for each offeror. We sent out questions to all five of the offerors regarding their proposals. One of the five offerors stood out across all of the evaluation teams. Every single evaluator on each evaluation team said that this company’s answers were sarcastic, condescending, and even disrespectful of the government’s questions. They made it clear through the tone of their response that they thought the government’s questions were stupid and beneath them. It didn’t matter whether the answers would have clarified the areas that the government had questioned or not. No one wanted to work with them – ever! The corporate attitude of this company so tainted their proposal that they truly had no chance of winning – and you can understand why!
The bottom line is, if you take the time to learn who your customer is for your core competencies, “price-to-win” (but not go under!), and look at each new customer agency with a positive attitude, you’ve got a strong start to building a successful, long-term relation with your government customers.