Part of “targeting your federal market” includes choosing opportunities that are in your weight class. This mean opportunities for which you clearly have the experience, expertise, and resources to perform well. But there’s no doubt about it, a lot of government opportunities are larger and more complex than you can perform by yourself. So then the question becomes, should I find a teammate (or teammates) to pursue the opportunity? If so, who are my potential teammates and should I partner with them on one or more opportunities?
In the Government contracting arena, everybody teams with other companies at some point. Even large businesses like Lockheed and Boeing sometimes can’t do it all by themselves sometimes. You often see large businesses subcontracting for niche capabilities. While the large business might be able to perform the tasks, it makes more sense and makes them stronger in competition if they subcontract to a company that specializes in the required capability.
How do you determine if you need a partner?
- One good way is to use Skyway’s “RFP Score®” tool that is available on our website free to our Professional and above paid Community members. The RFP Score® asks you several questions regarding the opportunity you are considering and gets you to identify areas where you are not as strong as you could be. For example, you complete the RFP Score and you’ve gotten a score of 55 (out of 100). Maybe it’s because you don’t have a relationship established with the potential customer agency. It probably means that they don’t know you and that you’ve never performed a contract for them. Maybe if you find another small business who has a good track record established with the customer agency, you can subcontract a portion of the work to them and improve your “relationship” score and your “past performance” score and raise your overall RFP Score from 55 to 70, showing you’ve improved your probability of winning.
- Another thing you can do is something called a “Gap Analysis.” Basically, you look at your company’s capabilities against each requirement in the Performance Work Statement (PWS) or Statement of Work (SOW), and give yourself a score for each requirement. Using the evaluation scoring that the government will use (this is shown usually in Section M, Evaluation Criteria, of the solicitation) score your own capabilities against each requirement. Where did you score yourself less than the very top score? You might consider looking for partners who are stronger than you are in these areas.
So, how do you determine who to partner with?
- Sometimes your competition can be your friend. While you are researching who your competition is (see our blogs “Who are My Real Competitors?”, Part 1 and Part 2), you will probably also identify other small businesses who might be good partners. Maybe they are not as strong as you are in your core capabilities, but they have additional capabilities that you do not. You can use the same techniques you used to identify your competitors to identify companies who have the capabilities you are looking for.
- Large businesses. One thing that Contracting Officers look at is whether the offeror has not only the experience and capabilities to perform the contract, but also experience managing large contracts, and have sufficient resources to handle changes in work requirements when needed. Resources might include not only financial resources, but additional or unique manpower requirements. A small business teamed with a large business usually gives the evaluators a feeling that the offeror (the team) has sufficient management experience to handle sudden changes, has the broad personnel resources to quickly fill a unique position, and the financial resources to make sure the contract performance is successful. Remember, large businesses cannot compete in small business set-aside procurements, so they are often interested in subcontracting to a small business on an opportunity that they otherwise could not pursue themselves. They also bring a wealth of knowledge and capabilities in proposal preparation which they often are very willing to share to help improve your chances even more.
Whoever you team with, be sure and update your RFP Score® and your Gap Analysis to reflect the capabilities and strengths that your subcontractors bring to the team. You should see a higher score resulting from the teaming arrangement. If not, perhaps you do not have the right partner. Ask your potential partners for copies of any CPARS they’ve received, especially for your customer agency. Look for significant weaknesses as well as strengths because you don’t want to bring someone on who is going to hurt your team, not help. If you’ve still got some gaps in capabilities against the PWS, consider picking up an additional company to fill those gaps to give your team the best possible probability of winning.