Unless you’ve somehow got a sole source in hand, no one can guarantee that you will win any particular opportunity. There are, however, ways to increase your probability of winning by choosing the opportunities you go after more carefully. Here are three suggestions.
Target Your Market. Here at Skyway, we emphasize targeting your market as being one of the most important things you can do to improve your chances of winning a contract with the government. Targeting basically means figuring out which agencies within the federal government buy what you sell. We have webinars (Target or Forget It!) and podcasts (Why Targeting Matters) describing the benefits of targeting and offering additional resources that are available to companies to help them target their specific customers within the federal market place. There are ways to do some initial targeting that are free, such as using the Federal Business Opportunities website (www.fbo.gov). See our blog “Targeting the Market Using FBO” for details regarding this approach. Targeting your market allows you to focus on getting to know your customers, their missions and needs, which increases your probability of winning.
Compete in Your Weight Class. It’s exciting to find an opportunity that is a match to your core capabilities with the opportunity of landing a huge contract. But if you are a small business with five employees and a few small contract efforts under your belt, how likely is it that you will be selected to perform a contract valued at $50 million requiring 45 – 60 employees, being performed at multiple locations across the United States?
Part of “targeting” includes choosing opportunities in your company’s weight class. This mean efforts for which you clearly have the experience, past performance, expertise, and resources to perform the contract successfully. Yes, determining your weight class is subjective and you might possibly be able to successfully manage a contract that is valued at 10 times your average gross revenue, that would quadruple the number of employees you have overnight, and you might be able to find a bank out there that will give you the funds you’ll need to accomplish contract start up for three months and pay your employees without receiving your first check from the government for 90 days. But (and this is key) you must be able to convince the government that you have a strong probability of success in performing their contract. If you choose opportunities that you clearly have the capabilities, experience and resources to perform, your probability of winning increases significantly.
Use Skyway’s RFP Score®, Deltek’s GovWin or Other RFP Analysis Tool. Large businesses are constantly looking at their probability of winning every opportunity they pursue. Even after having spent weeks preparing for the solicitation to be issued and a corresponding amount of money in preparation for writing their proposal, if their analysis indicates that they have a low percentage chance of winning they will pull the plug on the effort, and turn to the next proposal with a higher chance of them winning. There are a number of tools and processes out there that you can employ to perform this analysis. It will show you where your weaknesses are which allows you to identify ways to strengthen your position maybe through selective teaming. Or it can show you that there is a key piece you don’t have and can’t reasonably attain allowing you to make a decision to not spend your limited time and resources on an effort you probably won’t win.
Targeting your federal market, being brutally honest about your probability of winning (not just blindly hoping), and making smart decisions based on a thorough analysis of each opportunity, will help you to increase your probability of winning and successfully performing government contracts that are right for your company!