Everybody knows that Fed Biz Ops (FBO) (www.fbo.gov) is the place to look for upcoming federal opportunities. But did you know that FBO can also be a good way to begin targeting your government market as well? It’s a searchable database of synopses, special notices, awards, and even solicitations that have been posted in the past as well as upcoming opportunities. Just as important is that it maintains an archive of opportunities that have been published in the past, as well as those that are upcoming.
If you go to FBO, on the home page you’ll see a link for “Advanced Search.” Click on that and it opens a window with literally dozens of elements that you can search on – including searching the FBO “Archives.” Clicking on “both” allows you to search across all of the records, both currently active and those that have been archived.
To begin identifying and targeting the agencies who buy your products or services within the federal government, click on “both” then scroll on down to the section marked “Classification.” Scroll through that list and you’ll see that numbers identify products, and letters “A, R, Q, etc.” identify services in general categories. Let’s say you’re looking for agencies buying nursing services, so that would fall under “Q-Medical Services.” Select that group. That’s as much as you want to narrow your first search. So go on down to the bottom and click on “Search.”
The next window will show a list of links to opportunities that have all be advertised under the classification of “Q-Medical Services.” If you look at each opportunity shown, you’ll see the agency that has advertised the procurement. The first thing you’ll notice is that there are a lot of “VA” agencies shown. Makes sense doesn’t it? The Department of Veterans Affairs is charged with providing care to America’s military veterans and that often means providing medical services.
If you click on one of these, you’ll open up what’s called a “synopsis.” You will find great information in here. For example, the name, address and phone number of the agency running the procurement, as well as the name(s) and email address of the actual people in the agency that are in charge of that actual procurement. And it’s info that has been entered by that person, so you know the information is up to date and accurate.
So you’ve learned that the VA (several different offices) buys your services. If you go back to the list, you’ll find other agencies and offices that routinely buy your product and/or service. Some will surprise you (the Department of Agriculture, for example), some you’ll probably already know (Department of the Army, Medical Command – guess what they buy?).
The process can be time consuming. But, using the list you’ve just developed you can now target those agencies and individuals that you KNOW buy what you sell!