Selling to the Feds:

Getting to Know You

You understand the federal fiscal year sales cycle and how it affects your marketing and sales activities. You’ve finally obtained your GSA Schedule contract — it took months to prepare the proposal and negotiate the award, but you’ve got your GSA Schedule pricelist online on GSA Advantage! and have boxes of newly printed hardcopies ready for distribution.

What do you do now? You are scared that you are about to throw the biggest party of your life and nobody’s going to come to it! If you don’t connect with some buyers and close some sales, all that hard work preparing headquarters for the long sales cycle, etc. is going to sound like a sorry excuse for poor performance. And you’ll end up using those shiny new GSA Schedule pricelists to wrap fish at your next job.

So how do you meet buyers? Selling and buying is a two-way street; it takes two to dance the contract tango — a seller and a buyer — although either party can lead the dance. So meeting buyers is one-half them getting to know you, getting to know all about you (sorry, I couldn’t resist), and the other half is you the seller getting to know the buyers. It’s not one and the same.

The first and best way to get buyers to know you is to advertise in Government Video!!! OK, they paid me to say that, but it happens to be true. GV is the premier audio-video-broadcast magazine targeted directly at the federal government user community (and state and local users, too). Advertising in GV announces your arrival on the government procurement scene, shows that you’re ready to fight for sales, and demonstrates that you want the federal agency user and buyers out there to get to know you.

Developing your mailing list is another important way to get the word out about your company and products. Using the mailing list to send out flyers about new products, upgrades or promotions keeps your company image fresh. To start with, you can use the distribution list you get when awarded a GSA Schedule contract. The list comprises user agencies that have previously expressed interest in the type of products available on your Schedule contract. GSA will give you the list either in gummy labels or on disk. While the list is not targeted to your company’s particular products and may contain a number of obsolete leads, it’s a starting point for the development of your mailing list.

Other sources for your mailing list are agency Web sites, which usually list procurement information and opportunities for contractors, and the Commerce Business Daily. While the growth of GSA Schedules has decreased the importance of the CBD as a source of Request for Quotations and RFPs, the CBD when read over time is still valuable. Even if you cannot respond to a CBD announcement, you can use the CBD to learn about which offices are buying audio, video, and broadcast products.

Advertising, distribution of your GSA Schedule pricelist, and flyers alone will probably not lead to an avalanche of orders. But users and buyers will get to know about your company name and your products. Next time you meet them, they’ll know who you are.

Face to face meetings are overwhelmingly your most important sales tool. As noted above, fewer and fewer procurements are advertised in the CBD. More and more procurements are placed against GSA Schedule contracts unbeknownst to the contractor community at large. With so much going on in private among contractors and government buyers, personal contact is king.

To get to meet buyers and users, you can cold call user agencies and ask for a short meeting to introduce yourself and your company. Trade shows, especially the Government Video Technology Expo (that plug was for free), are an excellent way of meeting potential customers. After adding the prospect met at the show to your mailing list, you can follow up with a personal visit.

Demos are an effective method of interesting users in your products. If possible, prepare for the demo with materials relevant to the agency’s mission; your commercial demo materials may not be persuasive to the agency. If you already know many users who will be attending a technical conference, you can rent a hotel room nearby and schedule an open house with demos of your products.

Finally, the placement of evaluation units on site at the agency is the next best thing to getting the order. Once your products are on site, the agency will grow to rely on them.

Advertising, a mailing list, personal introductions, a handshake, a dialog about what your product does and doesn’t do, a demonstration, problem solving, evaluation units, and staying in touch over months and years. It’s showing the users and buyers that you are a reliable source of needed goods and services, that your products are high quality, and that you provide support when needed.