Connection - Federal Contracting

0:01 This program is designed to provide general information with regards to the subject matters covered. This information is given with the understanding that neither the hosts, guests, sponsors, or station are engaged in rendering any specific and personal medical, financial, legal, counseling, professional service, or any advice. You should seek the services of competent professionals before applying or trying any suggested ideas. Hello, and thank you for tuning in to a Sharp Outlook on pay for HD Radio and Talk or TV. I am Angela Sharp, your host. Our arm chair discussions with industry experts will give you the steps, tools and information to be successful in business and to prepare you to be your best self.

0:55 Hello, I'm Angela Sharp, and we are welcome to a Sharp Outlook and we are going to have an exciting show filled with lots of information that's going to be helpful to you. Our topic is connections to Federal contracting. Federal contracting takes the ability to connect the dots, and our guests will cover some of the first steps business must take to use their capabilities connections, sales, and proposal writing skills to win federal contracts. The federal government spent approximately seven hundred and fifty five billion dollars in twenty twenty four. According to the Governance Accountability Office, three hundred and ten billion was civilian agencies and four hundred and fifty five billion was Department of Defense. But that's just the spending week, and actually see in the public data there are so there are also several other layers of federal contracting we don't see, which can add up to trillions every year. Obtaining federal contracts takes a number of steps, which our guests will discuss in the power pack time.

2:12 So be ready to take a lot of notes because there will be guided golden nuggets excuse me, dropped everywhere, from registering that system for award management to writing winning proposals. Aileen Kent is our guest, will cover some of the beginner steps you need to take to position yourself properly. Kent says, despite the hype that the federal government is the largest customer in the world, the federal market isn't for everyone. But if you have a proven product or service that is available and at a reasonable price to the federal government and they actually need product or service, this hour will help you understand what it will take to be successful in the years to come. My guest is Eileen Kent. She is a prominent federal sales guide, trainer, and consultant. Known as the Federal Sales Guide. She specializes in helping businesses navigate the complexities of securing government contracts through her company, Custom Keynotes, LLC. Before focusing solely on federal contract and Kent worked in various sales and management roles, including a significant significant period at Brook Furniture Rental at nine.

3:42 After nine to eleven, she was tasked with leading a Lewis and Clark expedition to introduce temporary office furniture solutions to federal agencies nationwide, including the FBI, DHS, and Service. The experience of selling directly to the government formed the basis of her later teaching. From two thousand and three to twenty twelve, Kent served as the director of the Federal Sales Academy at federalmarket dot Com. During this time, she trained over ten thousand people on federal sales proposal writing in GSA scheduled contract preparation. In twenty twelve, she founded her own company, Custom Keynotes, LLC to offer personalized federal sales strategies and action plans. She assisted a national roofing contractor, Tecta America, and capturing sixty five million in federal contracts during the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act AAARRA funding period two thousand and nine to twenty ten. Credited with setting up the first offices for the newly formed Department of Homeland Security at an undisclosed location. She developed a three step program to guide contractors in market research, competitive analysis, and strategic action planning, which has been used

5:16 by over three hundred and fifty companies. Ailan Kent is a national key note speaker and a respected authority in the government contracting community. She has been hired by the GSA General Services Administration itself to train both industry partners and internal GSA contract specialists. Her consulting and training focus on practical and real word strategies for success, emphasizing the following areas training, hiring and managing federal sales teams, training, managing winning bids, developing custom federal sales action plan, performing deep dive competitive analysis reports, custom for your specific product or service, and building and executing federal sales action plans.

6:14 She is an active advocate for the Federal contract and community sharing job leads on linked LinkedIn and providing ongoing support and insights through various platforms and events. I want to welcome Eileen to the show today to give us those golden nuggets. Thank you, thank you, thank you for inviting me today. I'm very excited to be here and to be able to help anybody who's looking at this marketplace as something to enter. Thank you for having me on your show. Well, I know, I'm really thankful, and I wish I had known about you years ago when I was trying to do contract with the federal government. Oh, it would have saved me an awful lot of hours and time, frustrations, anger, everything. Sorry, that was just how I was handling it.

7:13 It's not an easy They don't call it the Lewis and Clark Expedition for nothing. It's like going up a river without a paddle or budget, and you have to survive on your own for a year. It's going out on a limb, So it is. There's risk to it. Yeah, yeah, and you got to really believe in yourself if you're going to approach this. But it is rewarding if you make it through. The steps. So let's start with the beginner baby steps. What is the way? What is the very first step a company needs to do to even be considered by the federal government as a company they can hire.

7:54 Great Well, I really like the way you said a company, because a lot of people are looking at going after federal business. As an individual. Maybe you're working at another job and you heard that if you're a woman, or you are a teeny tiny small company that the Feds are looking for you, I really want you to first instead of looking at yourself, you need to discover your superpowers. So if you have a business that's really good at something. For example, you might be really good at delivering hardware supplies to commercial companies in your backyard, or maybe you're really good at construction projects or repair projects in your backyard.

8:45 Or maybe you offered some training to the commercial world and you think it might have value with the government. The first thing you need to absolutely establish is what do you offer? What can you offer for commercial companies? What can you offer the government or government agencies and individuals to either make their lives easier, make things go faster, make things be more secure for them. Think about what you can do for them at a reasonable price. So really the first step is to look within what are you offering. Some people right now in the industry are thinking, well, I'm a woman owned I'm a woman and I heard through the news that they're looking for me. No, they're looking for a capability. If you happen to be a woman owned business, great, But capability is first. So you do need to look within a bit to see what your superpowers are and really harvest and decide the specifics of that. You don't want to go in saying I do construction and furniture and environment and repair, and I'll and I do computers too. You can't diversify like that.

10:03 You need to hyper focus on your capabilities. I call it choosing a lane. So that's the first step. Then when it's time to think about doing business with the federal government, there's a website called s a M dot gov source system for a Wardmanagement dot gov, and there is an entity section there where you're going to put your business information in there. So you're going to put in your name, your address, who you are, size of your business, your area of expertise, and then there's a whole series of questions that are going to be very critical and they're there. The government's going to hold you to the answers to these questions and that's where you and I Angela will go, uh oh, this is a little much for me, and I highly recommend you go to look up a PEX apex Accelerators, the one in your backyard. They are free resources to you that you can go to and their superpower is getting you registered properly on that site and it's free. So that's the first thing you need to do is get registered on system for Reward Management and get everything in there legally, your legal name, your proper information, because if you don't put it in there the first time correctly, changing it's going to be very difficult. That's why you want to bring in this free expert that, by the way, the

11:36 DoD funds with brant money to take care of you. They want you to do it right, so they've brought these people in Apex Accelerators. So getting registered at SAM is the very first baby step if you want to do business with the federal government, because they won't even talk to you if you are not registered there, and they're going to double check to see if you're in there. If you're not, can't talk to you. Yeah, And also just depending on your business, that's the only place you can go in and apply for bids. Don't see something else under another area of business and think, oh, I'm going to jump over here and apply for over here, because that doesn't work either. I know, I tried it.

12:23 Yeah, SAM is SAM is a couple of other areas in it. So once you're registered there, there is a contract Opportunities section to SAM where you'll be able to set up keyword searches for what you do so that you can watch for opportunities to come across this website that you might be able to bid on. But before you go down that rabbit hole, you want to build some relationships. So the whole bidding process is a big jump and a huge investment on your end if you don't know what you're doing doing. So it's nice to look at them and read them. And I like to pull names out of those bid opportunities because if I have keyword searches. For example, let's say I do construction in Chicago, then I might put in the keyword construction or repairs and alterations, and then I start watching for opportunities that are just in my own backyard. I may or may not bid on those, but I can peel the names out of the point of contact, the phone numbers and the emails, so I can start to build a database that I can market to. So I'm not quite at the bidding point yet when I just register. Yes, you can bid on things on stand, but there's some other steps in between diving into that deep end right away.

13:45 Well, what kind of companies, products, or services do you see that the federal government needs? Oh boy, that's a great question. If you think, I want you to think about, just for a moment, a bait. If you went on a base. It's like going to a small city. They buy everything. They buy paving, they buy food, you know, for the officers club. You know, they buy groceries for the grocery stores. They buy pool supplies for the pool. They buy training, they buy fuel, auto supply items. They need services, they need delivery services, they need training. I mean, I could go on. Just think of a small city. They buy everything. So when you look at an agency near buying you let's just say, for example, it's I don't know, let's say it's the Social Security Administration. They buy office supplies and computers and training as well, and they buy furniture and they need moving services so I mean lighting energy. So they buy almost everything. In fact, over six hundred and fifty thou companies are registered on SAM right now wanting to do business with the federal government. Oh but only if fraction are actually doing business with the federal government. So they do buy almost everything. There's a few things that I would go, I don't know if the Feds buy that.

15:19 And that's where you could talk to someone like me to find out. Am I in the you know, do what I ought? Does what I offer? Do they even buy what I offer? So, but they pretty much buy everything. I have helped companies with the most oddball items Angela from I had one company that had and this is going to sound really strange, but they sold a matrix of flesh. I'm talking skin about this big Yeah, I know it sounds gross, but hear me out. It goes on burns and bed source. So the veterans at the VA, they weren't healing there burns and bed sorees for like seven months, eight months. They'd be stuck in the hospital with this thing not healing. And this company came in with this matrix that just went over it and within three weeks, these veterans were able to go home. But they'd have to teach the surgeon, teach the nurses, tell this new thing, and they go, it's three thousand dollars for that thing, and you say, well, yeah, but you're saving eight months of this person being hospitalized and they get to go home. So you also have to not only sell the technology, but the outcomes. So that's a big word now that they're using in the government is don't just sell me what you sell, sell me what the outcome is going to be. And in this case,

16:51 it was get your veterans home. In three weeks, they're not taking up a bed and they're healed and home. So I mean, that's a crazy piece of you know, that's by this. You know. So I've done some Like I said, I worked with a company that has a DNA lab. They do DNA testing, and they really had to break into the market a few years ago. And now they're famous and they actually and they actually got they just released that they are now identifying the remains of cold case marines and there's a there's a saying for marines that no one's left behind. They might have, you know, a piece of clothing or some DNA from fifty years ago that this company can now identify this person and bring them home. And they were brand new five years ago. And I'm not really allowed to say their name on this show, but they've been on the Today Show for instant files. They are all the major crimes that you see on television now.

18:05 That was amazing, Oh my goodness. Yeah. I mean when you first started there, it's like, whoo, where are you going? Right? And I mean I've helped I've helped you know, furniture companies and construction companies and more IT companies, and you can imagine with every angle possible. But every once in a while, I get these really cool niche things superpowers that people have and it's like, well, we don't know if they buy what you sell until we do some research. Let's see what they're using to solve this problem currently and see if they're open to hearing about what you have to.

18:46 Offer right right, and especially when it's affordable. I remember years ago, I had a client and she was wanting to do contracting with the federal government, and I said, okay, so you know what we what are we presenting? What are what's the product? Said? T shirts. I'm like, Oh, they're all that's not gonna work. T shirts. Okay, you know I'm here to hear help your paying. I'm going to help you get there. Oh my god. She went in there and she got contracts. She probably was maybe retired now. She got huge contracts just supplying T shirts. And I thought, who would have thought? I mean somewhere in my mind, and maybe others out there are probably thinking the same thing. They're just going sending someone to a shopping mall and getting T shirts. But I guess no, they're wanting products brought to them. So whatever you know you normally shop for, they need it too.

19:52 You just need to provide it at a reasonable price and on time and you know the qualities there, and like you said, and you build those relationships and they're always going to shop with you. But my goodness, exactly. Yeah. Yeah. We had a cousin that we were working on audio and visual equipment repair and I just didn't think that would you know, be something successful. He did it for years, h Yeah, and got lots of like what are the people doing? Like throwing these out the window. Oh yeah, well think about it right now. So you've got audio visual equipment is a great example of a product and a service by the way, that you can bundle up and provide to the federal government conference rooms having meetings like this. They need audio visual for that, right, They need security cameras, they need audio visual for surveillance. Unfortunately, it sounds kind of creepy to be part of that, but hey, they buy it.

20:57 I mean, they've got compondal papers and documents. They got my personal information there. They better have some cameras exactly. And they also do production. I mean my first government job, but when I came out of college, my degree was in broadcast journalism, so I was a video production person. So we bought studios full of equipment and cameras and you know, teleprompters and all that. So absolutely, the federal government buys audio visual, tons of audio visuals, and they need the services to make sure it works properly, it's installed properly, the right kind of cables. Is this in a secure place? Do they need it to connect all over the world? Think of all the different applications of audio visual. That's a great example. Angela ye or you're going there like that and then you're like, oh, yeah, they would buy that, they buy you know. So that's a very intriguing one.

21:53 Yes, what certifications help businesses secure federal contracts. So if you are a small business, there's a place that you need to go to at the SBA dot gov website, or you can go to Google and just google this. You're going to type in SBA size standards. Okay, that's the first thing you need to do is go to the SBA side standards and you're going to download a PDF file that will give you a list. They call them North American classification codes. They're categories. So five, I'm going to be a geek fer a minute, five four one five one one one two one three one four one five. Those are all IT related North American classification codes. Right. So when you look up your size standards, in some businesses, it's based on the number of employees you have. So in manufacturing, in most cases it's five hundred employees and above makes you a large business, and for ninety nine and below makes you a small But if you're an IT software company, you could have two people, so they won't do it based in you know, hitting big numbers, so they use the size standard. I think it's around thirty two to thirty five million a year.

23:18 So some North American classification codes are based on a dollar amount, others are based on number in place. So you look up your main North American classification code. It's usually the code that you use on your taxes. So you look that up and you look at the size standard. If your business is smaller than that size standard from your sales in the last two or three years, you're considered a small business. So you in your SAM record can say you're small. So that's the first thing. You can self certify yourself as a small business. Now there are other certifications. There is the woman owned so you can it's fifty one percent woman owned. And let me emphasize you need that certification to get it out of the SBA. There's paperwork you need to fill out and you need to prove. Females, you need to prove that you are active in the business at the financial level or higher. You cannot be working in another business or in another job and your husband is running the business.

24:25 It's not appropriate. You need to be running the business. So woman owned. There's an economic disadvantage woman owned. So it's the kind of money that you have. I think they eliminate the ownership of your house, but they take a look at the amount of money you have and they determine whether you're disadvantaged. So that's another certification. There's a certification called eight A, which is basically socialized, socially and economically disadvantaged. Now that one, that one takes a little more time to get and you have to give a very strong narrative. I highly recommend to get that certification. You would need an expert to help you and I and there are lawyers out there to make sure you fill out. You have to fill out a narrative that proves that you've been socially or economically disadvantaged and they can't say, oh, I got turned down for a job once There's a little bit more to that, right, and there are also some financial things you need to provide.

25:26 So that takes a bit to get, but that would allow someone who gets that certification, they would have it for eight years and then they graduate. There's a lot of rules behind it. But if you have that certification, that allows you to get what we would call soul source contracts. Up to I think it's like four point five million or a little bit more. You're able to be awarded a direct contract without competition if you have this particular what we call a set aside, so that's a certification. There's hub zone, which is a where you live and where your business is located. There's some rules behind that, but if you are in it an underutilized economic area, you can be a hubzone. And if that's the case, again there are opportunities where you may be able to compete or win Soul Source. That means direct contracts without competition. The other one is veteran owned or service disabled veteran owned service veteran. You again have to go to the SBA. You have to prove that you're certified as service disabled. There's paperwork to be filled out to prove you're disabled. And you can also win soul Source contract as a service disabled veteran. And then of course we have tribal certifications. If you are a Native Alaskan, American, Hawaiian, you can. Again you have to prove it. These certifications

26:56 some people think they're made in a shade when they get them. But let me tell you get in line because thousands of other companies that have had those certifications for years, that have been working their way up building relationships with the customers. So you get them, but you still you're not going to sit and just wait for the bids to come out or the orders to come in. You actually have to actively sell yourself and really be good at something. The certification doesn't sell what you sell. It's your capability. And you happen to be a woman, you happen to be a day, and it makes it easier for them to limit competition down to three or directly award you something. So CERTs can help if you know how to leverage them properly.

27:44 Wow, that's great information. You know, I've just been wondering what are the pitfalls of selling to the federal government. You know, it takes a lot longer than many experts say it takes. I mean there's a whole lot of people say they can go and do the and but we'll have it in thirty days. That's not the truth. And it takes some time to win your first contract. Can you explain why that is and how the individual can avoid these pitfalls? Thank you? Yes. The first thing is is, unfortunately there's a lot of people out there in the gov con which they mean by government contracting, But I'm going to emphasize the con side of this business. A lot of people making gigantic promises that aren't necessarily the truth. And it's hard for me to tell you the truth, but here it is because I'm laying my eyes on the data of awarded contracts every single day. Okay. In this business, it takes twelve to twenty four months on average to win your first deal, and it probably is going to be very small, a teeny tiny deal to get you in the door, give you a shot. But they don't hand millions of dollars to just anybody. That's why it's important for you to be good and commercial and then

29:14 you can kind of bring some of this experience and you're pricing and your superpowers to the government, because if you just started your business and you don't have any expertise, you're expecting them to hand you millions of dollars. And some of these people that have been on YouTube and other site saying, you know, win millions and days and billion dollar market and all I can say is, yeah, three hundred and sixty five to seven hundred and thirty days one to two years, and I don't care if you are a multi billion dollar company or you're a mom and pop shop. It takes one to two years to get a first DATS inside contract. This is a relationship business and they need to they're very risk averse.

30:02 They don't just hand business to anybody. You really have to prove yourself. And our hope is is that if you have strong conversations with them early early on, and you build relationships and you talk to them about your past performance, you bring in past customers that are giving you thumbs up, or you have a prime that is bringing you or sponsoring you. Somebody needs to have done business with you to bring that forward, and you've got to be the best. That's when you're going to get business quick and under the radar, that's what we call it. But if you are just sitting in your office writing proposal after loser proposal, you are going to be penniless in about three months and you're going to be very frustrated.

30:52 So we need to turn that around. Because there's a lot of promises of AI companies saying let us write all your proposals, let us do this for you and you're going to invest in all these tools that are not doing what you're supposed to be doing, which is building relationships with people and only writing proposals that you know, they know you, You know them, you know when the situation is and you're walking in with your eyes wide open, knowing it's going to make you money. Blind bids will hurt your business. So yes, there's some pitfalls blind bidding all day and expecting to win business in days. This will take time, so you need to have a nest egg to get through that first one or two years.

31:37 Mm hm. You know. And it makes sense. And if you know people that are listening you, I'll just say it. Financially, they are accountable for those taxpayer dollars and they don't want it put on the news that they gave out these millions and billions of dollars and they were lost and the government didn't get anything for not saying that you would intentionally do that or you're planning on doing that, but it could happen. It destroys their job, It destroys the reputation of the department you're doing the work for. So they have to be careful because it's not like, well, you don't even want to do that with philanthropy money.

32:21 But they're accountable to the taxpayers that they spend that money on projects or services that are benefiting the government or benefiting citizens of the US or whatever, and they got a good product and it met the goals that they wanted to meet, And so they can't waste their dollars on newbies with no you know, referrals or no like you said, you know, having you know someone else that you have worked with, you know, speaking for you that they've done work for the government. But it's accountability. That's the reason why it's not like, oh, they just don't want to do it for me because I am a woman or i'm this, or I'm no. They're not going to do it because they are accountable for the dollars and they've got to make sure you really are going to provide what you're saying, and they don't know you, and so that's a whole lot of trust with dollars that they are that are trust dollars that they have to answer for, and so you have to understand the whole picture of what's really going on. So it's not going to be like you said, going in there doing those blind bids, and you just think you're just going to go get a bunch of money. You know, they started that stuff fifty years ago telling people that, and I still don't see a whole lot of them that that worked for. So yeah, right, yeah, this is great

33:51 information before you dive into the proposal, because it's a lot of information trying to write a proposal, and that's going to be selling. What should a company do before they even consider writing a proposal? There is a lot to do left of the proposal. All there's a bunch of steps before you actually go bid no bid, And the first step you need to do is there is data out there, which when I was selling to the government at first, Angelo, I'm not kidding you. When they sent me on the Lewis and Clark expedition, I had to travel to La travel to San Francisco, travel to San Diego, Las Vegas, Dallas, Atlanta, Chicago, DC, then La San Francisco, San Diego, Dallas, Atlanta, d C, Chicago, La S For seven out of eight weeks. I was on the road my first year. Because I wasn't given any information on how the FEDS bought what I sold.

34:57 I had to ask like a reporter. Luckily, I I had that background, that broadcast background, and I asked all the who, what, where, when? Why? Who are you working with? How? But I'd have to visit with them over and over and over again, Angela. We don't have to do that anymore. The Feds right now they have to report on their contracts in a database that's available. Yes, you can look it up in USA spending dot gov. That's available to you for free. But let me just tell you. I've been brought in by USA spending dot gov to give them feedback on how that system works. They don't even know what most of that data means. And it's over three hundred data points that you're downloading from it, and it's a mess. So it's kind of messy and it's hard to understand for a newbie. The one thing I love about USA spending is if you do pull data on a particular company, you do a search on maybe one of your competitors, you can see their subcontracts, so you can see who their primes are that there's selling to, and who the primes are selling to at the agencies.

36:03 So that's kind of helpful. But I actually use an internal keyword search capability inside SAM. That's very it's very It takes a consultant to understand how to use it, but it's available to us for free. That's what I do. I do keyword searches. I don't use North American classification codes to do searches. I use your superpower words and I look at your competitors data. And so the first thing is that you need to have someone for you or learn how to do it yourself. Need to go into those databases instead of spending the two hundred and fifty thousand dollars that I spent in travel to pull this information. Now there's subscription services that do that, but they can be as much as twenty five thousand dollars a year. Coming out of SAM directly is free if you know how to do it, or you hire someone like me to do it for you. So we pull the data and we can see who buys what you sell from whom, how they buy it, how many bids they got last time when the bid comes to an end, what the description is, what kind of company did they award it to? Are they eight a woman owned service disabled VET? Are they large? How much do they spend last time, and how much do they have left over to spend while they still had that contract. So those are the key elements of the data. So doing in a data analysis to see what's going on in this marketplace is the very first step you need to do.

37:31 So you get a handle on who specifically buys what you sell, and then you're going to focus on just five just five locations. So that might be I'm just going to say it for fun, if you were a health records company, the VA is going to pop up in the data. Of course your health records company, but there's one location in New Jersey that buys health record services, right, so you would focus all your sales efforts on that one location. You wouldn't be going across the VA at all nineteen hundred locations you just need to go to, but the databile point is there, right, So that's an example so doing a data analysis. Then once that analysis is done, it also shows you and I can't really go down this rabbit hole today, but what ways they buy and who they're buying from. Do you need those same type of contract vehicles or can you team with someone that has a relationship within there? And it also helps you decide you know what contract vehicles to invest in, what opportunities to watch out for. So that's the second step you need to go through. And then you need training and understanding the terminology in this business. You need to know what a GSA schedule is, what an IDIQ is, what a BPA. So these are things you need to kind of be understand this stuff. And then you need a plan so that you can focus all your sales

39:02 activities because a lot of people think I'm registered, I'm just gonna sit and wait for the opportunities. No, you need a salesperson like your T shirt person. I know she walked through walls to go get those orders. She had build relationships, show them their T shirts. You need to have salespeople reaching out to the customers and talking about your outcomes, your capabilities, your certifications, and your superpowers so that they start asking for you or directing the business your way. You need someone out there selling. Then, as you're watching for opportunities, only the bids that you knew were coming, that your salespeople were talking to them about, those are the only bids you're going to write. So those are some of the physical steps you need to go through and it can be done quickly with working with an expert, but you can also get training or DIY yourself. But it's going to take you probably one to two years if.

39:59 They are out. Yeah, it's going to take a long time. I'm just going to tell them. And you've got to just figure out think about your time and put a value rate on it, and then think about someone who can get it done in a short period of time and realize that. Just go get the work from someone else like Eileen, instead of spending all of this energy because you're going to go through a lot of frustration. You don't want to send it in there and then they have to send it back to you because it's not accurate because you didn't understand the language. You didn't understand you know, all those little abbreviations and things that they had. I mean, it's very little that's actually spelled out.

40:41 Everything's got a little acronym and you've got to understand what the acronym is. And then it's connected to some more acronyms that's connected through some more areas of the federal government, and all of them are going to be a part of the decision to make it so you got to you got to really understand what it is. What are the proposals and bid sites where you know vendors can find the opportunities. We talked about SAM but yeah. So sam doc gov is the free place where you can go and you would be clicking on the contract opportunities and they actually have a capability in there. You know, some people sell you subscriptions where they're watching the sites for you. Well, you can go into SAM yourself and develop your own keyword searches in there and save them and you can ask the system to notify you when stuff comes up. Now, if you put in project management, you're going to get like five hundred emails today. So you don't want to do that. But what I like to do is I don't I don't have it send emails to me. But I call it reading the mail.

41:45 I go to sam doc gov every Monday morning and I look up each of my keywords that I put in there, and I download all the opportunity. You can download a spreadsheet of all the opportunities and then I can quickly scan them to see which ones are fits, which ones are I need to dig in a little bit more. But one other little trick that you can do on SAM dot gov is put in a keyword of what they buy. That's a step before they need you. So what do I mean by that? I'm going to use furniture as an example, because furniture all of us can understand. Put in the keyword moves, construction, relocation, repair alterations because if they're building out a new wing, they're going to need furniture, but they haven't thought about that yet, right, So you're able to reach out to those people and say, I know you're building out this wing, but probably within six months you're going to need a whole bunch of new furniture. That's right. Can we come in and talk to you about our ergonomic chairs, you know. So putting in your information, your keyword searches for a step before they need you is a great little tool in SAM itself.

42:57 So that's one place SAM. Another places GSA, But you only have access to this site if you have pre negotiated your rates and been approved as a vendor at the GSA website. They have a site called EBI, so only GSA schedule holders can see this. So that's another little site that you can watch. But here's another trick that I use Angela. I don't watch the bid sites. I go looking for procurement for casts. So if you're selling, for example, the Homeland Security, like I was when I was at brook Right, so I started the way I started going after the business was TSA had just opened up four hundred locations, and so I went from TSA to TSA to they were working with my competitor, and they they pointed me to the person in DC that handled the whole thing. I went to meet with her.

43:54 She wasn't happy with the current vendor, so she walked me into the headquarters and said, don't work with my vendor that did four hundred locations, which was the major prime at the time. She said, use Eileen instead because she's got higher quality furniture and she's not going to do to you what this other company did to me. She was mad at them. So I was able to get in that way. But now at Homeland Security, so this is me chasing something down for a year. But now at Homeland Security, you can type in DHS percurement forecast and you will be able to get into their acquisition forecasting system and do keyword searches or just simply download the whole thing and do searches within the spreadsheet and now you're seeing things that are coming down the pipeline.

44:37 But once again you're going to need training on what that information is telling you so you can position yourself. But what I love about some of these percure and forecasts is they have names, emails, and phone numbers in them. Right, So that's so forget the d sites, look at the forecasts and what's happening. Maybe you can capture something we call it under the radar, so you never see the little light. To day rights. That's the smart way to go is to catch it under the radar. So it doesn't even have to go out to bid. You've already talked and got you know, the contract you know written for you because you've you've already made that. Connections. Connections are really important. Well, always talk about networking, but nobody realizes, you know, federal federal government, city governments, state governments, those are relationships that you have to build, you know, to build so that they are you know, going to do work for you.

45:38 Like I said, we my cousin was set up with the federal government for the audio visual equipment and repair but then he ended up being able to get a contract with State of California. Stayed busy all the time. Then you know counties that were in California and then cities that were I mean, and he registered with each one of them. And you know, even though he has retired, I'm still getting emails. I was awesome, I was on the contract. I don't do that work. I was just right and I thought, right, I can just pass this on.

46:19 But then you know, if they're not, if they're not certified and done everything that they need to do or whatever, you know, then I'm wasting a lot of energy. So I just said, somebody's going to get it, and you know, but it's just kind of interesting to see, you know, what's out there. And like I said, I've looked at some of those things in the forecast and it lets you know what's what's coming down the pike and you can even start prepping for it and then start building new connections. It's just calling people and saying why are you picking that? Or again the term before, it's either doing construction, but they didn't say anything about furniture. Hey did you even think about this? You know, so again you're you're focus your superpower. Don't look at everything going. I can do that, I can do that, I can do No, pick the one or two and build a relationship with that person listed or find them, find a way to find them.

47:11 And yeah, so and in terms of state and local, I do have a little thing to share here with that because I recently built a series of state and local for a particular client. I can't say who it is, but they were they were doing really well with the federal government, really really well, and they hired me to hire two sales people for them, train them up and have them chase. One went after federal and the other one went after state and local. So for the federal salesperson, and in this case, instead of just engaging me for that three steps for a month to do those three things I was talking about, they brought my on board two days a week to reach a base, manage a team, train them up, et cetera. So I ended up building about seven specific agency action plans for the federal government for them and twenty five states. And that took me five months to do that work. But it allowed the salespeople to just pick up the phone because they didn't have to do any of the research, pick up the phone and make the calls. Because I just built the databases for them and then coached them on a call.

48:27 So I did all the research and they were picking off one hundred and twenty to one hundred and fifty contacts a week and their goals were only sixty a week, but because I did the research. So if you have somebody you know doing that for you. Now, in terms of local a lot of federal contractors have pivoted because of this last year has been a little wonky for them, so they're diversifying their portfolio. And what I want to say to Smalls is, again, what is your superpower? If you are an electrician in the Midwest, only focus on the state and locals in your state and a couple of the surrounding states. So if you're in Michigan, just focus on Michigan, Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois and that's it.

49:13 Don't go any further. Don't do bids for Hawaii and all that jazz. It's a waste of your time. Focus on your backyard. Because if you're offering electrical services, you need to be able to travel, and so you need to be hyper hyper focused if you're doing state and local, because state is one thing, but then like you said, then there's counties in every single state, local, municipality, everything has their own processes, procedures, rules, regulations, and relationships and mid sites. So hyper focus, cut it down. If you do too much, you're never going to sleep. You're never going to sleep. So hyper focus your activities and make sure you have a certain superpower that you're leading with and that will help you get really good at what you do right now. And I couldn't say focus enough and diversify, but also keep it tight, keep it a tight group.

50:14 Well, I'm telling you their notebook is full. But you know what, we've got to have part two because we're still not done. So we're going to schedule another time to do part two. And there's so much, Like I said, there's so much to this. Could you tell our audience exactly how to get in touch with you? Your email and your website. Absolutely, I have two websites. I have my corporate website, which is custom keynotes dot com, but I also have Federal Sales Guide dot com and the best place you can connect with me. And that's how Jil and I got together. And by the way, the best way to connect with your federal customers, so if you connect with me, you're gonna be connected with a lot of Feds is on LinkedIn. LinkedIn's the most legitimate professional place connect with me. There.

51:15 I am posting every single day some silly inspirational post that's usually funny, tie to a funny video or a picture, and you can email me at info at Federal Salesguide dot com or call me at three one two six, three six five three eight one. But I suggest if you call me, leave me a message, or I'm deleting your phone number, so leave me a message or text me first, or I'm gonna think you're you're scamming me, so make sure you don't ever not leave a voicemail. Salespeople always leave a voicemail and or text me first and say hey, I saw you on Angela's show. Let's chat about your three program.

52:01 Okay, great, Well we have to bring this to an end, but I just want to thank everyone for joining us at a sharp Outlook. We'll be here again next Monday at eleven a m. Eastern time and eight am Pacific time. We have gathered so much information and I know that this is helping you to make decisions on where to go forward. We are going to continue this. We just have to find some more time for Eileen to come back. So thank you for joining us, and as I always tell you, stay informed. I want to thank you for joining us on a sharp outlook. We have been informed and energized to take the next steps. We have posted links to websites and videos to learn more on today's topic.

52:53 Please join us again next week for another thought provoking conversation right here on key for Age Radio and Talk for TV. Listen to the podcast on all The podcast apps, and until next week, stay informed.