Once you make a sale, you can use your company’s stellar performance on a federal project to leverage more sales. Federal contractors working on-site at a federal facility are essentially getting paid to sell to agency customers and to generate profit at the same time. Their billable staff sits with the customer every day and, [...]
The manner in which a federal purchase is completed depends on the size of the transaction. Credit card buys under $2,500 can be single sourced by the end user and can be transacted without the contracting officer’s involvement. More liberal credit card limits apply in emergency and national security situations. For purchases in the $2,500 [...]
Contracting officers are dedicated in their responsibility to follow federal purchasing rules. The rules allow less than full and open competition depending on the size of the purchase and the need for speed and efficiency in making a buy. Responsibilities of Contracting Officers Legal responsibility for a contract (signs contract) Ensuring that requirements for competitive [...]
The crown jewels of any federal service contractor are the company’s existing service contracts. Existing service contracts are so valuable that they are virtually irreplaceable. Such contracts are the source of, among other things, the following: Highly probability “re-wins” of the extension of these contracts Unexpected revenue resulting from increases in scopes of work New [...]
Agencies sometimes prefer their own homegrown IDIQs. Bureaucracies are bureaucracies worldwide- they tend to be parochial, self-serving, and mistrustful of outsiders. It is no different in the world of IDIQs. Most IDIQs are created and awarded by agencies at the cabinet or subcabinet levels, e.g., the Department of Homeland Security or the Coast Guard within [...]
Proactive methods have governed sales approaches for products and services since the days of Willy Lowman. The same basic principles remain the keys to success in federal sales. Examples: Sales Approach Example 1 Example 2 Example 3 Passive Monitor public bids for opportunities someone else has sold but are available for bid Blast email sales [...]
The amount of competition in federal purchasing is rooted in politics—but what isn’t? The size of the federal bureaucracy and the urgency of trying to solve current world problems have made the job of a federal acquisition official nearly impossible. Federal procurement rules discussed in this book are partly designed to assist federal buyers in [...]
We can’t emphasize enough that IDIQ contracts are becoming more prevalent and larger by the day. IDIQ contract ceilings now exceed $30 billion and individual task orders under IDIQs commonly exceed $1 billion. Government procurement experts are predicting that 2012 will be the year of the IDIQ contract. For example, they estimate that the Department [...]
