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Start Your Government Contracting Adventure With Richard Howard

Author

Wes Schaeffer
August 03, 2023

Professional Sales Tips you’ll learn today on The Sales Podcast …

  • The government is required to spend money with small businesses

  • A small business is defined by NAICS

  • If you have 500 employees or less or maybe $25 million or less

  • A lot of commodities go to the low-cost provider

  • Goal-setting, leadership, etc.

  • The government uses SFDC in both federal and state

  • Be focused and deliberate

  • CRM needs

    • Recruiters

    • Human resources

    • Cloud-hosted software must meet certain requirements

    • Fedramp dictates the cloud-hosted needs like CMMC

Related episodes and posts

  • You must register at Sam.gov to sell to the government

  • You can see most opportunities there

  • “Does this customer buy what I sell?”

    • Go to USASpending.gov

    • See what the government is buying

  • Government contracting is the long game

  • Plan on 12-18 months of consistent effort

  • It’s a relationship business

  • Target an agency and nurture them

  • One way to fail is to go to Sam.gov, find RFPs and submit your bids, fail, and say it’s rigged

  • Once the solicitation goes out, the hands of the government are tied

  • Before that, the government wants to talk to you

  • You can help write the solicitation

  • Get in during the market research phase

  • You can be sole-sourced and beat the competition

  • Innovative research funds (SBIR.gov) can pop quickly

  • Base security is using SBIR a lot

  • Maybe a biometric scanner…write up a 5-page report and win a “Phase One SBIR” to validate your solution

  • Phase Two is up to maybe $1.3 million (can take about four months)

  • It can be dual-use, i.e., civilian and government

❝

Government acquisitions is a couple hundred thousand offices that don’t talk to one another, and they buy their own stuff.”

Rick Howard on The Sales Podcast

  • Learn about government contracting

  • Entry-level program and get advice from experienced procurement people

  • Monthly membership

  • Weekly group calls

  • Program 2 is professional advisory services, and they may help you sell

  • If you’re looking for the easy button and don’t have an existing business with a team, pause and focus on your commercial sales efforts

  • Longterm government contracts help you sell your business

  • He did not have a seamless transition from a career in the military

  • Helped his wife with her real estate career for about six months

  • Spent time learning about sales

  • He has had a podcast for a couple of years with 100+ episodes

  • Also has an outbound sales team

  • Gets a lot of traffic from LinkedIn

Sales Growth Tools Mentioned In The Sales Podcast

GUEST INFO:

  • Guest Site: https://www.dodcontract.com/

  • Guest Podcast: https://www.dodcontract.com/blog

  • Guest LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rickychoward/

PODCAST INFO:

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