Every business in today’s economic climate faces a persistent question: How can more lucrative opportunities be found?
Companies from almost every sector of the economy are finding they have to stretch to uncover new approaches to business development. Many are discovering opportunities that have never been part of their reality in the past, such as competing for government business.
The idea that competing for government business can be a constant source of revenue is a new concept for many companies as they look to identify new sources of revenue generation.
Forget about the federal government for a moment and consider state and local contracting with its hundreds of billions of dollars in expenditures. Even though government entities are facing some of the same economic budgetary cutbacks as the private sector, the bottom line is the public still requires a level of service that must be maintained by those government entities. Cities, counties and states need new roads and schools— those are a given. However, these entities also purchase large amounts of paper, computers, chairs, desks, carpet, food, clothing, pens, light bulbs, cars, trucks and so on. Furthermore, they rely heavily on—and contract with—service companies, such as human resources, accounting, legal, healthcare and dozens of other industries.
The fact is American businesses from every corner of the nation have the potential to benefit from bidding on government work. This type of work allows companies to go after a new market and customer segment without having to develop a new set of offerings because the odds are good that a government agency needs what these businesses provide.
Many government agencies are required to follow compliance guidelines to complete and secure vendors for all their needs. These guidelines require that the project and its specifications are public knowledge so vendors can compete for the business. With a construction project, for example, every facet of the project has the potential to offer bid opportunities to dozens of different types of companies, from large architectural and engineering firms to carpenters or private security officers.
That said, a business that has never approached the public sector for revenue may have several questions on how to find and capture successful opportunities. For compainstance, how can one government contract be leveraged into multiple contracts for an extended period of time? Is it worth the time and effort to dedicate resources to government contracts? And, most importantly, how do companies discover these government opportunities?
The majority of these questions can only be answered after a company has researched and weighed the realistic evaluation of resources. Though the last question, regarding finding opportunities, may be easier to answer due to the market resources that are dedicated to providing bid opportunity notifications. In the past, companies needed to hire individuals specifically tasked with spending hours monitoring newspapers or various government agency websites to find bid opportunities. And even then, bid opportunities beyond a company’s local or regional market were difficult to find.
With the new bid notification technologies and services available in the market, companies are now able to easily identify lucrative bid opportunities with just the click of a mouse. In addition to learning about local opportunities, companies can also find projects nationwide. Businesses are able to better define what goods and/ or services they can provide and how they directly relate to what government agencies are specifically looking for from coast to coast.
Capturing opportunities
The following tips can help companies find out about and respond to government bid opportunities:
- Find bid opportunities released by government agencies, as feebased bid notification services can provide legitimate opportunities quickly and easily.
- Fine-tune the description of your company’s products and services, and create a profile for your company on the bid notification service. Narrowing the focus of your description allows for better, more accurate notifications for bids that are pertinent to what your company provides. For better service, bid notification services should ask for more than what you provide—they should request numerous matching criteria allowing you to better define what, where and with whom your company wants to do business. As this tailored criteria provides higher quality notifications, your company will receive better leads as opposed to hundreds or even thousands of unqualified bids.
- Legitimate bid notification services will provide daily reports showing any bid matches based on your profile settings. These notifications can then be delivered via email, fax or text messages.
- When responding to bid opportunities, ensure that all information has been meticulously reviewed for a better formulated offer response. Make sure to include all forms, documents, etc. that have been requested by the issuing agency.
- Applicable certifications and qualifications should be documented. If supporting documentation is requested, make sure to include it as part of the offer response.
- Make sure you have resources available to answer any follow-up questions or to attend any pre-bid conferences issued by the government agency.
Companies from every market in practically every industry can benefit from seeking out bid opportunities with government agencies because of the constant stream of projects available. And smart companies know that if they don’t go after these opportunities, the competition certainly will.
