Doing the Research
This is a series of five articles designed to help you build the relationships that bring value to yourself and your contacts. The series focuses on the small, but crucial steps you need to take to build valuable relationships.
The first article in the series started with examining your own organization to identify your own value proposition – its strengths, weaknesses, threats and opportunities.In this article, we discuss doing the necessary research to find those companies or agencies that would be interested in your product or service. Later in this series we discuss making a connection to prospects, delivering value to your contact, and finally, setting performance metrics to manage your business development practice.
This series stems from my own experience in building great support and business development teams, and creating enthusiastic references for my software development firm. After selling the company, I’ve applied these same principles to economic development in the federal space, building robust partner networks for the U.S. Department of Commerce, collaborating with local organizations to introduce companies to businesses assistance programs offered by the government.
Your SWOT Analysis has given you valuable information about your company, its products and services, and where its opportunities may lie. Now, use the web to research those agencies and programs that offer the best opportunities for you. This should give you a list of agencies and programs that offer the most promise – those that are most likely to use your product or service.
Research the agencies carefully. Better early research = higher conversion rate. Go beyond the web site and look for information from other sources. Read their press releases and blogs, and what other bloggers are saying about the agency. Ask associates about the organization.
Agency budgets are published on their web sites. Their budgets and the new spending programs will tell you their priorities, and most their important initiative as of late. Look at the products, programs and services that the agency offers, and where the money is being spent.
In the About Us web page, the organization chart will provide a list of program offices, and sometimes the personnel in charge of these offices. Research the leadership, and search the web for new stories about them. This will again give you an idea of the most relevant issues facing the organization. This information also provides discussion topics for your initial phone call. Together, they may indicate pain points that the organization is facing.
The Offices of Small and Disadvantaged Business Utilization are small business advocates. All federal agencies have an office like this and their mission is to connect small businesses with federal contracts. Here is a link to all the small business contracting offices – http://osdbu.gov/members.html . Click on the office you want, and contact info loads.
The Offices of Small and Disadvantaged Business Utilization are a great resource to learn of procurement events, upcoming bid opportunities, to find out the names of program managers that may have a need for your services, or potential teaming partners for an opportunity.
Develop relationships with the Office of Small and Disadvantaged Business Utilization for each Federal agency that you have targeted. Be active with them, stay in touch, talk about your credentials and capabilities to them, you want them to know your company and your name.
Your web research will also tell you the names of the top 10, 25, or 50 prime contractors with the agency. All of these companies have offices of Small Business Contracting. Their job is to match small businesses to teaming opportunities with the company. Get to knew them, attend heir events; find out the trade organizations to which they belong. Talk to them about upcoming opportunities. Develop a relationships with them, become a resource, talk about your credentials and capabilities to them, you want them to know your company and your name.
Get involved with your local Procurement Technical Assistance Center (PTAC), SBA Small Business Development Center (SBDC), Minority or Native American Business Center (MBC or NABC), and regional economic development organizations. These organizations are advocates for small business. They offer low or no cost seminars and services, will know of local small business incentives, and will sometimes hold matchmaking and procurement events. Their counselors are also a great source of introductions to small business offices, primes, and program managers.
Look here https://www.acquisition.gov/comp/procurement_forecasts/index.html for acquisition forecasts from those agencies you have targeted. Look at past awards, and upcoming re-competes. These will all indicate the direction and priorities of the agency, and any specific opportunities that may be released. Agencies will often hold Industry Days that focus on a particular opportunity. These events offer an opportunity to get to know others in this space – prime contractors, program managers, and the Office of Small and Disadvantaged Business Utilization.
There are also private sector paid sources of business intelligence regarding your targeted agencies and program offices. Evaluate these carefully. Are you getting information only, someone else’s analysis, introductions for your business, or someone who will not only introduce you, but become an advocate for your company?
Make certain you have exhausted and used all of the free resources out there before paying a subscription. Oftentimes, such services are a collection of publicly available information from the sources I’ve listed above. It is my belief that you can obtain this kind of information from targeted research. At that point, you will be in position to determine how best to use the information going forward.
The first article in the series [hyperlink here] started with examining your organization to identify its value proposition, and your company’s core competencies, those things they do better than anyone else. In this article we discussed doing the necessary research to find those companies or agencies that would be interested in your product or service.
In the next article we explore ways of connecting with potential customers.
