There are exactly two ways to make money in the Federal Government contracting industry. One as a prime and the other way is as a subcontractor. Subcontracting still requires vetting from the prime contractor in order to increase your win rate.
Number 1 you can either directly support the government on a prime contract. Second, and easiest government contract to win, you can have a subcontract under the prime contract holder. Although this is an easier way, it is still not easy. Prime contractors have a lot to lose if they are awarding your cleaning company a contract that your cleaning company can not fulfill.
Number 2 Winning Prime Contracts to Gain Market Penetration
To win a prime contract, you write a proposal that fully commits your company to perform exactly in accordance with contract requirements. Therefore, your company is 100% responsible and accountable to your government customer to comply with all contract terms. This is a daunting task with some risk should you not have any experience in this industry.
Having previous cleaning experience already have experience in the Federal Government cleaning contracting industry, then focusing on immediately winning prime contracts may not be your best strategy for market penetration, obtaining your first contract and therefore, not your easiest government contract to win. But, if you have cleaning business experience and have been in the industry for years, you can and should feel comfortable with striking a balance for competing for cleaning contracts as a prime contractor also.
Without any corporate current or past performances that you can cite, your company’s proposals are not scored as well, and your win probability is low. But one thing to remember is that all government cleaning contracts $3,000-$150,000 must be awarded to a small business, so if you have experience in the cleaning industry do not allow yourself to be fearful of moving forward.
Another thing to consider is that working along side an experience prime contractor that is going after a cleaning contracting that is willing to share their proposal writing knowledge with you and your team will allow you to learn a tremendous amount about writing proposals by supporting an experienced prime bidder as a member of their bid team.
As a subcontractor under an experienced cleaning industry as a prime contractor, you can gain a great deal of experience and working industry cleaning experience into how to successful manage a cleaning contract and avoid the very real risk of “winning yourself out of business.” For most first-time entrepreneurs in the Federal Government cleaning contracting industry, subcontracting is the may seem to be the best and most effective way to win a government cleaning contract.
Government Cleaning Subcontractor can be attractive as well.
Being selected on a prime bidder’s bid team before the proposal is submitted, and
Being added to the contract team after the prime bidder has been awarded the contract.
Each phase requires completely different approaches. GovClean Contracting Academy can guide you in obtaining subcontracts in both phases!
#1 Join Proposal Teams to Avoid Market Penetration, Easier Government Contracts to Win
The traditional way to obtain a subcontract is to be part of a proposal team, working together on a large bid effort.
Join prime bidder’s proposal team by entering into a teaming agreement can be easiest government contracts to win .
Teaming agreements delineate your proposal support obligations and your “work share” should your proposal team win.
Teaming agreements also include a Non-disclosure Agreement to prevent sharing team members’ proprietary information learned during the bid effort.
A teaming agreement may also include an exclusivity clause which states that you cannot join another competitive bid team.
Although this is the conventional approach to pursuing a subcontract, joining a bid team is a non-trivial task. You’re competing with scores of other small businesses to be selected by the prime bidder to join their team. In case you missed the subtlety, you must first win the selection process just to join a bid team that will compete to win a prime contract award. In the legal field, this would be considered double jeopardy. You should also be aware that subcontracting plans are only evaluated on very large prime contract bids, so prime bidders are usually only willing to entertain teaming with set aside companies for very large opportunities. Using this approach alone, you may tremendously limit the number of opportunities that your company has at winning. However, there is a more pro-active way to join a bid team. Select the prime bidder! Instead of being the small business seeking selection by a prime bidder, you turn the table and select the prime bidder! Government Contracting Academy will show you ways to put your potential success in YOUR hands and not some arbitrary large company’s hands. They will also show you the best subcontracting opportunities. Here’s a hint…its not always the larger company and the larger bid effort!
#2 Join Contract Teams to Avoid Market Penetration, Easiest Government Contracts to Win
After a contract is awarded and the work share is divided up by the bid team, hard-working entrepreneurs still find their way to a sub-contract.
Here’s why.
Doing Business Development
Some of the prime contractors bid partners invest incredible resources to do business development and help write the proposal. Following the award, they under-resource the transition and staffing of the contract.
Simply stated, they spend countless hours helping to win the contract and then neglect to hire the billable positions that will provide them profit!
Understaffed Contracts are the Most Overlooked, Easiest Government Contracts to Win
In some cases, a successful bid team member makes a business decision and walks away from their subcontracting responsibilities. While attempting to staff their positions, they realize they underpriced their positions and cannot make a profit by hiring people at their predicted salary. In either case, they leave the prime contractor with an understaffed contract.
On understaffed contracts, the prime contractor’s program manager is under a lot of pressure.
His government customer is constantly asking “where’s the rest of my team?”
His corporate manager is constantly demanding that he increase his “burn rate” by staffing more people who bill more hours.
Although the program managed will almost always try to staff vacant positions themselves or through an existing bid team member, these stressed folks will listen to anyone with an immediate solution.
An acceptable immediate solution is tremendously better than a great solution when it’s too late to matter.
Identifying Contracts with Staffing Challenges
This strategy is simple.
Identify contracts with staffing challenges and then approach the prime contractor’s program manager with a stack of “ready to work” candidates.
For many program managers, you are an acceptable immediate solution to their problem. Although this is a simple strategy, it leverages two components that are difficult to identify.
How do you identify contracts with staffing issues?
How do you find qualified people to pitch to stressed out program managers?
GovClean Contracting Academy provides the cleaning industry with step-by-step actions to win that first or 7th government cleaning contracts.
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