Richard Howard
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- 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."
- 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
- Hire The Best Speaker for your sales meeting or marketing conference
- Take The CRM Quiz: get a free consultation with me
- Donate: because you like the show and its no-bullshit approach, and you don't want to buy a book, software, or The Make Every Sale Program.
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GUEST INFO:
- Guest Site: https://www.dodcontract.com/
- Guest Podcast: https://www.dodcontract.com/blog
- Guest LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rickychoward/
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