One way companies can increase profits is by lowering their cost of doing business. Reducing the cost of goods and services purchased is one approach, streamlining internal processes to benefit from greater efficiencies is another. I’m going to dive into the latter as it relates to growth activities in the federal sector.

The steps involved in finding and winning federal contracts and subcontracts are processes that, over time, can be refined to maximize results and reduce the time and money spent conducting business development lifecycle activities.  A key benefit of having established processes includes an evidence-driven ability to limit or avoid distractions. Additionally, having established processes and limiting distractions contributes to increased bandwidth.

In this blog series, I’ll discuss four specific distractions that novice, established, small and large companies fall victim to regularly. In addition to these distractions being demoralizing and expensive, each of them is unnecessary.

Here’s the second distraction you should work to avoid.

Unless you only chase very small requirements, or have a super-niche capability where the Government issues sole-source awards based on ‘Only One Source,’ you will need and want partners. Partners are awesome! They can bring you knowledge and capabilities to put you over the top for an opportunity. However, the dark side of teaming relationships is the alignment (or misalignment) of how your companies respectively find, qualify and pursue opportunities.

If what you consider to be an early stage lead is something they consider to be a fully-vetted, ready to bid opportunity, then ‘Houston, we have a problem.’ This happens everyday, and it’s happened to me when I was on the sell-side. Partnering is a relationship activity, and good partnerships take time to develop. What makes a good partner? You need to decide what’s important to you, and then determine the fit and relevance of a potential partner. Picking partners seems like it should be easy enough, but I go back to strategy for this one. No strategy? Then how do you establish parameters for who will be a good potential partner? One more thing. Don’t forget about the culture-fit, too.

Government Contracting is not hard, but it does require commitment, context, and discipline. The commitment starts with you, and our Ethical Stalking for Government Contractors® programs have been establishing and improving the context and disciplines of successful Growth Professionals for more than a decade.

 

We help people win.

 

Peace, Health and Success,

 

Go-To-Guy Timberlake