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Finding Federal End Users Who Buy What You Sell by Richard White, President Fedmarket.com (888) 661 - 4094 www.fedmarket.com © 2010 Fedmarket.com. All rights reserved. Reproduction and distribution strictly prohibited without prior consent. Introduction Knowing your customers is the key to sales success. This is true whether you're selling to public or private organizations. The most successful federal contractors take the time to uncover contact information for the buyers who purchase what their company sells. However, finding the right buyers can be one of the most difficult aspects of federal sales and is the single biggest reason that small businesses find the federal market so difficult to enter. The federal government offers a wide range of marginally useful resources to help small businesses enter the federal market. For example, federal agency web sites provide information on how to do business with the government. The reality is that these web sites, for the most part, provide nothing more than suggestions on how to deal with red tape. Federal agencies also hold conferences and training events for small businesses. Unfortunately, end user contact information is not provided as part of these events. The government’s offerings are carefully designed to provide help on the surface without providing access to end users. Why, you ask? The truth is that end users would prefer to remain anonymous because they have all the vendors they need and do not want to be deluged with calls from new vendors. A long-range solution to this problem may be in the making. Congress is currently considering legislation which would require the creation and posting of a public contract awards database. The proposed database would provide a summary of what was purchased and who the end users and official buyers were for awarded contracts. The creation of the proposed database would be the single biggest step the federal government has ever taken to truly opening the federal market. However, the implementation of such a database could take several years, if not more. In the interim, a small business is forced to conduct research by (i) searching the Internet, (ii) perusing agency telephone directories and agency organizational charts, or (iii) making contact with contracting officers to ask them who the federal buyers are in their respective agencies. Fedmarket.com provides an alternative to the methods described above, FedBuying Intelligence. We offer a contract award database that identifies the contracting offices that buy what small businesses sell. FedBuying Intelligence searches five years of public bid data and tells you who bought what. Official buyer contact data, including the buyer's telephone number and e-mail address, is provided in a downloadable spreadsheet. Procedures for Finding End Users Contact data for end users - - the person making the purchasing decisions for complex products and solutions - - is not readily available to the public. Once located, matters are further complicated by the fact that there can be more than one federal official responsible for making purchasing decisions for a large buy. Contracting officers and their colleagues, known as contracting specialists, can be identified by the products or services they have purchased in the past. These “official buyers” or “purchasing agents” represent the end user in contract negotiations. The contracting officer is the official point of contact between vendors and the government. Contracting officers know who the end users are but may be reluctant to tell you. A typical conversation with a contracting officer might go like this: Vendor: "I see from my research that you awarded a $500,000 contract on May 11, 2005 to Acme Reseller, Inc. The product purchased under that contract was Cisco routers. Who was the end user in your office?” Contracting officer: "I don’t really know and I would have to dig out the contract to find out." Vendor: "I would appreciate it if you would do that and call me back." © 2010 Fedmarket.com. All rights reserved. Reproduction and distribution is strictly prohibited without prior consent. page 1 of 4 Contracting officer: "I’ll try but I can’t promise you anything due to our office’s overwhelming workload." Vendor: "But I thought that the contracting officer is the single point of contact for vendors and that your job is to promote competition." Contracting officer: "You are correct on both counts but that doesn’t mean that I can answer end user questions for the thousands of vendors out there." Based on the tenor of the discussions above, it is unlikely that the contracting officer will actually get back to the vendor with the information requested. The issue of whether the contracting officer is legally required to give out an end user's name is gray. The public has the legal right to request a copy of the contract itself under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). However, expect to wait from one to twelve months for a response. By the time you get a copy of the contract, the end user will have ordered another large batch of Cisco routers. Although FOIA mandates that federal officials respond to FOIA requests within twenty business days, this rule is routinely ignored. The bottom line is the feds have all the cards so you have to find a way to play their game. Trying to force them to give you contact data is counterproductive. Public Bid Data as a Sales Tool A public bid is posted at the government’s web site, FedBizOpps, using a solicitation document. To varying degrees, the solicitation document contains a summary (or “synopsis” in government terms) of the scope of work for the project. The complete scope of work is only found in the actual contract itself (the document that you have to wait months for if you request it under the FOIA). Contract awards are posted in FedBizOpps with the date of the contract award, the dollar amount of the contract, and the name and address of the company receiving the contract. For new players, public bid data and the subsequent “awarded to” data provide the best information available for developing a buyer call list. However, FedBizOpps does not tie bid and award data together and, furthermore, you cannot get data on a particular buyer’s past purchases. In contrast, FedBuying Intelligence provides the data companies need to ferret out the identities of the federal buyers. FedBuying Intelligence ties bid and award data together and allows you to search the database using product and service codes or keywords to describe what you sell. Search results are provided by agency and contracting officer and include full contact data for the official buyer. In short, we tell you who bought what, when, for how much, and from whom. But again, the contact data is for the official buyer, not the end user. If you sell routers, you can find out which contracting officers bought routers. Then you have to get on the phone. But the time saved as a result of using FedBuying Intelligence is immeasurable compared to the alternative of conducting Internet research from scratch. FedBuying Intelligence FedBuying Intelligence brings focus and precision to your sales efforts. FedBuying Intelligence quickly identifies for you the federal buyers buy what you sell -- and how often. For each of your company's federal supply codes, FedBuying Intelligence provides a compete purchasing history, rich with critical information such as buyer contact names, phone numbers, email addresses, agency names and geographic locations. Browse this information on screen, or download it for use in your contact database or other contact applications. Assembling intelligence data on your own would take enormous time and effort. FedBuying Intelligence © 2010 Fedmarket.com. All rights reserved. Reproduction and distribution is strictly prohibited without prior consent. page 2 of 4 streamlines this difficult process giving you access to current and timely data that will provide you with the tools to succeed in the federal marketplace. FedBuying Intelligence is the most powerful sales tool in the federal market. It searches five years of public bid data and tells you “who bought what”. Enter your product/service using keywords, Product/Service Codes, or NAICS Codes and find the solicitations and awards for the Contracting Officers and Contract Specialists who bought your product/service. Contact data including telephone number and email address is provided for each buyer in a downloadable spreadsheet. FedBuying Intelligence tells you: Which federal buyers have purchased your products or services. What they purchased. When they purchased it. How much they paid. Which agency the buyers work for. How to contact the buyers. FedBuying Intelligence government buyer information includes: First and last name Address Phone and fax Email Office and agency information Recent contract awards Demo FedBuyingIntelligence Use any search criteria and view actual search results. Buyer detail shown for the first three buyers in the results list. Become a GSA Schedule Holder Fedmarket's GSA Proposal Services: Fedmarket GSA eLabPlus Full Service GSA Proposal Preparation GSA Proposal Preparation Assistance Already have a GSA Schedule contract? Make the most of it with Fedmarket's Direct Marketing Services. Get the inside edge from the leaders in federal sales. Improve Your Proposal Writing Skills Fedmarket's Line of Proposal Services and Products Full-Service Proposal Preparation/Full-Service Government Price Proposal Preparation Proposal Templates and Software Fedmarket's Proposal Seminars © 2010 Fedmarket.com. All rights reserved. Reproduction and distribution is strictly prohibited without prior consent. page 3 of 4 Basic Cost Proposal Workshop Advanced Cost Proposal Workshop Training Fedmarket offers a range of full-day seminars that cover topics from GSA Schedules to Federal Sales to Proposal Development. View the Fedmarket seminar calendar for upcoming dates and locations. Tools FedBuying Intelligence Department of Defense (DoD) Roadmap Information Technology (IT) Directory U.S. Department of Veteran Affairs (VA) Directory Buyer Contact Data Federal Credit Card Holders Direct Marketing Services Federal Sales Plan Development Wizard Federal Sales Book Series Contact Us Telephone: (888) 661-4094 x 2 Email: [email protected] URL: www.fedmarket.com About the Author Mr. White is a national authority on federal, state, and local government marketing and sales. He is the founder, President, and CEO of Fedmarket.com, the premier organization for all things government salesrelated. He has unsurpassed knowledge of all aspects of doing business with the federal government using GSA Schedules. He is the author of three books on federal government contracting including “GSA Schedules: The Shortest Path to Federal Dollars”, a look at how GSA Schedules fit into the federal sales game. © 2010 Fedmarket.com. All rights reserved. Reproduction and distribution is strictly prohibited without prior consent. page 4 of 4