Can You Afford Not To?

Posted in: Blog on November 17, 2009

If you’re in business today then you spend at least some of your time selling. You search for leads, you market your product or service, you talk to your customers. If you don’t spend the time and money then eventually you aren’t going to be in business.

You can’t afford not to. Sell or else.

Our advice? Spend at least some of your sales time and money on government deals. Why? Here’s three very good reasons:

• The US government is actively soliciting your product or service. Really. They want you to sell to them. Don’t believe it? In the last 6 months there were over 100,000 solicitations posted to FedBizOpps ALONE. This is just federal opportunities – we’re not even counting state, county, city, …
• You already sell what the government wants. The US government buys literally everything. Everything. If you are really convinced that your product or service doesn’t work in the government space then you are probably not trying hard enough. Put your shoulder down and keep looking.
• You can win deals. True – real work is required. Yes, you’ll have to invest. But then, how is that any different than selling to any other customer?

So spend a little. Invest. Invest in selling. Invest in your company.

The way we see it – you can’t afford not to.

If you want an inexpensive way to get started then you should try Bidspeed. It won’t cost you anything for the first 30 days and after that it’s less than $0.63 a day. And, it really helps. Can you afford not to?

FedBizOpps Filtering Made Easier

Posted in: Blog, Using Bidspeed, What's New on November 10, 2009

We’ve just released an update to the site that makes filtering the list of FedBizOpps opportunities even simpler. First, you’ll notice a handy welcome page when you first log in. Right in the center of the page is a link that says “Search for FedBizOpps Opportunities.”

Next, the list of opportunities has 3 links:

• All Opportunities – this is the default view of the list. You can narrow the list to appropriate items using the normal, filter-by-form capabilities described here: http://bit.ly/4x6DLU.
• My Account Opportunities – this list shows opportunities filtered by your company’s main classification code. If you haven’t set your classification code there is a link at the top of the page.
• Recently Added – this list shows opportunities created in the last 10 days. Again, you can add filter’s by using the normal filter-by-form capabilities.

As always, we’re doing everything we can to provide our users with an application that helps them find, manage, and win government deals. Let us know what you think – we’re always grateful to hear from our customers.

How to attach documents to an opportunity

Posted in: Blog, Help, Using Bidspeed on

Part of the value of Bidspeed is that it keeps track of everything related to an opportunity. Most of the time, you’ll want to attach everything –email, proposals, designs, and any material you send to the contracting officer. This allows you to revisit the opportunity later for reference purposes and even reuse documents on another proposal.

Bidspeed allows you to attach any type of document and store it along with the opportunity. Documents stored in Bidspeed are secure, only available to authorized users of your account, and automatically indexed for searching purposes.

Attaching a document is easy. To attach a document, first navigate to the opportunity. Next, click on the “New” link on the upper right corner of the “Documents” panel.

Now, from the “New Document” form, click on the browse button, select the file from your file system, type a description and click save.

Bidspeed supports full text searching of documents. To search for a document, type the prefix “doc:” plus the text you want to search for in the search box at the top of the page and press enter.

What’s New – October

Posted in: Blog, Using Bidspeed, What's New on November 3, 2009

We’ve added several helpful features into the application in October. Here’s some highlights:

• Interested Vendors List – When you add an opportunity to your watchlist Bidspeed will read the interested vendors from FedBizOpps and put them in a list on the main opportunity (Watchlist Item) page.
  
  
• Calendar View – Items on your watchlist can now be viewed on a calendar. To get here, click on ‘Calendar’ on the Home page or ‘Calendar’ on the ‘Watchlist’ menu. The opportunities shown are Open Opportunities. You can click on an individual item and it will take you to the details.
  
  
• Attach Contacts – From the detail page of a watchlist item you can now click the ‘add contacts’ button. This adds contacts to your personal list of contacts and attaches them to the current opportunity. If you click directly on the contact you can send them email directly from within Bidspeed. The advantage to this is that Bidspeed will keep track of your last contact and even saves the email that you sent them.
  
  
• Create your own opportunities – so the deal you’re working on ISN’T in FedBizOpps? No problem. From the Home page click ‘Create a new Opportunity’ and fill out the information.
  
  

It’s a new product, and we’re dedicated to making it work the way you want it to, really, so you’ll have to keep those comments / requests coming.