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Gold Coast
Posted in: Blog on July 15, 2010 | No Comments
Bidspeed will be in Booth 203 at the Navy Gold Coast show August 17th and 18th. If you plan to attend please stop by and meet us.
If you are interested in spending a couple of days in sunny San Diego, here the show link: http://www.navygoldcoast.org
GSA Opening Doors
Posted in: Blog on July 14, 2010 | No Comments
Several of us from Bidspeed will be an exhibitor at the upcoming GSA Opening Doors trade show in Los Angeles, August 9-11. If you are planning to attend please stop by and see us. The conference should be very useful to you if you are considering a GSA Schedule or already have one and are looking for a way to start marketing it to the government.
The conference costs $180 / person and takes place at the Hyatt Regency Century Plaza in Century City.
Read More on the event website: http://www.gsaopeningdoors.com
Hope to see you there.
How To Get Federal Solicitations Set Aside For Your Business
Posted in: Blog, Business of Government, Government Contracting, Using Bidspeed on June 24, 2010 | 2 Comments
The Federal Government is looking for you. They like small business. They need small business. In fact, the Federal Government is required to “set-aside” certain procurements for a particular size or classification of business.
So why care? When a procurement is set-aside for a small or disadvantaged business, the government is effectively eliminating your toughest competition. While we believe strongly in the ability of small business, your chance of winning a set-aside procurement is almost 80% greater than an open procurement.
By law, the Federal Government is required to actively seek small business sources for every solicitation greater than $100,000. The method for this is called “Sources Sought.” (The requirement has many, many exceptions, and there are many, many workarounds, but the general idea is sound.)
On average, there are 1,200 Sources Sought notifications posted to FedBizOpps every month. In many cases, there are multiple solicitations that apply directly to your business.
A Sources Sought notification actually means “Small Business Sources Sought.” Sometimes the solicitation will specify explicitly that they are looking only for small businesses (or 8(a), HUBZone, …) to respond. (Even if it doesn’t say “only small businesses” it means only small businesses.)
If a Sources Sought opportunity is in your wheelhouse then you’ll want to add it to your watchlist and respond.
Every. Single. Time.
Sources Sought is your one chance to “get in early.”
In addition, responding to a Sources Sought notification is some of the best marketing and business development you can do for your business. It gives you a captive, interested audience with a real buyer who is required by law to read your response. Don’t waste this opportunity.
We know that you don’t have a full time capture and business development team. We know that you don’t have the time to respond. You’re too busy working on actual bids, right?
We’re introducing a new feature that’s available from an item on your watch list that makes it much faster, and much simpler to respond to Sources Sought notifications.
Responses from Bidspeed are fast, simple, and complete. Bidspeed can often reduce the response process from hours to minutes – making the decision to take the time to respond simple for the small business owner.
More importantly, the response process is simple, provides the contracting officer with a standard, complete, and readable response, and allows the small business owner to effectively manage their relationship with the government post-response, all with a minimum of time commitment from the small business.
Here’s how to use it:
- Add appropriate Sources Sought solicitations to your watchlist. We’ve added a built-in filter (Filters Menu, Sources Sought Only) that will show only Sources Sought in the main search page. To add the item to your watchlist, click the ‘Add’ link on the list or the ‘Add’ button from the item’s detail page.
- Click the ‘Respond’ button.
- From the Response detail page, add the contracting officers, appropriate set-asides that your company has, and any documents that support your case. Typically you’ll attach your capabilities statement and a document that fully responds to the solicitation. Pay attention to the page limit, it’s often 10 pages or less.
- Complete the form letter using the editor. Bidspeed provides a standard response that works well as an outline for the email response you are going to send.
- Make SURE you answer all of the questions as stated in the solicitation. Failure to do so is almost guaranteed to make your response non-responsive.
- Click ‘Send to Me Only.’ Check your email. Read the email. Make sure this is what you want to send.
- If you have changes you can always get back to the response by clicking the ‘Respond’ button again from the opportunity detail page.
- When you are ready to send the response click ‘Send.’ The response will be sent to the proper recipients and the opportunity will be marked as ‘Responded.’ (An alternative is to forward the email sent to you from your email client. If you do this, you’ll have to mark the opportunity as responded yourself.)
- Follow up (Bidspeed automatically creates a task for this, assigned to you) to make sure your response was received. (Another chance to talk to the buyer, use it.)
Remember, this is one of the best marketing and business development tools you will ever find. Period. Here’s the best news – sign up right now and you can start developing your business today.
On-demand Webinars
Posted in: Using Bidspeed on June 7, 2010 | 1 Comment
The recent Bidspeed Webinars are on the site and available for viewing. All of the videos are recorded in Windows Media Player Format.
Note that you will need the GoToMeeting Codec in order to see the movies. You can download and install the Codec here: https://www2.gotomeeting.com/codec. The install is very small and fast.
If you have problems launching the video try this:
- Right click on the link and choose “Copy Shortcut” or “Copy Link Address”
- Launch Windows Media Player (From the Run menu, type wmplayer, then click OK)
- Press CTRL + V to paste the link into the URL window
- Click OK
July 19, 2010 – An Introduction To GSA Schedules – Presented by Jennifer Schaus
July 14, 2010 – How To Get Federal Solicitations Set Aside For Your Business (This Webinar is a repeat of the June 25th presentation.)
June 25, 2010 – How To Get Federal Solicitations Set Aside For Your Business
June 16, 2010 – Using Bidspeed to Find, Manage and Win Government Contracts
Keeping the Promise, Irvine
Posted in: News on May 24, 2010 | No Comments
A few of us will be attending Keeping the Promise in Irvine, CA Monday and Tuesday, May 24th and 25th.
The California Disabled Veteran Business Enterprise Alliance (CADVBE) presents the Annual Keeping the Promise (KTP2010) Conference and Exposition – bringing together 200 corporate and government procurement professionals meeting face to face with 400 qualified, competitive, certified disabled veteran businesses.
KTP 2010 opens at 9:00 a.m. on Monday, May 24th, 2010 and concludes Tuesday, May 25th at 5 p.m. at the Irvine Marriott in Southern California.
Bidspeed will be in the Expo Hall – stop by and see us.
Keeping Track
Posted in: Blog, What's New on April 18, 2010 | No Comments
Selling your product or services to the government can be one of the best ways to transform your business from average to successful. The government is the largest buyer of products and services in the world with the added benefit of being mandated to pay you on time.
Of course, it’s not easy. There is a lot to keep track of. And while success ultimately depends on a great many things, there are two things that are absolutely essential – one: do everything on time, and two: do everything on time.
If you’re like us, there are simply too many individual tasks to do to keep it in your head. You need to write it all down some place. You need to keep track. While we know that there are as many ways to “keep track” as there are things to keep track of – all of them are essentially just a list of tasks.
We’ve just released an update to Bidspeed that promotes “keeping track” to a first class idea. Here’s the important changes:
- There are now 3 types of tasks –
- Opportunity tasks: related to items on your watchlist
- Contact tasks: related to contacts in your contact list.
- Stand-alone tasks: general purpose tasks
- The top-level tab “Tasks” shows you a list of all of them, grouped by the type of task. If you’ve related the task to a contact or an opportunity, you can click on the link and see a link directly related to the item the task applies to.
- You can now create tasks from 3 places:
- The main “Dashboard” (Click ‘Create a New Task’)
- An item on your watchlist (Click ‘New’ on the list of tasks)
- A contact in your contact list (Click ‘New’ on the list of tasks)
We’ve spent most of our time trying to keep it simple because we know that no matter how clever a list of tasks gets, if it isn’t used then it isn’t helpful.
The other major change is that you can see your tasks on a calendar and even move them around on the calendar. This makes for a very easy way to rearrange your day / week / month.
If you’d like to give it a try then you should try Bidspeed and start creating your tasks. It won’t cost you anything for the first 30 days and after that it’s less than $0.63 a day.
Hey, there is a lot to keep track of. Get out there and start keeping track.
Simple Workflow
Posted in: Blog, What's New on February 22, 2010 | No Comments
The first essential step to winning government opportunities is simple: do everything on time. We’ve recently added some features in Bidspeed that help you with this. There are 4 important milestones to track:
- Internal Response Date. Originally, this date is set to the same date as the response date on the solicitation. By default, you’ll get email about the due date starting 3 days before and continuing until you change the status (to “Responded” or “Won’t respond”).
- Questions Due. This is the date for the last day of questions. This isn’t part of the data we get from FedBizOpps, so you’ll need to enter it yourself. Bidspeed sends a reminder email 3 days before.
- Pre-proposal Conference Date. This is the date for the pre-proposal conference (or conference call), if there is one. Again, you enter this date yourself. Bidspeed sends you a reminder 3 days before.
- Site Visit. This is the date for the site visit, if any. Bidspeed sends you a reminder 3 days before it’s due.
We’ve tried to keep both the number of steps and the number of email reminders flying around to an absolute minimum. (Bidspeed only reminds you once of the Questions Due, Pre-proposal Conference, and Site Visit.)
This is a frequent topic of discussion around here, and it’ll probably continue to evolve. We’ve tried to strike a balance between annoying and useful with the understanding that annoying is, well, annoying. The general opinion being that something is never both useful AND annoying.
In order to set any of these dates you simply need to edit the opportunity (click on the caption at the top of the opportunity detail page).
Along with this, there have been a few other changes:
- There is a new Win/Loss Status: Cancelled. Choose this status when you’ve gone to the serious trouble of responding to the opportunity just to have the agency decide they aren’t going forward.
- There is a new Yes/No field named: Bid Bond Required.
- There are 2 new status types: Review and Future. The “Review” status can be used when you are still deciding if you should respond. Opportunities in the Review status are still treated as active (same as “New” or “In Progress”) and you will still be reminded when the due date approaches. You can put opportunities in the “Future” status if you are planning to respond, but the solicitation is either early stage (see http://www.fedbidspeed.com/cracking-the-code) or considerably far away.
Finally, we have added a feature that will allow you to change the overall display width of pages in Bidspeed. To do this, click on My Account, Preferences, and check “Full Width” box on the Preferences page. When you save, the page will now expand to fill the entire width of your screen. This has been a much requested feature and one that those of you that have larger monitors will likely want to use.
Cracking The Code
Posted in: Blog, Using Bidspeed on February 18, 2010 | 1 Comment
If you’re new to government contracting one of the first things you’ll need to do is understand the maze of government terminology. Even if you are a regular user of FedBizOpps, there is a good chance you still find it confusing.
The absolutely first code to crack is the Solicitation Type on posted federal opportunities. The Solicitation Type field, as you’ll see below, is often less than accurate. What it should tell you, at a glance, is exactly one thing: “Should I read this notice?” Here’s the short version:
- Award – Super easy to understand. This is the list you want your name on.
- Combined Synopsis / Solicitation – This is a real, live, actual deal. Most opportunities classified this way are going to actually happen. All of these should include specifications for the product or service and a due date for the proposal. A “Combined” means the agency is expecting a proposal or quote from you.
- Sources Sought – A Sources Sought notification almost always means “Small Business Sources Sought.” The government is loosely required to “set-aside” a certain percentage of their procurements to small businesses. (This small business “requirement” has many, many exceptions, and there are many, many workarounds, but the general idea is sound.) Sometimes the solicitation will specify explicitly that they are looking only for small businesses (or 8(a), HUBZone, …) to respond. (Even if it doesn’t say “only small businesses” it means only small businesses.) If a Sources Sought opportunity is in your wheelhouse then you’ll want to add it to your watchlist to manage. Sources Sought is your chance to “get in early.”
- Pre-solicitation – Covers nearly everything else. In some cases, it’s really a “Special notice.” In others, it’s a Request for Information (RFI). Sometimes, the Pre-solicitation is, surprisingly, a pre-solicitation – meaning, the “real” solicitation isn’t released yet.
- Special Notice – Could mean anything (unless you’re GSA). Often this is a way to post a “sole source” notification which means you aren’t getting the deal. Other times it’s simply a notification of a follow on contract – again, you aren’t getting this one. In some cases (GSA in particular) it’s a Request for Quote or a notice that a RFQ is going to be issued. Still other times the description for the “Special Notice” will begin with the phrase “This is a combined synopsis/solicitation…” Really. (One of our favorites: F3PT710034AG01. The description reads: “this is a streamlined combined synopsis/solicitation…”)
- Synopsis / Solicitation Amendment – This is either a change or a cancellation. Most of the time these aren’t top-level items, but rather listed (in both Bidspeed and FedBizOpps) as changes to a solicitation. When they ARE top-level items, it’s almost always because someone mistyped the solicitation number. (W912EP-10-Z-0007 vs. W912EP10Z0007). Just for reference, this doesn’t happen much – for example, there are 272 “Synopsis / Solicitation Amendment” items out of 256,352 total items as of February 18th, 2010.
Now What?
In general, you’ll want to concentrate on numbers 2, 3, 4, and 5 (Synopsis / Solicitation, Sources Sought, Pre-solicitation, and Special Notice). You need to keep “Special Notice” in your list, especially if you sell to GSA, even though many of these are really “sole source” notices. (GSA has a fondness for Special Notices.)
We’ve tried to make this easy in Bidspeed. To do this, we have a concept of an “Active Solicitation.” Bidspeed defines an “Active Solicitation” as being one of the four important types: (Synopsis / Solicitation, Sources Sought, Pre-solicitation, and Special Notice), NOT archived, and with a response date EITHER in the future or missing.
In Bidspeed, most of the time, you’ll want to keep the “Active Solicitations Only” filter applied. (Click ‘Active Solicitations Only’ on the Filters menu.) This dramatically narrows down the list. Add your NAICS, Class Code, Distance, Date, Agency, Full Text filters to this list. (This isn’t really possible on fbo.gov, one of the many reasons Bidspeed users are happier than non-Bidspeed users.)
Just so you know, a missing response date does not mean what you might expect. Many times, pre-solicitations that are really pre-solicitations don’t have a response date. These are still interesting and often you’ll want to add them to your watchlist as they are going to become opportunities that you’ll need to manage in the near future.
See? Easy once you know how to crack the code. So, go ahead, get cracking.
If you want a 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. Click here to read about plans and pricing.
Location, Location, Location
Posted in: Blog, Using Bidspeed, What's New on February 9, 2010 | 1 Comment
One of the more requested features was for us to add “State” to the list of searchable fields in the opportunity list. The latest update adds this ability, and more to the main search pages. To add the field to your list, click on “Customize” then “Additional Fields” and choose “State” from the list.
You can now use the standard Bidspeed search to find items in your state:
If you want to include items ONLY in your state type the state code in the list and press enter. If you want to include multiple states, separate them with the word ‘OR’ (CA OR AZ OR CO). If you want to include items that do NOT have a state, you can add the phrase “IS NULL” (without the quotes).
You’ll notice that if you hover over the state column (even when there isn’t a state identified for the opportunity) you’ll see more information about the location – Zip, contracting office address, state, latitude, and longitude.
You’ll also notice that some solicitations don’t have a state (about 500 of the active solicitations as of February 8th). Most of the time the reason for this is because the opportunity is to be performed at multiple locations – for example: “Various locations in Korea, Mainland Japan, Okinawa or Guam Torii Station, Okinawa, Japan.” We don’t have a good way to put a state or a geo location for these types of opportunities.
Another reason is that the listed place of performance has a military zip code (APO, FPO) or it takes place in a country where the only data provided is a name (Columbia or Iraq) and we can’t determine the state (or geo location) with any accuracy.
For most users this isn’t much of a problem, for example if the opportunity takes place in Baghdad the fact that it’s 7,667 miles your office isn’t generally all that important.
New features like this are in response to requests by our users. So, if you have an idea for something that could be better in Bidspeed, send us an email: support@fedbidspeed.com.
Search Within A List
Posted in: Blog, What's New on January 27, 2010 | No Comments
At Bidspeed, a great deal of the support calls we get have are related to finding opportunities. There are many of users whose businesses sell (or plan to sell) very specific items to the government. With many of our users, a simple filter on “Class Code” is too broad.
To help with this, we’ve just released an update that makes searching in Bidspeed even simpler, and even more accurate. With this release, at the top the “Search FedBizOpps” pages you’ll see a new search box with the text: “Search within this list.”
When you add a search term into this text box (e.g. “socks” or “fire extinguishers”) and click the search button, Bidspeed will search the entire text of the opportunity using your phrase including any filter you have already defined. (Click here for advanced search rules).
Here’s an example:
