Slides for the presentation are available here: http://video.fedbidspeed.com/HowToSellToTheFederalGovernment.pdf

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:

1. 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.
2. Click the ‘Respond’ button.
3. 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.
4. 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.
5. 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.
6. Click ‘Send to Me Only.’ Check your email. Read the email. Make sure this is what you want to send.
7. If you have changes you can always get back to the response by clicking the ‘Respond’ button again from the opportunity detail page.
8. 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.)
9. 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.

The total value of the 20 largest federal IT projects in 2010 is 50 percent higher than the previous year, increasing from about $120 billion to $180 billion.

The majority (all but two) of the projects are contracts that will be re-competed (which is good if you are new to government contracting, especially if you are a small business) or are consolidations of existing pacts (which is good for you if you are a potential sub-contractor).

The best and largest example is the Homeland Security Department’s EAGLE II contract which will replace the EAGLE contract as DHS’ preferred vehicle for procuring IT services. This is a huge contract – INPUT expects DHS to award EAGLE II during the second quarter of fiscal 2010 with a ceiling of $45 billion. The original contract had about $2.8 billion in business during fiscal 2007 and $3.3 billion during fiscal 2008.

DHS is choosing to re-compete EAGLE II rather than exercising the original contract’s two option periods because many of the small business vendors originally awarded under EAGLE have outgrown their small business and disadvantaged designations.

Here’s the really good news if you are a small business that provides IT services: DHS is looking for a new set of small business vendors for EAGLE II. The contract will include separate tracks for different classes of vendors, including small businesses, service-disabled owned companies, 8(a) certified organizations, and firms located in HubZones.

If you want to know more about EAGLE II, you might read the recently posted (September 22^nd) copy of the vendor day questions – (https://www.fbo.gov/utils/view?id=6a0edab4eb0b1e83a3f46ff0cced4b7d). In Bidspeed, search for DHSEAGLE2-UNRESTRICTED in the global search.

With a relaunch this week of the official www.recovery.gov site, the Feds are now competitive again. The new Web site features an easy-to-use map that lets you zoom in and click on green, blue, and pink dots that represent where contracts, grants, and loans from the $787 billion stimulus legislation are ending up.

One of the interesting things to note is that grants spending is more than 11 times greater than contracts spending. As of September 19^th, there has been $12 billion in contracts and over $141 billion in loans, all directly from recovery funds. The spending isn’t slowing down either. There have also been over 17,000 new solicitations posted in the last 30 days alone.

The new fiscal year begins Oct. 1, but Congress has not yet cleared any of the fiscal 2010 appropriations bills. The legislation passed Friday — known as a continuing resolution (CR) — would prevent a government shutdown. The CR, which will last through Oct. 31, was added to the conference agreement on the fiscal 2010 Legislative Branch spending bill.

The conference report was adopted on a 217-190 vote. The Senate probably will take up the legislation Sept. 29.

The bill also would prevent the nation’s highway programs from expiring, and it would free up funds for the Postal Service by lowering the payment it must make into a trust fund intended for future retiree health benefits, to $1.4 billion from $5.4 billion in fiscal 2009.

Republicans were critical of Democrats’ decision to include the CR in the Legislative Branch bill because it prevents them from being able to offer amendments to the stopgap bill.

They also seized on the somewhat ironic fact that the first fiscal 2010 spending bill to be enacted will be the one funding Congress’ own budget while the rest of the government is still waiting for its funding.

Yet a far larger flow of money into information technology may eventually come from state and local governments as part of a vast array of stimulus-package investment projects, according to Joaquin Gonzalez, director of research for CivicUS, which advises state and local governments.

Mr. Gonzalez estimates that between $250 billion and $300 billion of the stimulus funding is targeted for state and local government projects intended to modernize and improve the efficiency of public services. This is not money, he says, to plug budget gaps, but for investments designed to make local government work smarter. In doing so, Mr. Gonzalez calculates, as much as one-third of that total will be spent on information technology projects, often involving the Web, to streamline and improve the delivery of public services and information to citizens.

The stimulus legislation, the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, also calls for detailed reporting and tracking of the federal funds that will be handed out. Many companies, large and small, are rushing to offer project-monitoring software for state and local governments. In a research note this week, CivicUS surveyed the vendors’ scramble. The offerings come from the biggest companies, like Microsoft’s Stimulus360 and I.B.M.’s Economic Recovery Fund Tracking, and from smaller suppliers, like Acumen’s Stimulus Tracking and Recipient Transparency, or START.

These software “dashboards” for tracking projects are strategic products, especially for the big companies. The state and local government market for information technology is scattered and difficult to crack. By selling the dashboard software, the big companies are trying to get a foot in the door, Mr. Gonzalez said, and potentially a head start in grabbing a share of the expected surge in stimulus-funded technology spending.

In its report, CivicUS surveys other suppliers including MicroStrategy, CGI, Visible Strategies and Onvia. And state and local governments, the research firm says, should look to software to help them do three things: support reporting to the federal government, share information with citizens on the progress and benefits of projects, and manage the projects themselves.

The demand for project tracking technology, fueled by the stimulus package, extends beyond the companies cited in the CivicUS research note. A startup in San Francisco, Innotas, which offers Web-based technology-project software, has seen the effect. “The biggest growth area for us is state and local government,” observed Keith Carlson, chief executive of Innotas.