Staying Optimistic

Posted in: Blog on January 26, 2010 | No Comments

The news in 2009 wasn’t good and you felt it. In a report released by the National Federation of Independent Business (NFIB) the optimism index dropped 0.8 points, making November the sixth consecutive month the index has been below 90. It’s a good report, you can read it here: NFIB Small Business Economic Trends

What’s driving this crisis in confidence? Simple – buyers aren’t spending like they used to. Headcounts are down – 21% of small businesses reduced their workforce last year (4.2 workers on average). Capital expenditure plans are pessimistic as well – the percentage of businesses planning to make capital expenditures also fell to a 35-year low: 16%.

Hang in there – there is a bright spot. Government agencies are spending, especially the Federal Government.

Today is the day to start developing new customers and new leads. We’re not suggesting that it’s easy. Selling to new customers is never easy, and the Federal Government can certainly be a tough sell. But it’s still a new customer.

Worth it, if you ask us.

What’s New – January

Posted in: Blog, What's New on January 11, 2010 | No Comments

Tags

We’ve added simple tags support for opportunities on your watchlist and contacts. You can use tags to categorize items for easy filtering. To add a tag, just type the tags into the list and click save. You can add multiple words by separating the tags with a comma. It looks like this:

To search for a tagged item just type the tag name and press enter. You can match multiple tags by including the words “AND” and “OR.” For example, to find all items with the tag “dhs” and “business” type: “dhs AND business” (without the quotes) into the text box at the top of the page. To find items that have EITHER tag, use “dhs OR business.” (again, without the quotes).

Rich Text

You can now edit your notes on a deal and the description of any new opportunities using a simple rich text editor. To edit an opportunity that you’ve created, just click on the caption:

Workflow

Bidspeed already had simple workflow related to due dates. Now, we’ve added an additional item to help you keep track of the date that questions on a particular solicitation is due. In order to set this date you simply need to edit the opportunity (click on the caption at the top of the opportunity detail page) and set a date. Bidspeed automatically reminds you before the date passes to make sure that you’ve asked any questions you need to ask:

Proximity Filtering

Posted in: Blog, Product, What's New on December 18, 2009 | No Comments

Our most frequent support call by far has to do with finding local opportunities. So, because we’ve had a bunch of requests, we’ve just released an update to the site that adds proximity filtering for opportunities.

To use it – just type a number in the “Distance from <zip code>” and click the Apply Filter button () or press Enter. The zip code is the zip code for your account. If you haven’t entered it you can by clicking on “Manage your account” on the Welcome page. (If you don’t see the field in the list, click Customize, Additional Fields, then “Distance From <my zip code> “, then OK.)

The data posted by Federal agencies to FedBizOpps generally has a “Place of Performance” associated with it. In some cases, this data isn’t available, so Bidspeed uses the contracting office address. We mention this because we would suggest that you still browse new opportunities on a regular basis by your main classification code or by using the global search.

The global search (top right corner of the page) searches through the description of every solicitation and returns a list ranked by relevancy.

In case you’re wondering, the data for latitude and longitude comes from geonames.org

To toggle the filter so that you see only Active opportunities (Not Archived), simply click on the Filters button (at the top of the page), and check ‘Active.’ (Active opportunities have not been archived.) If you want to view only Current opportunities (Response Date is in the future), click ‘Current’ on the filters menu.

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.

Doing Work

Posted in: Blog, Using Bidspeed on December 2, 2009 | No Comments

In the last 6 months there were over 100,000 solicitations posted to FedBizOpps. Really. It can be a little overwhelming.

Here’s the problem – none of the opportunities have a contract attached with your name on it. Sorry.

So what do you do?

Bad news first – you have to do the work. All the software in the world, even elegantly designed, shockingly useful software (like ours) can’t help you if you aren’t doing the work.

Think of it this way – if you spend 10 minutes of every day looking at new opportunities and found only TWO appropriate solicitations a week, that would be 100 real opportunities a year. Be honest, do you have another place to find 100 qualified leads a year in less than an hour a week?

We suggest starting with 10 minutes a day. When you find an appropriate opportunity, add it to your watchlist. Set a priority. Read the bid documents. Write a good response. Send it in. Win the deal. Do the work. We’re happy to help.

If you want an 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, Bidspeed will do some of the work for you.

Can You Afford Not To?

Posted in: Blog on November 17, 2009 | No Comments

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 | No Comments

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 | No Comments

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 | No Comments

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.

DOD’s New Open Source Guidelines

Posted in: Blog, News on October 30, 2009 | No Comments

New Defense Department guidelines released October 16^th put open-source software on the same level as commercial software and urges DOD agencies to evaluate it on an equal basis with proprietary offerings. Read the memo here: http://bit.ly/3g8o1u.

“To effectively achieve its missions, the Department of Defense must develop and update its software-based capabilities faster than ever, to anticipate new threats and respond to continuously changing requirements,” wrote acting DOD Chief Information Officer David Wennergren, in a cover letter to the guidance, which was issued Oct. 16.

Military services procuring software should regard open-source as just another form of commercial software, the guidance states. When evaluating possible software choices, the agency should consider the benefits of open-source, such as how the code is peer-reviewed, the freedom from potential vendor-lock in, potential licensing issues about reusing the software and the potential cost-savings.

The guidance also states that the programming code of open-source software is “data” as defined by DOD Directive 8320.02. Because “open-source licenses authorize widespread dissemination of the licensed software,” the military can share open-source programs across the entire department.

The guidance also clarifies that any changes a service makes to an open-source program do not necessarily have to be shared with the public, though changes that do not compromise national security, such as code fixes and enhancements, should be shared wherever possible.

Schwarzenegger’s Puzzling Veto

Posted in: Blog on October 29, 2009 | No Comments

California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger typically attaches a message to bills he signs or vetoes telling lawmakers why he took the action.

Democratic San Francisco Assemblyman Tom Ammiano, who had sponsored the bill, actually received two messages: the veto letter itself and a not-so-subtle rebuke creatively hidden within it.

Like a find-the-word puzzle, the second message was visible by stringing together the first letter of each line down the left-hand margin. It consisted of a common four-letter vulgarity followed by the letters “y-o-u.”

Read the Huffington Post Article: http://bit.ly/4ypiqd