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 –
  1. Opportunity tasks: related to items on your watchlist
  2. Contact tasks: related to contacts in your contact list.
  3. 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:
  1. The main “Dashboard” (Click ‘Create a New Task’)
  2. An item on your watchlist (Click ‘New’ on the list of tasks)
  3. 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:

1. 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”).
2. 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.
3. 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.
4. 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:

1. 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.
2. There is a new Yes/No field named: Bid Bond Required.
3. 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:

1. Award – Super easy to understand. This is the list you want your name on.
2. 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.
3. 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.”
4. 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.
5. 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…”)
6. 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 18^th, 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:

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?