Bidspeed University

Posted in: Blog, Using Bidspeed on January 31, 2012 | No Comments

Bidspeed’s simple training platform called Bidspeed University is now open. Here we will be teaching you everything you need to know to use Bidspeed effectively and properly. Bidspeed University has information for everyone from the beginning small business owner who is new to Government contracts, to the experienced capture management team. We offer training for people with all different levels of experience with Government contracts and the Bidspeed software. The categories offered are the following:

• New to Federal Government Contracts?

• New to the Bidspeed Software?

• Interested in DIBBS

• Looking for More Advanced Bidspeed Training?

• Interested in Teaming?

To access Bidspeed University please click here

For additional support please click her

3 Steps for Small Businesses to Win Federal Government Contracts

Posted in: Blog, Government Contracting, Using Bidspeed on December 30, 2011 | No Comments

1.        Know your capabilities
2.        Sources Sought
3.        Set Asides

Know Your Capabilities

The first thing you must know before attempting to respond to a Federal Government solicitation, is you must know your companies capabilities. What is your company good at? What have you done in the past? What can you provide to the Federal Government? The wrong idea is to first find what the Government is purchasing and then trying to produce that.

Sources Sought

Sources Sought is one of the best tools to compete against large companies in the Federal Government arena. This is because the Government contract sector is highly competitive, and small businesses must use every advantage they can to win contracts. By responding to a Sources Sought, this is a way to get your foot in the door.  This does not mean that by responding you will win a contract, it does not even mean you will be considered for a contract, but it does mean it will increase your chances. It will increase the likelihood that the Federal Government will provide opportunities which meet your company’s capabilities, and set aside contracts which meet your set aside classification.

Set Asides

What are Set Aides? According to the Encarta World English Dictionary, “Set Aside” means to reserve something, to keep something, especially time or money for a specific purpose. This is exactly what a set aside is, part of the U.S. Government’s  Small Business Act states that the Federal Government is required by law to reserve a variety of procurements which are partially or totally for small business participation.  Which means that the Government must set aside a percentage of all Federal opportunities which meet certain small business set aside classifications. For more information regarding “Set Asides” and codes for classifications please go to http://www.fedbidspeed.com/set-aside.

In conclusion, if you are a small business, and you would like to respond to Government solicitations, first know your capabilities and set aside codes. Second respond to all sources sought relating to your business. By taking these three very simple steps you will greatly increase your chance in winning more Federal Government contracts.

How To Get Federal Solicitations Set Aside For Your Business

Posted in: Blog, Business of Government, Government Contracting, Using Bidspeed on June 24, 2010 | 1 Comment

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:

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.

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.

Click here to view all of the recorded Webinars

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.

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.

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.