If you are interested in spending a couple of days in sunny San Diego, here the show link: http://www.navygoldcoast.org

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.

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.

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:

1. Right click on the link and choose “Copy Shortcut” or “Copy Link Address”
2. Launch Windows Media Player (From the Run menu, type wmplayer, then click OK)
3. Press CTRL + V to paste the link into the URL window
4. 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

Click here to see all Bidspeed events on GovEvents.com.

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.

http://www.ktpexpo.org

Adding or Removing Columns

All lists allow you to change which columns are displayed. Here’s how:

1. Click the Customize Button
2. Choose the columns to be displayed
3. Click OK.
4. To remove columns, click the little red ‘x’ at the top of each column.

You may want to look at a few application wide settings that give you more control over everything. As usual, we’ve tried to keep it simple, so there are only a few settings that may need tweaking.

To change application wide settings, first click “Preferences.” (Upper right corner next to “Change Password.”)

My Account

Most of the settings are self-explanatory. The only one you will typically need to change is the “Full Page Width” setting. If you haven’t tried this yet and you have a wider (or higher resolution) monitor, then you might like it.

You can now change the overall display width of pages in Bidspeed from the standard centered version (800 pixels wide) to a full width version (as wide as your monitor).

Here’s how:

1. Click Preferences.
2. Check “Full Width” box on the Preferences page.
3. Click the Save button at the top of the page.

Full Width Preference

After you’ve created the opportunity, it will show up in your watchlist just like all other opportunities, and you’ll be able to attach documents, create tasks, assign priorities, and set important dates. It’s a good idea to attach the document(s) that are related to the opportunity as document on the opportunity.

The Solicitation Number you create is up to you. Our suggestion is to pick something that makes sense – we typically like to include a state prefix in the number – for example: TX-RFP-2054-9877. The text of the solicitation is optional, but we strongly suggest you type or paste at least a summary of the requirements into the summary editor.

On page 2 you’ll notice that you can enter a URL to the opportunity. It’s a good idea to enter a link to the main notification page and NOT the solicitation document, rather, attach the solicitation document to the opportunity as a document, and keep the link as a way to check for updates and amendments. (Remember, Bidspeed can’t check for updates on private opportunities.)

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.

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.