How to Get Government Contracts, 1st ed.
Have a Slice of the 1 Trillion Dollar Pie

Many companies venture into the government market with a certain naiveté and pay a hefty price to find out that there is much more to winning a contract than writing last-minute proposals in response to publicly posted solicitations. To stop the bleeding of precious resources, they need to step back to learn how professionals win business in the federal arena. This book shows you how to find, for example, the best potential customers and opportunities for your company. It also explains the secret to winning consistently by conducting pre-proposal preparation (also called "capture") and practicing a disciplined, process-based approach to proposal development.

This book provides a recipe for winning government contracts over and over again, the way seasoned government contractors do it. After reading this book, you will know exactly what to do to position your company to win a government proposal before a solicitation becomes public, including building customer relationships, gathering intelligence, developing a "win strategy," performing competitive analysis, selecting the best teammates, and developing a solution. As a result, you will apply professional techniques to organizing your proposal effort, outlining a proposal document, and writing RFPs that persuade evaluators to award the contract to you.

1. Let's demystify government contracting.
2. It’s not a get-rich-quick world, but there is more profit than meets the eye.
3. The pros and cons of entering the government-contracting market.
4. Bird’s eye view of the market.
5. Red tape, and how to rein it in and become a pro at winning contracts consistently.

1. Rules of the game in the federal marketplace.
2. Government procurement methods.
3. How to navigate the world of rules and acronyms.
4. How to leverage small business status and socioeconomic programs whether yours is a small or large business.
5. Necessary registrations and other steps to becoming a government contractor.

1. The chicken and the egg of past performance: Getting started is as hard as landing a dream job straight out of college.
2. Strategies for penetrating the federal market for the first time.
3. How to find perfect customers for your portfolio of offerings in the vast federal market.
4. How to feed your pipeline with high-probability deals.

1. Secret weapon of seasoned government contractors: Capture planning.
2. Six components of capture to make winning a proposal a slam dunk.
3. How to reduce competition with sole-source opportunities and small business set-asides.
4. How to “wire” opportunities to yourself legally.
5. How to prepare for a proposal in style.

1. Remember: You're dealing with people.
2. Four key tasks for interfacing and building relationships with government customers.
3. Rules of interfacing with government personnel that you don't want to break at any cost.
4. Twenty questions for gathering information from the customer during a visit to gain understanding of what keeps them up at night and influences their buying process.

1. Public bid posting doesn’t mean a level playing field: The diminishing opportunity for gathering information on your target bid.
2. Where and how to gather actionable intelligence when you are not allowed to talk to the customer.
3. What information is necessary to win.
4. Document intelligence in a capture plan so that it is useful for the proposal team.

1. Identify top-level actions that create a winning offer.
2. Good and bad win strategies.
3. How to distinguish yourself from the pack and avoid the trap of flaccid win strategies.
4. How to develop powerful proposal-level and section-level win themes that provide a conclusive set of reasons why the customer should select you and not your competitors.
5. How to turn win themes into action items to outdo your competitors.

1. Why you should worry about what your competitors do.
2. How cursory competitive analysis won’t fail to hurt you.
3. What you need to know about your competition, and techniques for finding this information.
4. Putting the puzzle together: how to exploit your competitors’ shortfalls to your advantage and outdo them through strategic actions.

1. Choose and engage the right partner companies.
2. How good teaming partners are like parking spaces in an office building.
3. Teaming strategies: types, timing, and pros and cons.
4. How to qualify a teammate to help you win and avoid problems down the road.
5. Understanding size rules and potential teaming pitfalls that could disqualify you from bidding.
6. Negotiating a binding teaming agreement.

1. Wow your customer and put your proposal in a whole different league.
2. 30 days: Barely enough time to prepare a winning proposal
3. Prepare in advance of the RFP issuance.
4. How to guess at the requirements before the government issues the proposal.
5. What can you figure out in advance, and how to do it without wasting time or money.                

1. Why proposals win (and why many don't).
2. Making an educated decision to bid or not bid on a proposal.
3. How to read the government RFP correctly to understand exactly what the government is looking for.
4. Why you need a proposal process, and how it works.

1. It is all about planning and attention to detail.
2. How to develop a schedule to avoid last-minute scramble and produce an error-free, professional set of bid documents.
3. How to outline a compliant proposal to get the highest score from the evaluators.
4. How to make your proposal sections more compelling through executive summary, graphics, and persuasive language.

Chapter 13: You Won the Race ... and Now for the Sequel

1. Fullfill your contract: underpromise and overdeliver. 
2. Techniques and strategy for building and aggressively growing your government contracting business to millions of dollars and beyond.

How to Get Government Contracts is an insider's view of how to get a piece of the $1 trillion the U.S. government spends each year on contracts and grants--and how to build a business selling goods and services to the government.