Analyzing your company’s sales is a valuable approach to understand how you’re doing in the federal marketplace as well as identifying any strategic changes you need to make. Every GSA contractor has to report their GSA Schedule sales on a regular basis, and of course it’s always important to keep tabs on your sales to track performance, but it’s also important to take a step back and see what sales look like across the Multiple Award Schedule (MAS) program. How is your business doing compared to your competitors? What does the market look like overall? Does it look like it's growing or shrinking in certain areas? As a GSA contractor, you have access to several tools to help you assess sales. Let’s talk about the various resources available.
The Schedule Sales Query Plus (SSQ+) Dashboard is designed to provide you the figures you’ll be needing for market research purposes.
For example, when you search for how much money is being spent within a designated SIN, you can learn whether it’s worth adding to your GSA Schedule or if you should keep it on your contract.
We created a scenario with the two SSQ+ sales reports below of both IT Special Item Numbers (SINs) 54151S-IT Professional Services and 54151HACS-Highly Adaptive Cybersecurity Services. These numbers can be accessed by navigating to the “VAM – Ready Report” tab (second to last tab on the right of your screen where the blue arrow is pointing).
At first glance, you can see the difference in numbers of vendors and contracts. 54151S has significant more money flowing through and more contractors selling through this SIN. It’s important to note this is just an example to show how you can use this tool to compare similar SINs to get a sense of the market. The HACS SIN is a more specialized category and requires a few assessments to get accepted, so it would make sense that it has less contractors. It also means there is less competition with less contractors, so it's something to weigh. We just want you to get a better understanding of what SSQ+ can do for market research purposes.
You can also use this tool to see Fiscal Year sales overall, and organize reports by Industry, Large Category, SIN, small business set-aside, whether it’s a service or product, etc.
The SSQ+ will take time to get comfortable with, as the endless filters are not quite user friendly. With more experience navigating through the tool, you’ll be a GSA sales researcher expert in no time.
GSA Advantage! is a useful tool to sell your products and learn more about competitor’s offerings, but did you know you can also take a look at all the total sales, the number of orders, and the number of items being ordered for contractors on GSA Advantage? You can access a wide range of fiscal years of GSA Advantage! sales on GSA’s Vendor Support Center GSA Advantage Archive Sales.
When you click on one of the links, an excel spreadsheet will appear on a new tab in your screen. You’ll be able to see how much your competitor’s have sold through this site.
By looking up your competitors’ names, you will be getting a better understanding of where you stand in the market. The illustration above is a sample size of a vendor’s sales numbers for the first quarter of FY22. The remaining quarters of FY22 are branched out to the right as you navigate through the spreadsheet.
USASpending.gov is very likely to be the most user-friendly tool for conducting sales and market research. The filter system is easy enough to navigate as you are able to access a wide range of sales data. This data not only includes information on contracts sales but data of company Grants, Contract IDV’s (Indefinite Delivery Vehicle), Direct Payments, Loans, and much more.
All you need to do to access this information is by clicking on “Start Searching Awards” on the front page of USASpending.gov. A table should appear with all of the filter options to your left. Make sure you’re aware of these options as it will save you time from having to research endless competitors that you may not be needing to look at.
The Advantage Spend Analysis Program (ASAP) is also a centralized reporting tool that is designed to provide users access to GSA Advantage! sales and statistical data. You may not be aware of this tool because it requires a log-in. Only authorized contract users with a GSA Advantage! account can access this data. ASAP’s reports give data results based on user-determined report time periods, procurement tools, as well as additional criteria such as socioeconomic factors. If you regularly log-in to GSA Advantage!, we suggest you look into this tool for further research.
As a reminder, keeping your Schedule up to date through reporting your GSA sales is one of many important parts of maintaining compliance. Your company needs to be reporting your sales monthly if you have Transactional Data Reporting (TDR). If you’ve opted into Commercial Sales Practices (CSP), please be sure to report your sales quarterly. Along with reporting your sales, you need to make sure you’re paying the Industrial Funding Fee (IFF) every quarter.
If you want more information on what a GSA sale is, steps on how to report your sales, as well as more information on market research, be sure to review our blogs. We know how stressful and time consuming it is to navigate through these resources, whether it’s for compliance or conducting research.
If you need help navigating through any of the portals or you have questions about your GSA Schedule, be sure to reach out to one of our consultants, we are more than happy to assist.