Everyone defines success differently, but when it comes to being a successful contractor, the goals are fairly straightforward: achieve sales, market your contract, and maintain compliance. This may sound like a simple enough task, but selling to the government is not the same as selling commercially, and new contractors may need some guidance on how to enter the federal marketplace. Since we help our clients acquire and manage their GSA Schedules and we have our own GSA Schedule contract, we know that being a contractor can be arduous and often overwhelming. So, we put together 5 tips to help you navigate your contract successfully.

Considering all the resources available to businesses pursuing a federal contract, it’s very easy to feel overwhelmed with all the information you have access to. On the other hand, perhaps you are unaware of all the useful resources that are out there. You may be asking: Where do I go to find information? Where do small businesses come into the picture? Where do I find contracting opportunities?

Once you get your GSA Schedule contract, you become part of an elite marketplace reserved for contractors who are pre-authorized to sell to the government. While this will certainly increase your business opportunities, you still have to face competition just like any other market. With your GSA Schedule, you’ll be competing for orders on procurement sites like GSA Advantage!, and competing in government solicitations. How do you make sure you stands out from the other government contractors? We put together 4 ways your company can gain an advantage over other companies and best practices you should follow.

Government agencies use contract vehicles like the GSA Multiple Award Schedule (MAS) Program to purchase many of the products and services they need from commercial customers. The GSA Schedules Program provides over 11 million products and services to federal, state, and local government buyers, and is often the preferred contract vehicle for government agencies. This is because GSA has simplified the acquisition process to make purchasing of products and services as smooth and efficient as possible.

The federal government offers a lot of support for small businesses looking to enter the public sector. This includes small businesses owned by women, economically disadvantaged businesses, and veteran-owned businesses. Here at Winvale, we have several clients who are Veteran-Owned Small Businesses (VOSBs), and that’s why we want to acknowledge resources available to these businesses as they navigate the federal marketplace. The General Services Administration (GSA) and the Small Business Administration (SBA) are among several federal administrations that promote veteran entrepreneurship, and it’s important you take advantage of these resources if you are a veteran business and a GSA Schedule contractor.

So you have been following a pending government solicitation for months (maybe years), you have met with the customer and completed a solution demo, you have attended all the industry days, formed your team, followed the capture processes and best practices, and your team is ready for the solicitation to come out (or potentially the draft solicitation). You get the notification that it has been posted, you download it, open it up and start reading. Three pages in you’ll see statement like the one below: