Monday, July 16, 2012

GovCon Procurement Changes

I have been advising companies on doing business with the government since 1985, and I have never seen this much turmoil in the market, starting with but certainly not limited to the budget issues, fixed-price contracts, low price/technically acceptable (LPTA) and more.

The good news is the government still needs all the products and services they’ve always purchased. The bad news is how they are buying is changing, especially on GSA Schedules. If you are not totally aware of everything that is going on, you may be severely handicapped in how you sell to Uncle Sam. Worst case scenario- you could lose your ability to sell to the feds.

The next several months will be crucial for your business!

If you sell via GSA, do you know GSA recently announced the intention of cleaning up the outdated and oversaturated GSA Multiple Award Schedules program?  GSA’s goal is to move to a “Demand Based Model” that would maximize the use of GSA’s limited internal resources.

According to GSA memos and information from other sources, these are the pending changes which may be coming to the GSA Schedules:

1.         Ending contracts that are not meeting minimum sales criteria (contracts with vendors that are not performing on specific Schedules)

2.         Deleting some outdated Special Item Numbers (SINs) and/or entire Schedules

3.         Closing overpopulated GSA Schedules to new offers for annual periods of time.

While each of these may be valid, they impact the current landscape in a big way.

Add to this the current and upcoming Federal Strategic Sourcing BPAs (Schedule 75 and others), and there truly major shift in progress.

Understanding what the issues are is the beginning of developing ways to ensure you maintain more of your government accounts than your competition.

I am looking for up to 8 companies that sell products to the government to advise and work with between now and the end of the year to ensure each company understands the issues and are fully prepared to succeed despite the changes.

If you’d like to see the complete details for this five month program, let me know & I will send them ASAP.

Absolutely the best-
Mark Amtower

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