Federal Contracting Unfiltered: The Truth WBEs Can’t Ignore

Intro: Broadcasting live from the Business RadioX studios. It’s time for women in motion. Brought to you by WBEC-West. Join forces. Succeed together. Now, here’s your host.

Lee Kantor: Lee Kantor here with Renita Manley. Another episode of Women in Motion. And this is going to be a good one. But before we get started, it’s important to recognize our sponsor, WEBC-West. Without them, we couldn’t be sharing these important stories. Today’s episode is titled Federal Contracting Unfiltered the truth WBEs Can’t Ignore. Today’s guest is Judy Bradt, CEO of Summit Insight. Renita, this is going to be a great show. It is so relevant in today’s world.

Renita Manley: It really is. Lee. Thank you. So today we’re digging into the unfiltered truth about federal contracting with Judy, CEO of Summit Insight. Like we just mentioned, she’s a nationally recognized expert in federal business development with more than 37 years of experience and Amazon number one best selling book and over $350 million in contracts won by her clients, Judy knows what it really takes to win the bidding above Con Arena, and she doesn’t sugarcoat it, so I’m very excited for today’s discussion.

Judy Bradt: Thanks for having me.

Renita Manley: So I’m going to just dig right in with this, Judy. It’s going after federal contracts different from going after corporate contracts. A lot of our lives are very much so focused on corporate contracts, and we do have many in the federal game. So can you tell us that difference?

Judy Bradt: The and there are similarities that are exciting as well. One of the biggest differences is that there is no organization, let alone no other country in the world that publishes over 400 pieces of information about every contract and purchase transaction on a contract expected to be worth more than $25,000 going back over 35 years. And that information is available for free online right now. If that doesn’t make your head explode, I don’t know what does. So the amount of public information available about your prospective buyers that you can access and help you make good decisions for where to focus is phenomenal. Second big difference is that there are players in what I call players at layers. There are people in unique, structured roles in every single office where you want to be successful. And while there are some parallels in the corporate world, you’ve really got to know who the multiple players are for making contract decisions in the federal world, because you need to get them all on board and knowing you, liking you, being enthusiastic about engaging you if you expect to be successful. The third is that there’s an overlay of law and regulation for public accountability for expenditure of public funds. And so, just like you wouldn’t want to step onto a hockey rink or a soccer pitch if you didn’t know the rules of the game. Knowing the rules of the game, which are published and transparent, is also essential before you get started. And I think the fourth big difference I would say, is that it’s a long game. And so it is necessary and realistic to have working capital to figure out your way. Start small, be persistent, focus tightly, build Build relationships and grow trust and track record if you want to be successful. This is not a quick sale and there’s no reason to feel you are entitled for any reason for someone to award a contract to you. How’s that for a start?

Lee Kantor: Now is is working with the government. Um, uh, something that you need kind of a Sherpa in order to do effectively? Or is this something that a person can do just on their own, like you mentioned? Oh, it’s all out there and it’s public, but it’s kind of like Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, you know, public like it’s all there if you can find it and use the right words to do the contract. There’s a lot of details and there’s a lot of, um, you know, you make one mistake and that could set you back, or it could eliminate you. And without a Sherpa kind of by your side, it could be difficult and it could take you longer than if you did engage help.

Judy Bradt: I would agree. And while the term Sherpa is a very specific term related to indigenous people of Nepal, I will say that I want to use the term guide, and I want to say that you’re going to spend time and you’re going to spend money. All you get to choose is the mix. You decide. And so I’m when I’m not doing government contracting, I am a scuba diver, an indoor rock professional indoor rock climbing instructor, and an instrument rated private pilot. I’m not an adrenaline junkie. What these three things have in common is that you do them successfully and safely in, by having the best guide money can find at your elbow, answering your questions, and keeping your tookus alive. This is how I feel about government contracting as well. And by the way, when I talked about the things that are available for free in public, one thing I did not say is that there’s information about all the opportunities you can win. Available for free online, in public. That’s exactly what there isn’t. And so your analogy of the Temple of Doom amused me very much. And while there’s enough doom in the world to go around at any point in time, being able to do great adventures and do them safely is going to happen more easily with an experienced guide who is paid for what they do, by and large. And a footnote there is free assistance available for every business owner that has a legitimately established business entity in the United States that wants to win federal contracts. Those are the apex accelerators and their mission, their paid 50% by the Department of Defense Office of Small Business Programs, 50% by local partners. Their entire mission is to help companies win not just federal, but also state and regional and local government contracts. And if you have not hit your dinger on the funding meter on the free stuff, for the sake of all that is holy, look up Apex accelerator in the state or territory where your business is registered, and see what kind of local help is available for free before you think about engaging anybody and paying them money.

Renita Manley: So, Judy, that’s that’s that was a lot of information to take in. And I’m so happy that we have this podcast to hold that information. In addition to this, you just recently hosted a VBA expert series for us. And in that series, which all our readers can access in the web resource portal. I remember you mentioning that federal contracts is a long game, so it can take anywhere between 12 and 24 months to get a contract. How can our VBS prepare for such a long journey?

Judy Bradt: Some key steps, and I won’t try to get all of them in, but some of the keys to success. One of them includes focus. There’s no such thing as doing business with the government. There’s only doing business with people. And for most of the world offering products and services, there are literally thousands of people who might need what you do if you’re going to be successful. The level of effort required to build relationships means that you’re going to be more successful more quickly if you do research, especially on that past federal contract data, current events and public future projections and relationships and other intelligence you have and focus tightly on no more than 3 to 4 agencies or offices. Get real specific and expect to then research what’s the network of connections with individual federal humans who are going to have to fall in love with you and be on board if you want to be successful, and then expect to get the help that you need, and invest the time and money required to understand what’s important to them and build trust and relationships with them.

Judy Bradt: There’s no such thing as well. I’m going to win a federal contract. It’ll be profitable, and the profit that I make off of that will mean I’ve got enough money to reinvest, to grow the business. Know. Just as many of us have experienced when we first started our businesses. You’ve got to get an investment, an infusion of capital, and that includes financial capital, temporal capital time, emotional capital, human capital, in order to just get on track to do that market expansion. I love the way that the Webbank community is great at offering the opportunities to connect with and understand how to get working capital and connect with each other for complimentary resources that can help them. It’s realistic to expect to invest 12 to 24 months of outlay before you win your first contract. The good news is that the last time there was research done about this, the companies who won their first contract, two thirds of them want a second contract or more within 24 months of winning the first one. So past performance leads to future wins.

Renita Manley: Yeah, that definitely sounds realistic. And a few moments ago you mentioned that we should pick about 3 to 4 contacts or, um, um, opportunities to.

Judy Bradt: Offices, offices, potential buying organizations. Not here are the only three things I’m going to bid. But rather, rather than asking what can I bid? And this is a common question that deals with the phenomenon I call opportunity illusion. Uh, everything gets better when you stop asking, what can I bid? And you start asking, who is my buyer and how can I know them? What keeps them up at night? What problems can I solve for them? What tiny problems can I solve for them so that I become the top of mind person? That when they need something, even if it’s not something I do, I’m the one they call.

Renita Manley: That sounds exactly like some of the advice that we give in our PSP program. Judy. And so I know that in our PSP program, which helps our ribs go after corporate contracts, a lot of them, they kind of eek at the idea of focusing on maybe just 3 to 5 when they can go into a portal and see about, I don’t know, 100 opportunities available. So what do you say to a baby who wants to copy and paste their email message and send it to all of these opportunities, versus just focusing on maybe 3 to 5.

Judy Bradt: I want you to imagine the analogy of, let’s say, let’s say you’re in one of the big national conferences and business fair events. You’ve been to them. They’re wonderful. They’re exciting. You come in, there’s all kinds of things going on. Imagine being in that environment and watching someone come into the room and look across the room, and they see someone and their eyes light up and they push through the crowd, make a beeline across the room to that person, go down on one knee and hold up an engagement ring. Really, you would just cringe to watch that. And that’s what’s happening every time you throw your stuff in front of somebody who’s never heard of you. And so the alternate, the alternative is, well, you find someone, you think that you could help them, you’d like to build a relationship. You have to get to know them a bit. You’re going to take your time. There are very few whirlwind romances that lead to 56 year marriages. Are there? Very few. You get to know people. It feels a little awkward. You ask their friends what they know about them. You find it might. You might say hello. They say hello. You went and you leave. You circle back again. Um, that that dance, that very human dance of connection is important. And for every single W.B. who stands on the big stage with the backdrop and the sparkly dress in the big room with the crystal trophy, who’s being recognized for extraordinary achievements. And their story of their success is comes over the public address system. There’s one line. Listen for it. It’s. And we followed up for four years. Watch for it because that happens every time.

Lee Kantor: So can you can we get kind of granular in the process? You mentioned, um, targeting a handful of offices. What does that look like? Give me homework to do. You know, like, let’s pick some arbitrary office, and then how do I know who that human being is that I should be meeting? Or who are those handful of human beings that I should be interacting with in order to build a relationship that I do have a shot at?

Judy Bradt: Pick your arbitrary office. Let’s just take an example and go to town.

Lee Kantor: Um.

Judy Bradt: The Department of Defense is not a buyer. You’ve got to be more specific than that.

Lee Kantor: Okay, so help me. You’re the expert.

Judy Bradt: Okay, let me think for just a second. Um, let’s say within the Department of Homeland Security, one of the components is the federal law Enforcement Training Center in Glynco, Georgia. All right.

Lee Kantor: Okay.

Judy Bradt: All right. So let’s let’s just say that. And so in that office and all of them there are I have a model for sorting this out. And it’s called the players at all the layers, the players at all layers and layers methodology. So in that office you would sort out the people and there’ll be multiple humans in five different roles. The first is what I call the stakeholder. Now the stakeholder in my view is someone who’s the cabinet secretary or the CIO or the base commander. The person at the top of the heap. They’re not in the room when you get chosen, but they are the one that drafted and signed off on the strategic plan for that buying organization. They said define the mission and the priorities, and they are responsible for making sure that the, um, they are carrying out the policies of this administration. Okay. That’s stakeholder. They’re not in the room when almost any of us get chosen. But they do matter. And you’ve got to know who they are because everybody takes their marching orders from there. With me so far?

Lee Kantor: Yep.

Judy Bradt: Okay. Next layer. In no particular order. Industry rb’s are in industry. The other players in industry include the prime contractors, large and small, who are already being paid money to do something like what you do that you would dearly love to be supplying. It may include people who are teamed with them as subcontractors. It could include large and small companies that would dearly love to displace them. Okay, so industry layer, you’re going to have people in a variety of roles at the industry layer. You’re going to have to get to know about and might need to team with or compete against, or nibble something off their back porch when they’re not watching. So stakeholder industry next layer. Um, a layer that has become a moderately endangered life form called the Small business Specialist. All but one of them were fired in the Department of Health and Human Services earlier this year. Thousands of others are still in their jobs. Others will be losing their jobs, but their mission, insofar as they are there, is to act as the liaison with industry. Be accountable within the agency for whether that agency is meeting its small business goals or not, and be liaison to the outside to vendors to help them navigate the system. They are not your buyers. They have no buying authority. They can’t sign stuff, and 99.9% of the time they’re not the users of what you do. They are the equivalent to the supplier diversity representatives who show up in force at the National Council of Business Fairs and other events at your regional program office. So stakeholder industry, small business specialists, then the last two truly juicy layers include the contracting layer.

Judy Bradt: The contracting officer in the federal procurement World has an authority that the president of the United States does not have, and that is the legal authority to bind your company to these United States in a contract to provide products and services. The contracting officer is supported by one or more people contracting specialists who help make sure help run the competition, make sure the i’s are dotted and the T’s are crossed. Review documents and solicitations. Throw out offers that are not compliant or complete. These folks have that authority to award the contract, but they are not stuck with the daily consequences of whether or not your product works or your service comes in on time. They’re going to administer it. They won’t pay you. They’ll make sure you don’t get paid if you don’t deliver on time. But they’re and they’re essential, but they’re not everybody. The last layer where you need to find out who your humans are, is a group that I call the end user layer. This is a really juicy layer and this includes everybody from the warrior in the battle space to the tier one help desk support person who calls up when windows isn’t working. You call when windows isn’t working. And so there’s lots of them and they are stuck with the daily consequences of choosing you. They have a lot to say about what’s needed, what’s the requirement? And the more of them that really think that you can make a difference for them, the better. Now that’s a lot of people to get to know, isn’t it?

Renita Manley: It’s a lot of people. How do how do we find these people? Like where are they? What can we do to look them up? Do we stalk them? Do we Google names? Like what? Do. What else would we be do?

Judy Bradt: Um, yes. To all of those things. But I can try it again. One of the things that I do when I work with teams and um, uh, and small groups and clients as I try to put together a, um, a starting point for a structured workflow that can make the most of the publicly available sources. And you should be able to find almost all of these people through free public sources. And as well, if you are paying money for subscription services and I’m not going to name any of them, some cost a lot of money, some cost a little. You can also make the most of your paid sources if you want to. So a one place to start is that in the. The federal government of the United States publishes over 400 fields of data about every single contract award transaction. Three of those data fields include created by, approved by. Last. Modified by. In some cases, you’re going to get a completely usable email address. In other cases, you get a first name, a first initial, a last name, a last name, a first initial something. But you’ve got about 90% of the time you’re going to have information in there about people who actually had signature authority on that contract award. And or we’re working right next to the people who did. That’s published information, and you can pull that out through sam.gov contract data.

Judy Bradt: That’s different from Sam.gov opportunities, Sam.gov data or USA. But you can’t get that through USA spending. Those two sources draw from the same pool of published data, but USA spending does not give you created by, approved by, modified by the data. Although it’s annoying to try to get and you have to spend time learning how to find it, the stuff out of Sam.gov contract data does. So that’s your first layer. Now those people. Okay, um, if you want to know, then once you’ve got a first name and a last name, LinkedIn, LinkedIn, LinkedIn, 2.4 million current federal employees have profiles that are more or less active on LinkedIn. And so once you’ve got something like a first name, last name, LinkedIn is one place you can go. Some, uh, agencies or departments publish employee directories. General services Administration and Health and Human Services, for example. The level of accessibility of any one entry. It varies by day. They turn it on, they turn it off. But those are available. Other departments like Veterans Affairs or nothing. There’s very, very little. State Department publishes a PDF. It’s not nothing. It’s not real searchable, but not bad. But um, another source so this is contracting is a great place to start. Okay. They to find end users. That gets kind of easy. Think about what are the typical job titles of people who need and know and love what you do that you can search in LinkedIn, filter by department and agency and geographic location program office.

Judy Bradt: And that’s their person’s current employment. And you’re going to search for keywords in their job titles. Not that hard. And then you not only have some identities, but you can read more about where did they go to school, How long have they been in the Coast Guard office in Elizabeth City? They just come over from, uh, someplace else on the West Coast. Gee, did they used to be in the Navy? Were they a Naval Academy graduate? That’s a whole other level of stuff. Stuff you’d really want to know about people before you talk to them, get a sense of where they’re coming from. So. Contracting layer and end users. Linkedin is a great place to pull them. About the small business specialist. If they’re still employed, it’s their job to be found so their information is available right through the agency websites. On the part of the website that says doing business with the Department of Bumpty bump. Uh, there’s a whole other chapter on how to engage productively with a small business specialist. Let’s save that as a conversation for another day if you want to, but they’re pretty easy to find how helpful they are, but you do want to check in with them because the last thing you want is for a buyer to come down to the small business office and say, hey, have you ever heard of Bumpity Bump Company? And they say, I’ve never heard of those guys.

Judy Bradt: Well, nobody wants that. So it costs you almost nothing to be polite, introduce yourself, explain the work you’ve done, and be willing to give them credit for contract awards that go to your company, whether or not they actually did anything very much to help you. There’s no end to what you can accomplish if you don’t care who gets the credit. So industry, the stakeholders with whom you don’t really need to interact anyway, they’re very public. They’re easy to find. And finally, industry, the name of the company who won the contract and where they are and what the contract was worth, and all the set asides and certifications they’re eligible for, and their phone number and their address, that’s all part of the contract award record. So all this stuff is available for free online right now. It becomes feasible to sort that out. If you’ve got tight focus, so you’re not trying to do this through eleventy seven different agencies, and you’ve got a standard workflow so you don’t miss steps and you’re not wasting time. That’s a very long answer. But did I answer your question?

Renita Manley: You did. And now I see why it’s important for me to focus on 3 to 5 targets, because there’s a lot of quality effort that goes into it. Lee, I only have one more question to ask. Judy, but do you have, um. I didn’t want to ask my last question. Unless you.

Lee Kantor: Yeah. I, um, of all of the people you’ve worked with, hundreds of people, right, in this space and helped hundreds of people and organizations. What percent, um, used your services or got their first, um, opportunity with the government by being going directly in and getting the opportunity versus somebody who’s first opportunity was maybe Identifying, like you said, a prime contractor, and then came underneath them as a sub and then used that kind of experience to then get their own contract down the road.

Judy Bradt: I love that question. I do not know. And the last time really serious data on this got done specifically for the women’s business, enterprise and women owned businesses segment. Was 2012 done by by the late Julie Weeks. So I would love to see updated stats include this. I will say that it is much more common to win. I believe that it is much more common to win your first contract, and your first contract could be worth as little as $15,000 awarded on a sole source with virtually no competition. So being a prime does not have to mean you won an $8 million contract. Um, and if you. And so, um, it’s a very long and very complex dance to say, oh, I’m going to go and I’m going to win my first contract as a subcontractor with insert name of company. They already have lots of subcontractors. Even the effort that they have to take to even get you set up, let alone well, when are they going to call you? When they need you know? One of the biggest misunderstandings about subcontracting is they’re going to call you and know you have to bring business to them. Oh, people say I said yeah. And so suddenly you’ve got to have not just the end user fall in love with you, but also the prime contractor and the federal government buyer is the most risk averse life form on earth, second only to the prime contractor who’s serving them. They don’t really want any risk either. And you as a business owner, walking through the door, no matter how bright your smile, no matter how great your track record, if they’ve never heard of you, all they see is a great big ball of risk. And they don’t like risk.

Renita Manley: How do we get rid of some of that risk? Oh, how do we get rid of some of that risk?

Judy Bradt: Ways that you can reduce the perception of risk. Past performance sells primes, and federal buyers all want to see how you’ve solved their problem for someone who looks just like them. Yesterday afternoon and the more examples you can bring to the table like that, the more they excel and go, okay, walk this way first so you can renew perception of risk by showing examples of the size, the scope, how recently the project was, what was accomplished. So they can see that, oh this, this, this vendors got me. They’re going to take care of me. And I can see how they’ve done that in a similar size and scale and scope before. That is really super powerful. And that’s especially as well if you’ve done lots of work in corporate and you’re thinking of getting a tip in tip and a toe into federal, that’s super, super valuable. Having current audited financials Is also very helpful. You’re going to need to share them sooner or later, especially if some edges up toward a contract award or a or a subcontract arrangement coming with. If you’re teaming coming with relationships with the buyer, you don’t have to open your Rolodex real or virtual anymore, but you have to be able to explain. Here’s what we know. Here’s the kinds of conversations we’ve had. Here’s the kind of engagement that we’ve had with these people. Here’s how we know that they think they’re going to die if they don’t have our solution. At the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center in Glynco, Georgia. Want to talk? So those are three ideas that help to lower. Oh, yeah. Another one as well is if you’re already on contract vehicles that the buyer uses and likes, that’s another one. Do you do are you set up to do business through what that buyer shows in the data? Is there easy button. Does that help a little.

Renita Manley: So not it does. So not only should we be be looking for opportunities and looking to be bringing business to the contractors. They need to maybe mold that that essence and try to bring solutions to those contractors, uh, solutions for business.

Judy Bradt: So you you we I one of the things that I the watchwords from Andy Cooper, one of my clients, uh, runs a team of professionals providing services in the intelligence industry. Um, it says we don’t sell, we solve, we don’t sell, we solve. And that was a fundamental shift that he credited with working with me and his subsequent wins of over $7 million.

Renita Manley: So before we get out of here, one final question. Since you are an expert in the federal arena, what tips or advice do you have to our babies who might still have some concerns about, um, using their identity as a woman to get contracts. How how are we looking in that arena? Is there a new way they should navigate that space? Is there a new way they can leverage their bank certification, or leverage the fact that they’re a woman owned business while trying to get a federal contract? Does it even matter anymore, or does it matter more now? What do you think about that, Judy? What do you have to say to us about that?

Judy Bradt: It’s a really important question. First of all. Wb certification explicitly is not recognized by the federal government. The federal buyers could not care less. There it’s not. They’re neither required nor permitted to give that up to make that a criteria or make it important when they’re making buying decisions. Okay. Now, the corporate partners, many of them have, um, are required by the Securities and Exchange Commission still to have supplier diversity, um, activities in place. So they might care a little, But nobody with um. Even if there is a requirement that only someone who is a a woman and who is certified as WB would be uniquely qualified to perform, there’s very, very little that I think is in that category. So it’s not what your gender isn’t, why somebody is going to hire you. If your experience because of your gender means that you’ve gone on to have other qualifications and experiences and, um, abilities and capabilities, then that is what’s going to show up. If there are, the federal government is still measured on the books as having goals to meet, to award contracts to women owned and economically disadvantaged women owned businesses. So if there is a certification that might end up being to your advantage, and a federal buyer, for example, could, if they know that there are enough small businesses in a particular category to justify limiting competition based on one or more of the small business categories.

Judy Bradt: Then, hey, fewer competitors. Your odds of winning are better. You want to be able to be in that that little pool if you can. So if you’re eligible for Wosb or Wosb certification, get it. But it’s not almost never going to be a significant factor in awarding the work to you. There is a difference between having a goal to award contracts to business owners in different categories, and actually using a set aside to award the work. Those are two different things. And in fact, the total small business set aside contract dollars last year were less than 3%. Less than 3% of the total dollars were awarded through setting aside contracts for any of those categories, so it might help get every advantage you can. But now I’m going to circle back and say when WB certification can matter in pursuit of government business. First use your certification to win. Work with marquee name. Impressive as all get out corporate entities so the federal buyer will go wow, you do business with PG and E! I can see why. I might want to talk to you about making sure that the that the naval base in San Diego doesn’t run out of power. All right. So use that because that’s a great way to leverage that. Second, use your WB certification to open the doors to prime contractors who may be potential partners, bring business, do all those other things.

Judy Bradt: But as a WB, somebody has a commitment to at least open the door to a conversation. It’s up to you to make the conversation worthwhile and bring things that are sparkly and sticky in a good way. Third, use your WB certification to build your network of trusted partners, among other wosbs. Lift each other up. Make this a team sport, not just a relationship game. And one of the things if you want opportunities to be reserved or set aside or competed among wosbs. Make it easy for your federal buyer. Bring a list of two or 3 or 4 other wosbs that you’d be happy to go toe to toe with. You’d just like to get a shot in a smaller pool of five people instead of 500. So know who the people are that you’d like to go go up against as legitimate strong contenders. And finally, leverage advocacy. Leverage the kind of advocacy efforts that women impacting public policy carries out on behalf of women owned small businesses across the country. Take advantage of this special membership access that you can get at, uh, at good value and prices. Pay attention and support the efforts of a national organization, national bipartisan organization that is devoted to keeping the doors open and opportunities expanding for us as well.

Lee Kantor: Good stuff. Judy. Thank you so much for sharing what you’re doing. You’re doing such important work, and we appreciate you. If there’s somebody out there that wants to get a hold of your book or have a more substantive conversation with you or somebody on your team, what is the website? What is the best way to connect with you?

Judy Bradt: Uh, three things. First of all, you can pick up my books on Amazon.com. Just Google Judy Brat, brat and the word government and you’ll find them. There’s a book and a workbook. Connect with me on LinkedIn. That’s super easy. And I have tons of free on demand webinars, guides, and blog posts and insights on my website, which is grow fed biz grow fed biz com. You can also email me Judy Brat at grow Biz. Com.

Renita Manley: And if you miss Judy’s Expert series, if you are a BB, you can go log in to our web resource portal and visit the educational resources. And you can get all of Judy’s Federal Contracting one on one information right there.

Judy Bradt: Thank you Anita. Thank you Lee. This has been fun. And the WB are the ones who are doing the important work out there. So go forth and do that because government buyers and we as citizens need what you do.

Lee Kantor: All right. This is Lee Kantor for Anita manly. We’ll see you all next time on Women in Motion.

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