Past Performance

Past performance is a major factor that increases the probability of doing business with the government in the future.

Contract vehicles

It is necessary because the government likes to use contract vehicles to buy a lot of different products and services.

Capabilities

If you are a new business, you may not have a lot of capability. If you are an IT company, you may have knowledge in one specific part of it but you may not have the capability to actually deliver a full solution. If you are in construction and do the electrical part, you may need someone to do drywall and plumbing to get a contract. If you find a company that does drywall and plumbing and they have past performance and have a contract vehicle, it will make your offer a lot more attractive and makes the government’s life a lot easier.

Certification

There are many different certifications and you need to find out which certifications are relevant to your line of work.

Socio-economic categories

This includes business categories like woman-owned, the veteran-owned, disabled veteran-owned, and minority-owned. It also includes “AA”, which requires an entire new e-book all in itself because that is a powerful socioeconomic classification that can give you a contract with no competition at a maximum amount. They can go higher but just to simplify, it can range from five and a half to six and a half million dollars. Think about this big number that can be life-changing for some companies.

Proposal Support

You should look for companies that have proposal support. People need to know how to write a government proposal. It is not just a quote with your price; it is not going to get you any work in the government.

Let me tell you that you need to write a proposal and if you do not know it, you need to learn how to write a proposal. This is the reason why it’s good to build an ecosystem of companies that have proposal support. Many people can write a proposal but a winning proposal results in getting a government contract.

Delivery support

This is when you are going to deliver your product or service. This is when you decide how many resources you need to have to deliver the results.

Financial support

I have seen people sell their companies after getting a government contract because they did not have the financial capacity to deliver on a contract.