Find Your Target Customers | #1 of Government Contracting for Beginners Course

are you considering governmentcontracting and wondering where to focusand what to do first well your firststep is to put together a target list ofabout three to five prospects who buywhat you sell in other words start byfinding your first customer becauseultimately your company's success isgoing to be driven by your ability tobuild relationships and you don't havetime to build relationships witheveryone fortunately there are four freetools you can use to build your prospectlist and i'm going to show you thosetools in this video first i want to showyou this because this is where i differwith a lot of the other business advicei've heard here i'm on the websiteusaspending.govand i've looked up all federalgovernment contracts in 2021 ranked byagency and you can see that most of itby faris at the department of defense dodspends a lot more on contracts than theother agenciesand i've heard lots of advisors look atthat and conclude you should focus onthe dod because that's where the moneyisbut i want to encourage you to notignore the smaller agencies there arehundreds of different agencies andoffices in the federal government eachwith its own procurement organizationand every one of them is big enough togive you a sizable contract i have afriend who has a great business heenjoys doing work for the us agency forinternational development and thatagency is so small that most people havenever heard of it but the agency'sbudget is still big enough to give outlots of contracts to lots of companieslike the one owned by my friendbottom line i want you to find thecustomer that's right for you becausethe government isn't your customer firstof all because the government isn't asingle organization it's not one thingthe government is a collection ofhundreds of different organizations butmore importantly your customer is anindividual humanworking within one of those individualofficesso your first step in governmentcontracting is to figure out whichspecific government offices to targetand then to identify those humans so youcan start building relationships withthem so where do you start well irecommend you start your research bylooking at past contract awards and thereason is that lots of governmentcontracts are bid over and over againfor example say you have a janitorialcompany and there's a nearby forestservice site you may find they have ajanitorial contract that they re-bidevery three years and you can find outall about that contract who won thecontract what's the dollar value of thecontract you can see who the buyer wasand when the contract will expire so youcan target that contract for when itcomes up for rebid okay so let's go overthose free tools you can use to buildyour prospect list starting with theprimary source for federal governmentcontract data which is fpds the websiteisfpds.gov you can use fpds to find outwhich government offices buy the productor service that you sell also how muchare they spending when are they buyinghow many contracts are they issuing howoften are they issuing contracts whichcontracting vehicles are they using andeven how much competition is there foreach contract you can also enter thename of your competitor and see all ofthe contracts they've won and the amountof each contract and you get all thisinformation at the level of theindividual contracting officer makingthe purchasefpds will even give you a name and emailaddress for a buyer for each contract irecommend you start your search with akeyword search or a search by yourindustry using your nate's code forexample a janitorial company couldsearch for the keyword janitorialthen unless you offer something reallyspecialized i recommend you focuslocally and the reason is it's mucheasier to build relationships when youcan just drive to meet with someone so irecommend starting by searching the areawithin driving distance of where you arefpds is a terrific resource and theinformation is all freehowever unfortunately the website isreally clunky to use and that's why imade a video that walks you through stepby step how to mine data from fpds so besure to check out my link to that videoin the notes belownow let's look atusaspending.gov because it's anotherfree government tool you can use to findthe agencies that buy the most of theproduct or service that you provideyou can do a search by keyword or searchby your industry using your nate's codeand you can narrow your search down toyour specific state or countylet me walk you through how to do thisi'm at the website usaspending.gov and iclick on start searching awards on thesidebar here on the left are all thefilters that you can search by so let'ssay you have a janitorial company inmontanafor keyword i'm going to filter byjanitorialand then for time periodi'm going to select the last few yearsfor award type i'm going to click oncontracts and contract idvsand then under locationi'm going to filter by the state ofmontanai click add filter and then i click onsubmit searchand now we see the results here on theright now look at these tabs we havealong the top here they are used topresent the information in differentways the table tab gives you a list ofthe awarded contracts that match yoursearch terms now click on the categoriestaband you get this graphic that lets yousee the spending broken down by agencybut i think looking at spending byagency is too big the department ofhealth and human services is huge andit's made up of lots of differentsub-agencies and that's the informationyou wantso click on this sub-agencies tab to seethe spending broken down to thesub-agency level and here we see thebiggest spender is the nationalinstitutes of health followed by the airforce and the forest serviceso go ahead and do this search yourselfand find out who are the biggestpurchasers in your areathe next website is one you're going touse a lot as a government contractor andthat's sam.govthis is the website where the governmentposts bidding opportunities and you cansearch by lots of different things likethe procuring office your industry akeyword and your locationand you can also search to find upcomingindustry days and other networkingevents and these events will give you anopportunity to meet with buyersthere's a lot of information on thiswebsite so i've made a video that walksyou through how to search it and i'veput a link to that video in the notesbelowalso lots of federal agencies postprocurement forecasts online at thiswebsite acquisition.govfor example they might tell you we'regoing to issue a contract forenvironmental consulting services everythree yearsso you can check out the agencyprocurement forecast when you'reresearching potential upcoming contractsoh and one last thing while you're doingthis research you'll not only beidentifying promising customers but alsoidentifying promising partners becausethe same research tools i showed you tofind your customers will also show youwho your competitors are and remembercompetitors are also potential teamingpartnersso here's what i recommend watch myvideo on fpds and then spend a week ortwo poking around the data and puttogether a list of three to fiveprospects that you want to target forcontracts that way you'll know where tofocus your energy hey friends post inthe comments below and let me know howit goes i love seeing your progress anddon't forget to like the video andsubscribe to my channel if you haven'talready thanks for joining me today seeyou next time[Music]