The Federal Government is a treasure trove of opportunities for a salesperson. It is the Fortune One. According to ITDASHBOARD.GOV, Information Technology spending in the 2024 Fiscal Budget year is projected to be $98,107.9M.
This guide will help direct a Federal Sales Team on how to navigate the Federal Market and position their pipeline to secure a lucrative portion of the government’s IT spending.
Leadership, planning and knowledge are the keys to ensure you are successful in building this market vertical.
Kevin Mahoney
Before you can even begin pursuing business with the Federal Government, you need to have the proper registrations of your business. Here are a few places to register:
Poor planning leads to poor results. While there is great potential to generate revenue from a Federal Sales focus, it does not come without planning for it. A pursuit of the Federal Market begins by answering these questions of yourself and your organization:
This journey takes time and commitment from multiple business units including Leadership, Marketing, Product, Sales, and Engineering. So you must be prepared to invest the appropriate amount of time and resources; otherwise, you won’t cultivate the returns you seek.
Once you decide to pursue the Federal Market, you need to develop your strategy. An effective Federal Sales Strategy presents a detailed understanding of the following areas:
Additionally, for each opportunity you will need to manage the expectations of your internal stakeholders. These are the common expectations you will need to manage:
Finally, this plan and the expectation manage all leads to obtaining four critical resources on your journey to securing revenue from the Federal Government:
Success in the Federal Market requires finding quality leads and developing meaningful relationships to drive business. If you make it a point to know your Federal Decision Makers and Buyers, you will also start to know more of their challenges and needs so when the time comes for your solution you know how to position it in the way that helps them the most.
Two points are critical in developing meaningful relationships:
To get in front of the right people, you need to determine who is the right person. In Federal Sales, relationships with specific departments that would leverage your solution, the contracting office and the Government Purchase Card (GPC) holders can each be a valuable resource into how that particular agency and division functions and the role you can serve to support them. Once you have identified the people you need to meet, then you need to organize a meeting and start working on the relationship. Meetings can be coordinated through direct request to the office or the individual if their contact information is available online or it can happen by attending industry days or speed networking events that they may attend on behalf of their agency. You may also be able to see mutual acquaintances through LinkedIn and request an introduction from them. There are 8 methods to generate the Federal Sales leads you need:
Now that you have introduced yourself to the right people, you need to understand their specific problems and requirements. This includes an understanding of their unique speech. Government leverages acronyms any chance they get and understanding the acronyms is key to deciphering their problems and requirements. Their acronyms and abbreviations can be complex, below are a few resources to help explain Federal Speak:
You also need to familiarize yourself with the following terms, ranks, and ratings and their associated acronyms:
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Now that you have an understanding of your positioning and the time and resources needed, you can start uncovering opportunities to pursue. Federal agencies use several methods to articulate their intent to spend budgets. Examples include:
Now you understand the customer, how your product relates to their unique needs and upcoming opportunities that you can compete. The next step is to offer your solution by responding to the Request for Proposal (RFP) and/or Request for Quote (RFQ). Depending on the contract vehicle you may need to find the support of a reseller and collaborate with them on the proposal or you may be able to bid directly. Either way, you (or someone on your team) needs to craft compelling copy to showcase your solution as the best and most affordable solution for the Government's needs. When developing a proposal it is imperative that you:
Then request a FREE Consultation from Sanctum Federal! Our team has successfully built several Federal sales startup practices and secured millions of dollars of revenue directly from the Federal market and our mission is to help other organizations do the same!
Use the form below to request your FREE Federal Sales Consultation and learn what methods you can learn to increase you or your team's ability to sell to the Federal Government!