Win Strategies: Marketing to the Federal Government

Win Strategies: Marketing to the Federal Government

Government contractors face strong competitions and, depending on the procurement opportunity, pre-award Federal Acquisition Regulations (“FAR”) governed marketing “exchanges” (i.e., communications) with Agencies can be critical to clarifying terms, helping to shape requirements and assuring that an Agency considers various options available for procurement of the supplies or services at issue. While many marketing communications with a procuring Agency are permitted during the market research phase of a procurement, once the Agency publishes the final solicitation on SAM.gov; the restrictions on communications begin to apply in greater force.

This program will discuss the range of strategic considerations for increasing the likelihood of successful proposal evaluations and award by providing insight into the full range of permissible pre-award Agency marketing communication exchanges and related strategies under the FAR that can help increase your company’s competitiveness when marketing to the government. Topics will include:

• Strategies for shaping the solicitation throughout the pre-award acquisition lifecycle including through market research, industry days, sources sought responses, Q&A, and other Agency permissible marketing communications exchanges including “communications” and “clarifications.”
• Strategies for approaching the Questions and Answers period resulting in definitive responses and/or action by the agency to address any corresponding conflicting or ambiguous of the terms within a RFP.
• Strategies for increasing the likelihood of a win by providing insight into bid responsibility, responsiveness, the basis for award, and other bid criteria.
• Strategies for utilizing small business socio-economic categorized teammates to pursue set-aside and market sole source opportunities along with protocols for submitting unsolicited proposals.
• Strategies for marketing mentor-protégé and small business joint ventures to Agencies and large prime contractors pre-award when pursuing large federal contracts directly, via teams or as subcontractors in order to add capacity, resources, and experience to a proposal pursuit.
• Strategies for facilitating FAR-governed meaningful, equal and not misleading “discussions” (i.e., negotiations) with Agencies where applicable and ways to assure your company’s right to post-discussions Final Proposal Revisions are observed.
• Strategies for using NAICS, size, status, and pre-/post-award bid protests to reshape a solicitation, to challenge solicitation terms, to ensure mandatory source selection procedures are followed by an Agency, to eliminate competitors, and to defend awards.

This program will assist government contractor executives, corporate counsel, capture management teams, and compliance officers understand how best to proceed with a range of approaches for marketing the federal government to increase the likelihood of successful proposal submissions, evaluations and award.

If you have ever wondered about the full range of FAR rights and entitlements available to government contractors when marketing to the federal government to increase proposal win viability in pursuit of larger federal contracts and accelerate corporate growth, join us as we discuss key strategies for marketing to the federal government throughout the acquisition planning and pre-award phase.