Get Ready to Bid for Government Contracts

With a 400 billion dollar per year combined military and civilian appetite for all manner of services and commodities, the US government is actually the single largest buyer of goods and services in the entire world. Fortunately, for small US businesses, the government has a statutory obligation to reach out to certain categories of business owners. The stated goal is that 23 percent of all contracts should go to woman, small disadvantaged businesses, those located in Hub Zones, and those owned by disabled veterans. Many firms large and small actively seek out these types of companies in order to partner with them in the competition for lucrative government contracts. The incoming Obama Administration's 800 billion dollar stimulus package promises to offer a wealth of new opportunities for businesses of all sizes. There is no time like the present to put your business in the proper position in order to be ready to bid on the forthcoming government contracts.

Getting a head start on the opportunities just around the corner also means gaining an understanding of the new trends implicit in the proposed changes to come. There can be no denying the fact that many of the old manufacturing sector jobs that were shipped overseas have been lost forever. Nonetheless, led by the US government under the Obama Administration a new Twenty-first Century economy is destined to take shape in the coming months. The question that we must all begin to ask ourselves right now is, just what innovations can we expect to see in the near future? Here are just a few probable developments that you may want to keep an eye on.

• Expect the new economy to be a vastly greener economy, opening new avenues for green technologies and creating a whole new sector of green jobs.
• Expect wireless technology to move into the forefront of innovative technological change. This is sure to have an enormous impact upon marketing; putting an even greater emphasis upon social media and mobile technologies, and also broadening the prospective pool of consumers across a wide spectrum of industries.
• Websites shall become the new business card. Without a website of your own, don't expect to be taken seriously in the Twenty-first Century marketplace. As a matter of fact, the government will not do business with you today unless you have a website.
• All of this is sure to create a new emphasis on optimum customer service. Expect to see a greater demand for a higher level of professional care, no matter what business that you are in. More than ever before companies will have to make sure that they keep their employees up-to-speed with the demands of the new marketplace. Proper training will be vital to this new reality. One bad customer service experience can become very expensive in the long run.

Once you gain a focus upon what may lie ahead, now it is time for you to take the proper steps to make sure that you are in a professional position to answer RFP's (Requests for Proposals) once they are issued. First you want to make sure that you have a well-written and comprehensive company profile detailing just what it is that your company does, at what capacity and with how many employees. I CAN WRITE THAT 4 U www.okwriteit.wordpress.com can help you with this; simply send an email detailing what you need to okwriteit@yahoo.com, and you will receive an estimate for your profile within 24 hours. It usually cost roughly between $75 and $100 dollars depending upon what you require. You might also consider having your company's profile put on Linkedin.com and on Wikicompany.com's worldwide business directory as well.

Even though your small business may have a great sales volume and may be a spectacular performer within your industry, still this alone will not be enough for you to win that lucrative government contract. Although bidding on federal contracts is intended to be a democratic process and President Obama has promised to bring more integrity and transparency to government, still this can be a rather daunting process if you come into it unprepared. This is where the difference between one proposal and another can resemble the difference between being represented by a huge law firm with unlimited resources, and simply relying on the earnest efforts of a court-appointed lawyer. You have to do your research. Bidding on government contracts is a process, and you should not expect to be successful unless you learn the process and position yourself ahead of time. Sometimes you have only a short period of time to act as the bidding process can often last no more than a couple of weeks. You cannot expect to win unless you know how to play the game.

The Small Business Administration is the first place for you to begin. At www.sba.gov you will find all the necessary resources that you will need to begin the process of putting yourself ahead in the game. In the following series of articles, I will take you through the process of registering your company with the Central Contractor Registry (CCR), and writing a bid proposal that will make your company stand out above all the rest by helping you avoid the common pitfalls that many small businesses fall victim to.

Author/Publisher T. S. Aschenge is a fulltime writer who lives and works in Atlanta Georgia. Among his writing skills and qualifications are Search Engine Marketing and Optimization, Ghost Writing, Technical Writing, Journalism, Resumes, Press Releases, Abstracts, Essays, and Research Papers. His website is called I CAN WRITE THAT 4 U! http://www.okwriteit.wordpress.com This year will mark his debut as a fiction writer as he publishes his first novel set in titled Woodruff Park.