Using A CRM To Get Government Contracts

Rainmaker Government Contracting solution is designed to help get government contracts for organizations via Salesforce implementation:

  • Grow the business within existing customers.
  • Win business in targeted accounts/agencies where there is none today
  • Identify and add more potential opportunities into the top of the pipeline
  • Bid on and win larger and more profitable quotes and contracts.

Government Contractors Overview

By definition, U.S. Government Contractors are organizations who sell products and/or services directly or indirectly to the federal government. Based upon our experience, there are three basic types of contracting companies, based on offerings delivered:

  • Service Providers– The largest group of contractors (mostly those under <$50 mil) provide only professional services. These companies either provide services by:
    • Selling and delivering service solutions to solve a specific agency’s problem.
    • Body shop work – These organizations hire individuals to work a particular contract over the course of several months or years. For example, FBI may need 50 java developers and project managers to update a home grown application in 18 months. Instead of hiring these people directly, the FBI will look to utilize contractors to complete the job.
  • Product Resellers – Another type of contractor are those who serve as product resellers. Due to the need to have government purchasing vehicles in place, the Federal Government will award a few organizations contracts to be their main conduit to purchase such technology offerings as Dell, HP, Microsoft, Oracle and Cisco equipment These organizations make their living on high volume, low margin sales.
  • Custom Products & Solutions – This group contains the largest contractors (>$1 bil), as their contracts can exceed 10’s and 100’s of million in value. A large number of these contractors sell their internally created and manufactured offerings (i.e. weapons, aircrafts, communications solutions, etc.) to the Federal Government.

What are Government Contractors Looking For?

  • Government Account and Contact Intelligence — social media and profile intel and management.
  • Opportunity Intelligence — contract, order, and industry intel and management.
  • Process Optimization — an application that is focused on process fixing.
  • Process Execution — an application that assist in accomplishing the task.

Government Contract Baseline Implantation From Rainmaker

The experts at Rainmaker have put together a 3 Week Quick Start Implementation guide that will get you on the fast track to get government contracts. Contact us to learn more about this crash course.

how to get government contract

Typical GovCon CRM requirements

  • Integration with 3rd Party Business Development Applications – Deltek
  • Campaign Management
  • Account Management
  • Contact Management
  • Opportunity Management – Multiple sales processes
  • Resource Management
  • Contract Management
  • Activity Management
  • Document Management
  • Mobile
  • Outlook/Gmail Integration
  • Reporting

Typical CRM Challenges for Government Contractors

It is common for government contractors to have multiple silos of information (i.e. Outlook, Excel, etc.), which leads to the following inefficiencies:

  • Lack of real time visibility into such information as:
    • How many leads (i.e. unqualified opportunities), opportunities and revenue are generated per marketing event and/or source.
    • How healthy the pipeline is from a potential deal, territory and cash flow perspective.
    • Which potential deals have the highest chance to close.
    • What deals are stalling and why.
    • What contracts are expected to come up for renewal over the next 6-12 months.
  • Lost Productivity, which is shown by time being spent in the following ways:
    • Internal phone calls and e-mails to find the updated status of an account or an opportunity.
    • Sales reps and management manually creating and compiling reports for meetings.
  • Inability to ensure account continuity – Because critical prospect and client related data is in the hands of the individual resource instead of the company, thus putting critical prospect and client information and relationships at risk if a key resource leaves the company.  It also prevents other resources from easily taking over the relationship and the account without great investment of time and effort.

Typical Government Contractor CRM Requirements:

  • One centralized database – To store all prospect, client and partner related information in one central location to help increase efficiency and productivity by not having to search for data in multiple locations as well as to more easily create meaningful internal reports. 
  • The system must be easy to learn and use in regard to entering data and reporting on their specific sales and marketing focused efforts.  
    • As part of the definition of easy to use, the user base must be able to access and input data through multiple sources including the following mediums:
      • Online via the Internet
      • Outlook
      • Mobile Device
  • Make it easy to support and/or modify – It is critical that the CRM selection chosen must be easy to support and modify. 
    • Support being defined as the infrastructure and resources necessary to ensure that a CRM system is available to the user community and working properly. 
    • Modify being defined as the ability to easily make and roll out changes to the user base. 
  • The new CRM application of choice must possess an expansive and flexible architecture. The CRM of choice should provide a broad level of functionality across multiple business divisions (i.e. Financial and Project Management, etc.) in order to offer a business platform that the company can build on and/or integrate with to provide themselves a 360 degree view of their client. 
  • Lead Management –To track prospective sales deals (pre-qualified) that are identified by different  marketing sources, including:
    • Trade Shows and Conferences
    • Teaming Partners (i.e. Northrop Grumman, Lockheed Martin)
    • Existing Customer and Social Referrals
    • 3rd Party Federal BD Tools such as:
      • GovWin IQ
      • Fed Biz Ops
      • Web Site and Searches

As part of Lead management, the system needs to:

  • Integrate to a website so that any new lead filled out on the website is automatically captured in the new CRM.
  • Automatically route web leads to the appropriate BD person based on a specific criteria.
  • Allow sales and marketing to easily upload lead lists (i.e. trade show list) into the application for prospecting purposes.
  • Build lists of leads by type of agencies that the reps can use for prospecting purposes. 
  • Campaign Management – To track the effectiveness and return on investment of the marketing vehicles that they invest in. 
  • Account Management – To collect prospect, partner, and client information, including the ability to:
    • Segment and report on all sales related activities and opportunities per individual federal agency (i.e. DOD – Department of Defense – Parent Account) as well as their collective sub-agency (i.e. BD – Navy– Patuxent River Naval Air Station – Child Account).  More specifically it is important to roll up all data collection and reports by agency to provide a collective view of what is going on at the sub-agency division level as well as within the entire agency.
    • Associate partners and competitors with a specific opportunity. 
  • Contact Management – To track the key contacts per account as it relates to prospects, clients and partners.  As part of contact management, the CRM system of choice must be able help define the role that each contact plays in the sales process.  
  • Opportunity Management – To track the number of prospective deals by their one sales process in regard to where they are specifically by stage in the process.  Information to track for each opportunity may include, but is not limited to:
    • Agency Name
    • Key Agency Contacts
    • Opportunity Name and Description
    • Projected Award Amount
    • Projected Award Date
    • Stage in the Capture Process
    • Next Step
    • SWOT Analysis
    • Desired Services
    • Proposed Schedule of Services
    • If they are the Prime or Sub
    • Teaming Partners
  • Activity Management – To track all prospective and existing sales and marketing tasks (to dos), events (meetings) and notes.  
  • Contract Management – To track all contract information, including when service contracts are coming up for renewal. 
  • Content Management – To store all prospect, client related documents in one centralized portion of the CRM database.
  • Collaboration Management – To share documentation and information internally to ensure they have the best informed to support their customers.
  • Mobile Access – To provide read and write system access for all users to access standard objects (leads, accounts, contacts, opportunities, tasks, events and reports) on their mobile device including Blackberries and  iPhones.

System Reporting – To easily create and manage systems reports and dashboards by individual user as well as the company as a whole through all aspects of the application.

Interested in our 3 Week Course To Get Government Contracts? Contact a sales rep today!

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