Customized Federal Agency Research

Market research is essential for federal contractors to be successful. It is important to understand the needs of your target agency specific to your industry, who your competitors are and understand the impact of current economic conditions on agency buying decisions.  Barrier Consulting specializes in custom research for our clients to increase their knowledge to develop action plans, minimize risk, identify sales opportunities and identify current trends in the federal marketplace.

Federal Agency Research

Not sure if federal contracting is right for your business? This research will enable informed decision making.

Knowing your target agency allows you to tailor your unique capabilities to provide a solution that shows you understand the agency’s goals, mission and budget and demonstrate exactly what your firm can do to meet their requirements. To provide a total picture of an targeted agency we present the:

• Agency mission, goals, strategic plans and budgets
• Current programs within your specific industry
• Past spending performance
• Preferred vendors
• Contacts
• Upcoming programs
• SBA small business scorecards

Competitive Research

What impact will competitors have on your bid strategy and pricing?

To compete effectively you must understand your competitors strengths and weaknesses, specific to the public sector, to be able to identify your competitive advantage. We identify who your competitors are and give you a complete analysis of the competitors within your industry including; strengths, weaknesses, past performance, contract award history, federal earnings and government performance reports.

Bid/ No Bid Decision Research

How do you decide which projects to bid on?

Prior to dedicating valuable resources preparing a proposal it is worth the effort to perform a bid/no bid assessment to quantify your chances of winning. We assess three areas; procuring agency, internal strengths of your organization and competitive information.

We supply valuable research on the agency’s strategy, funding, preferred vendors, bid requirements, evaluation criteria weighting, procurement history and contract terms and conditions.

On the internal side we work with you to categorize your strengths in achieving the requirements and strategic fit. Together we identify relative past performance examples, resource needs and allocation, ascertain partner or subcontracting needs and identify potential candidates, assess potential differentiators, risks and profit potential.

We identify potential competitors and if there is an incumbent. What threats these competitors could pose. The level of previous government contracts won by competitors with examples to determine past performance on similar projects. What the competitor’s relationship is with the procuring agency.

The most frustrating situation is to know you have the best product or provide the best service, but this means little when your proposal does not win. More often than not a bid is lost because the bid was not researched and a realistic bid/no-bid decision-making process was not used. Clients who perform regular bid/no bid processes have win ratios just over 75%.

Please contact us to discuss how customize research can improve your sales in the federal market.