Securing Government Contractors

One of my recent clients was hoping to diversify his business and expand into new markets by offering his services to state and local governments. He had traditionally been focused almost entirely on providing commercial concrete services to real estate developers in Eastern North Carolina, but like many busines owners, he wanted to try his hand at government contracting.

The problem: My client (Drew) was new to the game of government contracting and did not have any established connections that would help him secure the high-value bids he was after. As many contractors do, he set up an account on the North Carolina Electronic Vendor Portal (eVP) and began keeping an eye out for solicitations relating to commercial concrete jobs. After a few months and a few unsuccessful bids, he gave up and returned his focus to the private sector.

When I got in touch with Drew I advised him that we could try an alternative approach to securing government contracts by creating opportunities to speak with local municipalities which might increase his chance of winning a bid.

The solution: I met with Drew and spoke to him about how today's technology has evolved to the point that you can now get in contact with almost anyone who is online, so long as you know the type of person you are looking for.

I suggested that we try to get a list of names of individuals who work in the procurement, infrastructure, and development councils of some municipalities in his area. He could then use this list to reach out to these individuals directly and attempt to build a relationship with them. Drew agreed to give it a shot.

The first step in this process was identifying the job titles of the right people to talk to. Once we had identified the roles of the people in charge, we could use artificial intelligence to scrape their names and contact information from the web.

I created a list of about 50 names and ran it through the algorithm which provided us with a spreadsheet of titles, locations, phone numbers, and email addresses for key employees of local governments.

The result: Drew was able to work through this list and get in contact with decision-makers in local governments around his area. He spoke to them about new developments, asked questions about their process for selecting vendors, and gave his pitch on why his company would be a good fit for upcoming jobs.

We were able to set up in-person meetings with a few of the procurement officers which eventually led to Drew being selected for two jobs with nearby municipalities.

This exercise in lead generation brought new business to Drew's company and allowed him to diversify his service offering and build lasting relationships with local governments.

In this case, I provided Drew with the names of people to talk and he reached out to them directly via phone. In other cases, where the stakes might be lower, I would have offered to automate this process for him and send emails to the list of contacts I built.

This was a great client to take on and I am pleased with the results we were able to see. In the name of transparency, however, lead generation is not a 100% guaranteed way to build business. In Drew's case, he was able to build a relationship through his personable character and had established credibility in his industry, which certainly helped secure those deals.

To learn how lead generation can build the door that opportunity knocks on, feel free to message me at the link below.