A multi-award contract comes with no specific promise of business. So winners have to continually refine their strategies in order to maximize their wins and income from the contract.  As such, marketing within a contract becomes just as important as the original sales pitch.

Building the specific sales and marketing savvy needed to maximize contract income requires an explicit understanding of the perceptions and needs of those who have the ability to purchase off the contract.  To that end, many government contractors turn to market research to help answer questions critical to contract success, including:

• How aware are potential buyers of both our company and the breadth and depth of our offerings?
• How do potential buyers perceive both our company and our competitors on the contract in terms of strengths and weaknesses?
• What are the most important features and benefits that buyers are seeking? 
• How do those vary by agency and/or department?
• Do potential buyers have needs relevant to the contract that are not currently met by our offerings – or those of one or more competitors?
• What are buyers’ true pain points and decision-making factors, such as location, fast turn-around, flexibility, innovativeness, history, backgrounds of team members, and more?
• What magazines, radio stations, portals, blogs, conferences, and such are important to potential buyers?

We typically recommend in-depth telephone interviews for this type of contract-specific research.  This qualitative approach reveals both the rationally-based needs and requirements as well as the emotionally-based perceptions, attitudes and beliefs of potential buyers.  With such insights in hand, contractors can develop tailored “playbooks” or sales strategies for each relevant agency or department, thereby developing marketing messages that better resonate with the target audience.

As you can well imagine, gaining the market intelligence necessary to solidify your position as the provider of choice on a contract is well worth the investment.�

This entry was posted on Friday, May 9th, 2008 at 8:08 am and is filed under Government. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.