So, Karl Rove is leaving the White House. ‘Tis the season for many more changes to happen in the White House and in the Cabinet. As we approach the elections of 2008, we at Market Connections start getting the question: How do you think the elections will affect purchasing in the federal market? We get asked to perform interviews with political appointees and speculate about the effect a new appointee will have on spending within a Cabinet level department. While we don’t try to interview appointed (or elected) officials, we do have a pretty good idea as to the answer: Elections don’t change the values of the people making the day to day decisions.

Your average program manager, or even director, is not making day to day purchasing decisions based on the political affiliation of the head of the agency. Now, don’t get me wrong, a change in the agency head can bring on longer term, strategic changes as to how work at the agency is approached. Efforts like reinventing government and the more recent OMB Lines of Business initiatives certainly had political will behind them. But certain values don’t necessarily change. Decision makers are looking for vendors that answer their questions in a timely fashion, deliver on what is promised, and work to help make their job easier. These factors are certainly not Democratic or Republican.

Market Connections recently conducted a national survey of education and state and local IT professionals, and will release the findings in a report available on its website on Tuesday, August 14th.�

The report gives insight into the state and local public sector’s top IT priorities, IT challenges, top future IT investment areas, most valued vendor attributes, most popular sources of IT information, and the IT procurement process.�

This report is an excellent investment for those wishing to better understand the workings of the education and state and local IT markets.� Make sure to visit www.marketconnectionsinc.com next week to order your copy of the 2007 Guide to IT Challenges and Priorities: State and Local Public Sector IT Marketing Report!

The Government Marketing Forum recently held a networking event that featured a discussion on innovative partnerships that increase sales.� The discussion panel included Joanne Connelly of ConnellyWorks, Bob Lohfeld of Lohfeld Consulting Group, and myself.� The most important takeaway that was emphasized throughout the panel was the importance of a strong relationship and clear communication among marketing, sales, and business development personnel.� The panel agreed that too often these departments work against each other instead of working together toward a common goal.� CDW-G was repeatedly used as an example of a company with an excellent relationship among their marketing, sales, and business development teams.�

The Government Marketing Forum is an open, peer venue for marketing, sales, and business development professionals in the government market.� The forum will provide networking opportunities and panel discussions once every other month to share ideas and hear from leaders in the field.� The steering committee for the Government Marketing Forum comprises of some of the most elite marketing companies in the government arena including: 1105 Media Inc., Amtower & Co., ConnelyWorks Inc., Federal Business Council, ImmixGroup , Market Connections, Inc., and Sage Communications.
To learn more about the Government Marketing Forum and its events, go to http://www.fbcinc.com/gmf/.
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As a member of the Government Marketing Forum steering committee, I want to invite you to participate in our first event on:

Tuesday, June 19, 2007
Tower Club, Vienna, VA
5:30pm - 8:00pm

The Government Marketing Forum is an opportunity for marketing, sales, and business development professionals in the government market to share ideas, hear from leaders in the field, and to network with the best and the brightest.

At the upcoming event, an interactive panel, led by Chris Dorobek, Editor in Chief, Federal Computer Week, will discuss The Business Development – Marketing Connection - “Innovative Partnerships That Increase Sales”.  I will be joining Chris on the panel along with Joanne Connelly, President, ConnellyWorks, and Bob Lohfeld, Lohfeld Consulting Group.

The cost for this event is $35 and will cover light hors d’oeuvres.� For more details and to register, please visit:� http://www.fbcinc.com/gmf/.

I hope you will take advantage of this exciting opportunity.

If you’re a government contractor, you’ve likely heard of the Federal Procurement Data System — Next Generation (FPDS-NG), the GSA’s central database repository of statistical information on federal contracting.� With a web interface that allows government agencies to enter data directly into the system, FPDS-NG offers information on many contracts almost immediately.� In fact, this past year the GSA updated the system with a new look and additional data as well as enhanced reporting and tools to further improve data timeliness and accuracy.�

Indeed, many contractors seeking information on a specific contract refer to this portal, which offers free access to more than 12 million contract actions spanning the entire federal government.

However, some don’t realize that FPDS-NG can be leveraged as a more powerful resource for data mining.� Market Connections and several of our government contractor clients often utilize it as a key source for secondary market research as well as a tool for developing and/or refining primary research studies.� For instance, the database can reveal:

• Contract awards by contractor type, including large business, small business and education
• Proposals or statements of work for specific contracts�
• Procurement habits and trends of specific government agencies and departments
  Competitors who are under government contracts to sell specific kinds of products or services
• Estimated market shares of products, services, or companies based on spending within the overall government or within specific agencies/departments

Here’s a case in point.� A client recently asked Market Connections to conduct a survey of government agency decision makers regarding a group of products and services.� However, because the client was primarily a commercial firm with only a handful of government customers, they weren’t sure which agencies to target with their offerings or, therefore, the survey.

Since Product Service Code (PSC) data is available in the FPDS-NG, Market Connections determined the appropriate PSCs for the products and services of interest.� From there, we ran a report detailing the dollar value for each PSC by agency and department.� With granular spending data relevant to their offerings, the client was able to intelligently prioritize and target government entities, to which Market Connections then targeted the survey.

Of course, FPDS-NG is a sophisticated self-service tool.� So, to optimize searches and create useful reports, users should first review the User’s Manual and help files to familiarize themselves with the system.� To learn more, visit http://www.fpds.gov or call us here at Market Connections.

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Unfortunately, the federal government has yet to embrace teleworking programs. In its April 30 issue, FCW features a commentary on the fact that teleworking has not taken hold to the level many anticipated three to five years ago. In her article, The Telework Dance, Judy Welles cites the results from two different studies that point to a primary reason – lack of support from management. Our 2006 Telework Study, released just about a year ago, revealed similar feelings among federal workers. This resistance still exists despite legislative support for telework presented in a new bill sponsored by Sens. Stevens (R-AK) and Landrieu (D-LA).

Clearly, the potential big-picture benefits of teleworking are significant: improved workforce flexibility and morale, a cleaner environment, and reduced traffic and gridlock. However, these effects don’t readily make a strong enough business case for teleworking. Loss of management control, trust, and office politics all play a role in management’s uneasiness with the telework concept.

I always come back to this question: what can the contractor community do to help ease the skepticism of government managers and promote adoption of teleworking? I believe that contractors can and should help their government management counterparts understand the available technical tools that enable effective monitoring and management of remote workers as well as those that enable dispersed teams to effectively collaborate and interact. Contractors can also share teleworking success stories from government agencies and the private sector. Understandably, most decision makers appreciate hearing about the experiences and lessons learned of others that have adopted a new idea, technology, or program.

Market Connections, together with CDW-G, posted a link in the February issue of the FCW’s SI E-Newsletter inviting readers to complete an opinion poll. Please click here to download the Executive Summary of the opinion poll results. http://marketconnectionsinc.com/index.asp?PageAction=Custom&ID=82

Federal contractors invest a great deal of time and money developing what they hope will be winning proposals, striving to effectively discriminate themselves in each area of government agencies’ RFPs. But, unfortunately, those RFPs don’t always accurately reveal and/or prioritize the agency stakeholders’ true pain points and decision-making factors. As a result — even with the help of expensive proposal consultants and thorough Red Team review processes — many contractors are not maximizing their win rates on lucrative government contracts.

Utilizing third-party professional researchers to conduct interviews with decision makers at targeted agencies can help contractors develop a more effective “playbook” or sales strategy. This type of qualitative research uncovers agency officers’ perceptions, attitudes, and beliefs relevant to vendor selection. It delivers invaluable insights into how much emotional weight they place on various factors. From there, contractors can improve their win rates by tailoring their pitch approach to each agency.

The Small Business Administration’s recent announcement about its new requirements for recertifying small business status makes contractor size a timely example. With some agencies, being a small business is going to help. With others, it’s going to hurt. Such business intelligence can effectively guide the small contractor on whether it should lead with its small business status in the proposal or, instead, put heavy emphasis on how its specialized capabilities coupled with partners’ offerings delivers a compelling solution. Conversely, the large contractor will know whether or not it should partner with a small business to be seriously considered by a particular agency.

Interviews with key agency stakeholders can also reveal and prioritize other key decision-making factors, such as location, fast turnaround, flexibility, innovativeness, history, location, backgrounds of team members, predispositions to particular vendors, and more.

Remember — the RFP doesn’t tell the whole story. Sometimes certain factors seem very important on paper, but have much less importance in the hearts and minds of the decision makers. Sometimes it’s the other way around. Often, some factors that could make a difference aren’t even explicit in the RFP. And, even if your organization has worked with a particular agency before, it’s not safe to assume that views there have remained stagnant or are consistent among all relevant stakeholders. The only way to truly know is to ask them.

Many government contractors walk that fine line every day: striving to nurture relationships with important contract partners who also happen to be formidable market competitors. In fact, because of that underlying competitive dynamic, many of these companies neglect to include partners in their customer satisfaction surveys – especially in a prime-sub relationship.

We’ve worked with numerous clients who, before coming to us, excluded their primes from such research and instead attempted to survey only the government agency end users of their products or services. But, they weren’t very successful because, in many instances, the agency end user doesn’t have a deep enough awareness and understanding of the sub-contractor’s performance. So, they’ll either opt out of answering a lot of the questions, or they’ll struggle to evaluate the sub-contractor’s performance separately from the prime’s performance.

The best approach is for sub-contractors to include both the primes and if possible, the government end users – as the customers in their satisfaction surveys. A research partner with government-market experience will know how to tailor those particular survey instruments in a way that gleans performance-improving insights but also avoids fueling the customer/competitor conflict.

Does your organization compete against, partner with, or want to compare itself against one or more of these federal providers?

If so, you’ll want to purchase our sixth annual Federal IT Marketing Report. Within its 60 pages, you’ll find not only the perceptions and decision-making factors of 500 federal IT decision makers, but also statistically valid representation from 14 different agencies.

Some of the findings include the market’s awareness, favorable or unfavorable perceptions and product/service associations for these 16 firms. We also offer important considerations and resources for planning and implementing more effective marketing tactics to federal buyers.

Click here to learn more and purchase the report online. And, as always, feel free to call us anytime with questions about this or other research topics.