Is doing business with the U.S. DoD right for my business?

– It is such an honor to be present with my fellow Canadians here today. Here’s how to participate: first, be present. This is the thing you’re gonna do for the next hour, and I promise to make it worth your while. Take notes, and so get out your notebook. Expect to take action, because at the end I’m gonna ask you what are your aha or your takeaway, and what action are you gonna take as a result of taking part in our webinar today? I also want you to steal from me the technique, instead of saying, “Oh, we wanna invite your questions.” 

– When you give a presentation, especially when you’re doing training or introducing your company, when you get to the end of the substance, I wanna encourage you to use a technique where you ask people to share their aha or their big takeaway from the content you’ve delivered. Because this not only is a technique that lets people reinforce their learning, but your audience is helping others remember all the gold you’ve delivered for them. You’re gonna get a meta experience here. 

– Pay attention to not only what you’re learning, but the experience you’re having in learning it. So here we go, CEOs wanna know about the federal market when they’re thinking about it and doing business with DoD. What’s the opportunity, what’s the investment, and what is the timeline I can expect? 

– So we’re gonna cover what to expect when pursuing business with DoD, how to assess your readiness to enter the US DoD market, and some potential next steps if you are ready. I wanna invite you right now to do an initial self-assessment. On a scale of one to seven, how would you agree or disagree with these three things? These three statements. One, my company has strong prospects with DoD buyers. How would you rate from one to seven? Write these three numbers down. Second question, I know the top challenges I can expect. Do you strongly disagree, a one, Or strongly agree, a seven? And finally, I know exactly what my next three steps are, one to seven. So those three numbers, add up those three, and drop your starting number in the chat, because what I hope that we’re able to do is move your score. 

– Let’s start to move now. So just the facts, just the facts. US Department of Defense, awards grew from 422 billion in 2022 to 470 billion in 2023, an increase of 11.5%. Largest percentage increase since 2018 and the largest dollar increase ever. In federal fiscal 2023, DoD awarded contracts that, of that 470 billion, 50% worked for supplies and equipment, 37% for services, 10% for research and development, and 3% for construction. With luck, you’re on there somewhere. 

– Here’s some other sobering facts. US American small suppliers struggle to thrive in this market, it is tough. DoD lost suppliers in a significant way between 2011 and 2020. Between 2016 and 2022, they lost 43% of their small suppliers. 40% of new entrants exit the federal market after three years. 50 to 60% are gone by year five. If this were easy, everybody would do it. But what’s so tough about this? You’ve got billions and billions of dollars of contracts awarded, thousands of buyers, hundreds of solicitations every day, and dozens of resources to help you. Opportunity illusion kills small suppliers. 

– Now I’m gonna explain what that is and how to fix it. Those thousands of companies that are departing the market after three or four or five years are wandering around this huge flow of data and opportunities asking, “What can I bid?” Little wonder. So I want you to ask yourself for a moment, do we have products or services that DoD needs at the quality and price they require that we can deliver perfectly on-time and on-budget? That’s the opening question you need to ask yourself. And if the answer is resounding, “You betcha,” then remember 10 words that start with the letter R, and these 10 are the things that we’re going to be talking about this morning. 

– The first is the reason. Some of you may be familiar with the work of Simon Sinek, an author and strategist. Start with why, and here’s what I mean. Why do you wanna sell to the DoD? Reliable business say diversification, diversify the business. Do you wanna meet a specific buyer’s need? Do you wanna drive long-term business? Want the really hefty marquee name? Seriously, balance the business with fantastic solutions for them to increase mission readiness. The two reasons that the most successful companies cite about why they went into the DoD market is to meet a specific buyer’s need. This is gonna be a long haul, so you’ve gotta be willing to stay in it. So the great news is that thousands of people could use what you do. There’s literally millions of leads in this market. 

– So the number two R is research, and we’re gonna be doing a lot more of that in our second webinar. You’ll want to identify who buys what you sell, how they buy, how much they buy, when they buy what you sell, the acquisition methods they prefer. So how big is DoD’s market for what you do? $470 billion is an absolutely meaningless number. What matters is how much of that are they spending on what you do and how much are you willing to invest to go get your share of the pie? So that you can know which specific DoD offices and, ultimately, actual humans are your top prospects. And so you can discover ways to make it easy for them to know you, to love you, and ultimately to buy from you. The fix for opportunity illusion that nobody wants you to know. There’s no such thing as doing business with DoD. There’s only doing business with people. When you sign a contract, another real human being, who we’ll discover has everything on the line, is also signing that contract. And they are responsible for the consequences of choosing you. And some of those people are gonna have their picture on the front page of “The Washington Post” below the fold if your performance goes tango uniform. Winners focus on the right question. They’re not asking, “What can I bid?” They’re asking, “Who’s my buyer?” ‘Cause if you don’t get it, you don’t get it, the Benjamins, the bucks. So winners focus on the buyer first. You can see I wear corrective eyewear. This is in part because a million years ago, solicitations used to come out in a publication called “Commerce Business Daily.” It was published by the Department of Commerce, and it arrived daily in the mail on flimsy tissue paper printed in 8-point type. This is why I now wear glasses. But if you wear corrective eyewear, you’ve sat in the optometrist’s office, they put this big thing in front of your eyes, and they go better A, flip, or B, better A, flip, or B, better A I can see. And that’s what happens in this market when you stop asking, “What can I bid?” Change the lens to say, “Who’s my buyer? How do they behave? Who do they love? What’s important to them?”

– Research can include ways to make it easy for specific buyers, but it’s important not to let how do they do business get ahead of who’s problem am I solving. And so for example, the Defense Innovation Unit can help a federal buyer with a problem, a DoD buyer with a problem, but they’re waiting for potential customers to reach out to them for a challenge. So if you’re waiting for someone to bring you the business, you’re gonna be waiting a long time. And so the critical thing is don’t wait, create. By getting to know your buyers and their problems, you’re not gonna wait for someone to publish something in a place where everybody’s gonna see it. You’re working to bring your solution to solve their problem in a one-on-one relationship, when they’re bringing together the stakeholders. This is the way it’s really done. So your research will make sure that you’re focusing on the buyers first.

– The third are regulations. Canada is unique. There’s a foundation in the Defense Production Sharing Agreement, something that was formalized in the wake of the Second World War. Since 1956, the Defense Production Sharing Agreement has enabled Canadian companies to compete for contracts as part of DoD’s domestic supply base. CCC does that really well. And the growth in CCC contract awards has been really impressive, and that agreement is doing its job. Things to keep in mind with respect to regulations, then, are these, that the growth in CCC’s awards continues. Is yours?

– The CCC is written into the Defense Federal Acquisition Regulation Supplement, the DFARS. And in these specific rules, and these are ones you’ll get to know over time, DFARS waives limitations of the Buy American Act, allows Canadian goods to be shipped duty-free, recognizes Public Services and Procurement Canada site and employee security clearances, identifies CCC as the prime contractor of record for DoD for all contracts worth more than $250,000 US. And there’s an instruction that recognizes Canadian companies as an equal and valuable partners in North American industrial base. Trade agreements aren’t enough. It’s important to know what other rules govern the way business is done in your niche. First, you need to validate your buyer’s understanding of how it works. And then you may need to educate. So you’ve gotta be able to read the same rules they’re reading. You don’t ever wanna try to tell a US federal buyer how to do their job, but you may find that you’re introducing them to parts of the regulations they’ve never looked at before.

– What could spook your DoD buyer risk? Risk. Risk scares the socks off them. They’ve got a lot of responsibilities, and we’ll learn more about the nature of and the impact of those responsibilities as we go along. But you always wanna be looking at how can you anticipate and help them lower their perception of risk.

– Judy, we have a question that says, “What about contracts requiring US citizenship?”

– A contract that requires US citizenship is going to carry that requirement. The trade agreements and DPSA don’t change that. And there are a couple of, and this is what I mean about understanding other rules that govern your niche. If there are rules that prohibit sharing of or restrict the flow of classified or controlled information, you’re gonna have to pay attention to those, as well. Sometimes those ride along with Department of Defense contracts. So you’re gonna have to get the full sense of how is business done with in buying the products or services that you offer. You also have to anticipate other potential barriers.

– There’s been more than one occasion when we’ve had a new administration come in and there have been either new funding initiatives or policies that have just pasted new Buy American requirements all over top of these perfectly fine agreements that work well. And it has taken the Canadian government many, many months or sometimes years to undo those and get exceptions put into place and open the doors back up again. This happens, you’ve gotta anticipate that. Buy American, the attitude, is invisible, but it’s very real. And there are, if you think about it, the elections are very close calls and have been for many years in the United States.

– So there’s a 50% chance that somebody has one belief or the other, but they can have very, very strong views. People, your buyers can have very, very strong personal views about whether or not they’re comfortable or even feel patriotic in awarding work to a Canadian company. And so they may not talk to you about those, but you’ve got to build trust slowly in every way and get to know your buyers. The last.

– And I. I’m sorry, I’m saying, Judy, that’s where CCC can also help. CCC team can also ensure that they advocate for you.

– Mm-hmm, that’s right. To have government people talking to government people to say, “No, we just wanna talk to you about the rules. And this beats you as a company going in and trying to tell US federal buyer how to read their own rules.” That’s not, if you feel uncomfortable about that prospect, you should. But to have CCC be able to go to bat for you is great. But there are ways where at lower levels of contract, some of these things aren’t an issue. So it’s why starting small and being persistent, we’re gonna get to that in a minute, can really help, ’cause once somebody falls in love with you, there’s usually a rule that will let them do what they wanna do, but they’ve gotta love you first.

– The one thing I wanna talk about briefly and once over lightly is something called small business set asides. When we were preparing for this, I got to tell a background story that I really can’t share online right now about how it was that this happened. But I will tell you that US federal small business set-asides have a policy role to address systemic US socioeconomic disadvantages. And there are contracts that are awarded with a preference for businesses that are established in the United States as a for-profit business contributing to the US economy through direct material or labor or taxes, and whose level of revenue, if you are a services provider, or number of employees, if you’re manufacturing, falls below that defined as small by the North American Industrial Classification of the thing that’s being procured. If I’d taken a big breath, I could have done that all in one breath, but I forgot. The critical element here is that the companies got, Canadian companies that are established solely in Canada are not eligible for DoD small business set-asides, and the trade agreements, all of them, allow DoD to do this.

– They have a goal to award 23% of their contract dollars to US small business. You’ve gotta be aware of that and get to know your buyers far enough in advance so that they know if they reserve that opportunity for US small business, then they won’t be able to do what they wanna do, which is award the work to you, okay? That’s the long, the short of it. There’s lots of strategies to deal with it, and places where CCC can help you build those relationships.

– The next R is resources. What’s it gonna cost to play the game? It’s like being in the amusement park. You must be this tall to ride this ride. You must have this much oomph and resources if you’re gonna actually be able to get in and stay in and get a return on your investment and thrive. So there’s this idea that the myth about financing doing business with the DoD. The idea is, well, I’m gonna win a contract, I’m gonna perform well, gonna generate profit, and reinvest the profits and grow. This is not actually how it works. The reality is that you can expect to inject an investment of cash and sweat equity, and you’re gonna spend that on having to develop the business and find the opportunities, to win the business, to perform the contract, and then to stay in business until they actually pay you. And there’ll be a little bit of money left at the end of that, and you’re gonna have to rinse and repeat. And so the idea that it’s gonna be self-financing, the profit margins on these contracts, especially at the beginning, are often not that big. And even on large contracts, this is a long game and it’s a volume game.

– You’re not gonna make so much money that you’re gonna be able to vastly expand your DoD business really quickly. You can expect to get working capital financing and make the most of free resources, which includes ones we’re gonna talk about at the end. And you may need to tap resources from sources like the Business Development Bank or Export Development Canada, EDC. 

– So what are people spending and what are they spending it on? Well, the companies that research showed are getting started might spend as much as $34,000 in a 12-month period, and they’re winning about one bid out of every five. The companies that are experienced in the marketplace can be spending up to $233,000 in a year, and their win rates may be as high as 50%, but they’re investing a lot more. So market leaders can be winning over 50%, but $233,000 was how much they were spending in a 12-month period to win that business. It’s a big deal. 

– The procurement leaders, the people who are doing really well, they’re investing in a big toolkit of stuff. That might include advocacy. Now, CCC can do some of that for you. Association memberships. Support to get clearances and compliance with things like cybersecurity maturation for example. Or if you need a better ISO level, or if you need CMMI, different levels of IT security and prowess. You may need to invest in going to conferences and events. Certainly in tools and time to research your contacts. You might or might not need a contact relationship management system. There are accounting compliance requirements you’ll need to meet. Learning about the federal market, gonna take time, probably a little money. You’re gonna have to get financing. Most people who need more staff are also investing in human resources and recruiting. Legal services. There is no such thing as a legal agreement you can copy off the internet to do a teaming arrangement with a partner. Do not ever do this. Your legal agreement is gonna require US counsel that has specific experience in creating those partnerships for you if that’s the way that you have to go. Market research, collateral media buys, you may have to adapt your product or service. Production capacity, proposal staff. 

– There’s a lot of things, a lot of moving parts that go into doing this work. You don’t need all of them at once, but these are the kinds of things that people do spend money on. Registrations. If all of this has still left you going, “Yep, I’m good.” If you haven’t already registered in sam.gov, you’re going to need to do that. Registration in sam.gov is free, and the Canadian Commercial Corporation can help you get your ducks in a row and do that if you need assistance. There may be specific offices that also want you to register your company, just show that you showed up so they can show that they tried to compete the work. Sometimes large prime contractors will also require you to register on their sites. 

– So registration is another R. Once you’ve decided you’re in, you’re gonna do the work. You need to show up and get seen. And you can see other people that are registered to do business with government, which is a cool thing. I don’t know whether the Canadian system will let you do that, but there’s a couple of different sites where you can suddenly research your competitors, which starts to get interesting. And we’ll be doing more of that in the next webinar. Readiness. You wanna train your DoD-focused team. You wanna get training on federal business development and sales. The good news is that probably, well, I’m gonna get to this in a second. You can expect to get help and this is why they’re in red. CCC can help you with things like proposals and compliance, financial billing, reporting, and pricing, which is great. So tap those services from CCC. And you may also wanna get additional training on project management and delivery. 

– Another one of the Rs, and this is so important, is relationships. There are players at five different layers. Your buyer is more than one person. And the earlier you meet your players at all the layers, the more successful you’re going to be, and the more quickly we’re gonna unpack for you the players at all the layers. One of the biggest differences is in Canada, I won’t even ask, how many of you have had the chance to play golf with the chief of defense staff? And that could be a really valuable thing for your business, not only an honor, but something that’s really helpful. You do not wanna have golf with the secretary of defense in the United States. It’s not gonna be helpful. It’s probably gonna be hugely risky even if you could get to do it. The program manager on the other hand, really important to be able to just have coffee and each of you pay for your own coffee. That’s gonna do a lot more for you. 

– But you’re gonna get to know players at five different layers and make human connections with them a long time before they even pay you money for anything. Because this government contracting is a relationship game. So I wanna know, tell me this, drop a number in the chat, what percentage of your. So no, no, where, where do your company’s best opportunities come from today? Where do your best opportunities come from? The things that you perform really well, you get to do more of, it helps your company grow, it’s profitable. 

– Where do you get those? “Your network,” says John. Yep. “Talking about people’s challenges,” says Savan. “Referral,” says Mitak. Uh-huh, the place you’re probably not finding them is electronic bid notices that land in your mailbox, and you’re doing what I call writing novels for strangers. DoD business is a relationship game. And here are the players at all five layers, okay? The first is end users. These are the people who you’re working with every day who are stuck with the everyday consequences of choosing you. That might be the warrior in the battle space, it might be the tier-one help desk person, it might be the facility manager. 

– Think about the titles, the working titles, everyday working titles of your customers, drop a few of those in the chat. I wanna see what those are. And you speak their language, they get you, they have pain, they’ll talk to you. They’re the ones who are defining the requirements, which is really important. Second layer, industry. Hate to break it to you, you already know this. Your US federal buyer is already buying something like what you do from somebody else who may be charging them more and performing less right now. And so there’s somebody that you may need to displace, somebody you may need to team with, or you may need to nibble some business off their back porch when they’re not looking, all right? 

– The third one is the one that people think they get all excited about, the contracting officers. Contracting office, contracting specialist. They have the power that the president of the United States does not have. And that is the power to award contracts for goods and services to your company. They also have everything on the line when they choose you. 

– Small business specialists are counselors that are in every single DoD office and location, and they have inward-facing responsibilities and outward-facing responsibilities. Their inward-facing responsibilities are to lean on the contracting officers and say, “Hey, why aren’t you awarding that work to American small business?” They have to ask that question every single time, ’cause the buyers are supposed to reserve or set aside any opportunity that’s worth more than $25,000 and they think that two or more American small businesses could do the work at a fair and reasonable price. 

They have to ask that question every time, which is why your relationship with the buyer is important because they have to realize that “No, no, we can’t say for sure that there are two or more American companies that are able to do this thing as well as or meet our requirements. We have to go and cast the net more broadly.” Small business specialists can be helpful. Although they’re not paid to help you as a Canadian company, they can be helpful while you’re trying to navigate. ‘Cause they also wanna make sure that the buyers get good suppliers. The fifth layer are the stakeholders. Now by stakeholders I mean the base commander, the CIO, the cabinet secretary, they’re not in the room when you get chosen, but the things that they write about and the priorities that they get and the budgets they set have everything to do with what’s gonna be bought and the language they use to describe it and how important what you do is to achieving their mission. 

– With that, I’ve kind of run through the top end, and I want you to appreciate that in a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away, anybody recognize these guys? Anybody know who these guys are? They were given the advice when they were investigating the Watergate scandal. It’s Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein. Follow the money. Follow the money. The US federal government does something that no other government on earth does. They publish over 208 fields of data related to every contract transaction related to a contract that’s expected to be worth more than $25,000 going back over 35 years. Then that information’s available for free online right now. If that doesn’t make your head explode, I don’t know what does. But that means that there’s a treasure trove of information that you can use to figure out who needs what you do, how they buy, how much they buy, who they’re buying from, and make a confident decision to focus based on hard data of where the business really is for you. 

– So somebody asked a minute ago about, “Below the $250,000 threshold where CCC must prime, can Canadian companies deal directly with DoD?” Absolutely yes. And there’s two thresholds that you really wanna know about. The below $250,000. There’s something called the Simplified Acquisition Threshold. Underneath $250,000, there are simpler methods that the federal buyers, DoD buyers, can use. You wanna write this down. Federal Acquisition Regulation, part 213. Sorry, DFARS. Defense Federal Acquisition Regulation Supplement. DFARS part 22, sorry, part 213. 

– Okay, you’re gonna see the procedures that DoD buyers can use to have simplified ways to choose vendors. They could do something as easy as make three phone calls and choose you. That beats having to do a big hairy expensive proposal. And there’s one other threshold which is super valuable to know about. Right now, I want you to think about what problem you could solve for A DoD buyer who had just under $10,000. Could you solve a problem for them, make something better for them, offer something that they would value if they had less than $10,000? ‘Cause under $10,000, which is the micro purchase threshold, the Buy American Act doesn’t apply, rate agreements don’t apply. It’s not quite the Wild West, but they can pay you this afternoon on a credit card. 

– And you know what you get besides $10,000 in your bank account? Past performance. Past performance begets future wins. Past performance lowers the risk. You can say, “I do business with the United States Marine Corps.” It was a $2,500 lunch and learn in how to decide whether your railings need replacing, but you do business with the Marine Corps. Awesome. So people sometimes come into the market going, “Oh, I guess I’m gonna have to team with these really big primes.” Nope, you can do business as a prime contractor, as the awardee yourself. So keep that in mind and think about that. 

– The $10,000 is per transaction. Great question: not per month, not per year, okay? So start thinking about what could you do for less than $10,000, what could you do for less than $250,000? ‘Cause those are things that not only can you win on your own, but when you’ve won some of those little things, then by the time you’re walking up arm-in-arm with your buddies from CCC to say, “Here’s my friend who’s gonna make this so much easier for you and lower the risk and keep you safe,” they’ll go, “Oh, okay, let’s talk.” As opposed to, “Who are you? How do you spell CCC? What the heck? This sounds like a problem. I don’t wanna do this.” 

– Yes, in DFARS 213 is where you’re gonna find the details on simplified acquisition and micro purchase, which is a sub-part of simplified acquisition, all right? So something to keep in mind is that contract data generates contact data. And so it’s from there that you’re gonna start to be able to drive your leads. 

– The next R is resilience. This is a long game. It can take 12 to 24 months to see your investment pay off. DoD buyers want strong, long-term suppliers who are safe that you’re gonna keep showing up. So I remember talking to one of the supplier diversity representatives from General Dynamics who was talking about these big trade shows associated in the U.S. Army or Air Force Association or the Navy League. And she said, “I don’t even talk to somebody unless I see them for the third year in a row, ’cause there’s all these little guys they show up, they’ve come, they’re gone. I’m not gonna invest time to get to know them. I wanna know that the business owner is showing up and they’ve got worker bees back doing the work. I wanna see, go eyeball-to-eyeball, with the business owner who’s got everything on the line when we’re working together.” So you need patience, persistence, and perseverance, ’cause when they know you and like you and trust you, that’s when they’re willing to step up and choose you. 

– Past performance drives future wins by lowering perceived risk. You wanna start small and be persistent, and don’t wait, create. By getting to know your end users and talking to them about little problems they can solve, and especially can anybody tell me when fiscal year end is in the Canadian government? March 31st. So when is fiscal year end for the US federal government? Anybody know? September 30th. You are onto my evil game. Now here’s a trick question: In 46 of 50 states, state government, when is fiscal year end for state governments in the United States in 46 of 50 states? It’s June 30th. So if you do business with corporate and the federal government of the United States and state and local in the United States, and the Canadian government, Christmas can come four times a year for you. Fast fact. 

– So reporting, expect to do reporting. You’ll have to remember to keep your SAM profile active. Log in, not just the annual once a year. And I know I actually missed mine once, and it got outta compliance, and that was embarrassing to revive. But do it twice a year because then people will not hit on you to try to sell you services. There are vendors out there who look at expiring SAM profiles and try to sell you things. By the way, if you get anybody who’s offering you opportunities to get help with federal government, if the email doesn’t come from .gov email, it’s a vendor. So be very careful. You could expect that you may have to provide audit information for rates and pricing, because you’re not an American small business, you are other than small. So you may need to report a percentage of US small business that are doing business with your subcontracting. 

– If you win a contract that is worth more, I’m sure you would like this, that’s worth more than $700,000, then you have to have a small business subcontracting plan and project compliance reports. So reporting is a big deal. Keep your reporting it line, it shows that you know what you’re doing, you care about the details, and you’re a safe bet. 

– The next R respond. Expect to respond, and there are ways to participate in something, a collection of activities called pre-solicitation activities. And these are things you’ll wanna know more about. So I’m not gonna do a deep dive on these things. You can find out more about these in the DFARS. Responses include not just responding to requests for proposal, the big, huge honking things. But in the bid boards, you will also see requests for sources sought. A federal buyer is gonna publish a sources sought when they wanna know, “Hey, we wanna know if any small businesses can do this thing, who can do this thing?” And sometimes the responses need to be in a lot of detail. They want to know what you can do, how you would do it. They’re trying to assess whether or not there’s enough capability that the contract could and should be set aside for American small business. But by responding to the sources sought, you’re getting on their radar. 

– If you submit a response to a sources sought, then you have standing, you have a reason to call back the person you submitted it to and say, “Hey, just wanna know if there’s any update or we would love to get your feedback on the information that we sent in. Could we set up a meeting and chat?” A request for information is a little bit of a fishing trip for market research. Ah, the government kind of sorta wants to do a thing. Ah, we don’t know how we’re gonna do it, and we don’t promise we have any money, but what should we do? Again, another way to start to shape the requirement. Say, “Well, you know this thing you wanna do? You might wanna do this, but you probably don’t wanna do it with a rocket launcher. You wanna do it with another kind of propulsion system,” or whatever it is. So you can say, “This would be a good idea. These other things, these are not great. And this is how we think that a requirement might be shaped.” 

– And this is again, the beginning, the formal start to what can be more informal conversations over many months. Sometimes they want a quick quote, sometimes they want an estimate, sometimes you get the big honking public bid or request for proposal. Sometimes they’ll issue a draft, RFP or a draft proposal. Sometimes they will have a site visit or an industry day where they’ll get lots of comments. So there’s lots of different ways to respond and interact formally as well as knocking on doors and trying to get a visit. And there are easier ways to do that as well. That’s one of the things we teach, and that I hope I’ll get the chance to share with you. ’cause that how to get practical boots on the ground through the door is a whole ball game. And it’s a very, very human ball game, and I can help you play. When you do win, commit to delivering perfectly on-time within budget. 

– And ask for consideration. You wanna ask, “What about a demo? What about a capability briefing?” If you were me, who would you call? And winning or losing? Always ask, “If you were me, who else would you be talking to? Where else might someone need what I do? What else might I be able to help you with? What else could I have done better?” Overall, doing business with DoD is both a relationship game and a team sport. The team sport, team Canada, has a very special place in the DoD business game. And so remember that your team includes not only the Canadian Commercial Corporation, but also the Trade Commissioner Service, Business Development Bank of Canada, Export Development Canada, Innovation, Science, & Economic Development Canada, and provincial and regional resources. 

– You’ve got so much going on your side, so don’t despair when you think about all the advantages US small business has. There are also advantages that you have as a Canadian company. So be sure to find out what those are and tap those. Use all the tools in your Canadian kit. 

– So recap of the 10 Rs: Reason, what are you doing in here? The most successful companies cite you’ve got something that a US DoD buyer needs to solve their problem and DoD business is important to your plans to grow the company. Research. Research your buyers, research the requirements. Regulations, not only understand the things that are unique about Canada, but the ones that are going to apply in your niche. Cruise the table of contents of the DFARS. Get to know where you’re gonna be looking for answers. Resources, expect to invest working capital and sweat equity if you’re gonna be in this market. And expect that it’s maybe a 18 to 24 month investment before you start to see serious return on your investment. This is not a market you’re gonna enter lightly. 

– If you’re go, get your registration in, get help from CCC in registration if you need it. Make sure your team is ready to do the job. Seek out resources that can train up people for the new responsibilities they’re gonna have. Not only to win the business, but to deliver. Invest in building the relationships you need. Expect to draw on your resilience to get through the bumps and problems and keep winning the business. Ask for the business more than anything and look for opportunities to respond. So we’ve covered a lot in not very much. What to expect when pursuing DoD business? 

– The opportunities, the investment, the time horizon, the 10 Rs. We’re gonna go on to how to assess your readiness to enter the DoD market and some potential next steps. And resources. Take your phone, screenshot this one because this is a quiz. And so I wanna encourage you to score yourself, from one is low and five is high, on each of these 10 readiness markers. And so if your readiness score is less than 20, ah, you’ve got a long road ahead of you. 20 to 29, moderately ready; 30 to 39 good; 40 to 50 strong. 

– Okay, so this is just a way to just get a sense. Self-assessment is helpful, and you get a sense of if your score is low in one of these areas, what might you, but this market’s important to you, where might you wanna concentrate some of your efforts? So what will your next steps be? Oh, certainly confirm whether or not you think this is a market for you. Talk with your team, your co-owners and stakeholders in your own business. Decide what the Go/No-Go criteria are gonna be for your company. Count your pennies. Draft a resource budget, what can you invest? If it’s less than $5,000, that tells something. 

– And count your sweat equity as well. Meet with your CCC advisor. CCC advisors have a lot of experience having dealt with thousands of companies over decades of what it’s likely to take for your company to be successful. Start your research. CCC has eBooks for you. And you can explore the sam.gov opportunities via the GBOF, the Global Business Bid Opportunity Finder. I wanna encourage you to not run off and bid anything yet before you do a little bit more research and really choose where do you think you can be the most successful the most quickly. 

– And our next webinar on November 21st is gonna give you some really meaty tools to be able to do that. And finally, for those of you who are keeners, I wanna jump ahead and say, “Ah, let me at it, where’s that data?” I’ve got something called “3 Easy Lessons in Free Federal Market Research.” And so you can screenshot the QR code, go grab it. I’ve just refreshed version nine. And that’s gonna let you take a look at federal acquisition forecasts. Some real inside deep stuff related to a particular kind of contract: GSA Schedules, which are a little bit like Master Standing Offer. There’s data about who has them and who’s using them and what some of the rates are that they’re charging. And the other is some top-level cruising of contract award data through a system called usaspending.gov. 

– Your CCC advisor can help you with referrals, with onboarding and with deal assistance services. And I realize I’ve got a book. “Government Contracts Made Easier” is because easy is fiction, but there are success stories and six or seven of them are success stories of Canadian companies who have done well in doing business with the US federal government. And so they may even be names of businesses and business owners you recognize. So I tell you this not because I wanna sell lots of books but because if you can’t have me at your elbow answering your questions for three hours, this is the next best thing. And when you read the book, you can hear my voice. My mother uses hers to prop up her television. It has multiple uses, but there’s a book and a workbook. They’re on Amazon, and I encourage you to go get ’em.

– Any comments on pitching DARPA on new technologies?

– You can pitch DARPA on new technologies all you like, but doing the research to find out who has the problem, whose problem can you solve, is going to be more effective in the same way as the Defense Innovation Unit, that slide that I showed up front, says, “Oh, this is an organization that military buyers come to when they have their problems.” You can throw your stuff over to DARPA, but it’s not gonna be real sticky unless you’ve done your research to find out whose problem can I actually solve? “Hi, I’ve got a thing, it’s great.” That’s nice. I wanna make money is not their problem, saying, “This thing does this particular thing and here are the people who have that problem.” 

– Looking at contract data is another way to figure that out. Okay? There’s also another chunk, and again for keeners who wanna write down notes, if you have an account on sam.gov, and instead of going into, and you wanna go in directly, not through the GBOF, set up your account on sam.gov, go into the front end, and instead of looking at contract opportunities, look at the section on contract data. And then there’s a chunk that talks about, it is other transaction authorities, OTA data, all right? So it’s real inside baseball, but those of you who are do-it-yourself data dumpster diving divos and divas, that’s the place to go to see who’s doing stuff that’s outside of the Acquisition Regulations, doing really interesting technical things, and wanting to fund those. So that’s another place to go.

– Okay, I’m just bringing it up, but they’re coming as we chat. Does a track record of being successful with other US government agencies like the DoD, the DoE, sorry, help?

– Yes, absolutely. Your federal buyer, being one of the planet’s most risk-averse life forms, wants to know that you’ve solved their problem for someone who looks just like them yesterday afternoon. So the closer you can show them to, “Oh yeah, we did this, and it looked like this, and we understand that your thing over here looks a little bit like that. Of course, you are not the same as those people, I understand that. But we’d love to tell you a little bit more about what we learned and how this approach that we have helped them solve a problem that sounds a little bit like a situation that you’re in.” So yes, and if you’ve done business with large marquee-name corporations in the United States or in Canada, but the problem you solve is similar in size and scale and scope to the problem that your US DoD buyer has, that’s gonna be a reason why they might wanna talk to you to get through the door.

– Is there anything on contractual mechanism, like Proof of Concept funds like we have ideas in Canada. Is there anything in the US for that kind of introduction to the DoD?

– There is, but Canadian companies aren’t eligible for it. The Small Business Innovation Research, SBIR, and Technology Transfer, STTRs, they are only for American companies. So there are, again, OTAs, the other transaction authorities, can be another way to bring something innovative to the party and get something tried out to do a prototype or something like that. The trick is to research the buyer, get in front of them, get to know them, again, figure out what you can do for less than $10,000 to do. Maybe it’s a presentation or a training or a prototype or a proof of concept or a pilot program. Start small, be persistent. You can go your own way.

– And I think if you’re a little further along in your technology, the DIU might be an an option, but you would have to connect with them and see if there’s anything that you could connect. Again, it’s long push.

– It can be, and again, the way that it’s supposed to work is not to, hey, we’re here to hunt around to place technology. No. Okay.

– No, that’s true.

– If the DIU has received a request for something that happens to match what you do, they’ll let you know. Otherwise outta luck.

– Yeah.

– There’s a question about whether the FAA, the US Department of Transportation, connects in any way with sam.gov for aviation-related bids? Yes, they do. The FAA is not covered by the Federal Acquisition Regulations, but they still post opportunities there.

– Very good.

– And their contract award data also appears in the system that we’re gonna talk about next time.

– Okay, very good. So with that, I think it’s time to wrap it up. So if you haven’t already, I recommend registering for our next webinar. And Judy, thank you so much, it was a lot of fun.

– Okay, take care, keep in touch, bye-bye.

– Goodbye everybody.