Name: Federal Hot Wash: Turn Last Year’s Lessons Into This Year’s Wins
Uploaded: 2025-10-08T16:16:08.965Z
Duration: 58 min 36 s
Description: Federal Hot Wash: Turn Last Year’s Lessons Into This Year’s Wins

Transcript for "Federal Hot Wash: Turn Last Year’s Lessons Into This Year’s Wins": Alright. Well, Judy, thanks again for for doing this. Like like we were saying before, the first session we did together was was amazing. And I know that today will be the same. So first of all, everyone, that's on the call today, thank you for for joining. We're gonna have a really great session for you today. First off, I wanna introduce myself. My name is Sean Doherty. I'm one of the cofounders and the CEO here at GovDash. And also, the star of of today's webinar is, Judy. And for those of you that, weren't on our first session, haven't yet met Judy, Judy is the CEO of Summit Insight LLC, which is a nationally recognized authority on business development, in the federal space. Judy has over thirty seven years of experience and has helped companies win over $300,000,000, in government contracts. So a wealth of experience and knowledge here. And, Judy, again, thank you so much for for attending, the session today. Awesome. So today, we are gonna be talking about a hot wash in the federal sales world, which I think is a a very fun term. And so, Judy, for those of, of us that might not be experts on this idea yet, what exactly is a hot wash in the federal space? Well, we're gonna cover all of that. So a hot wash, it's an actual term that comes from, the first definition is from the military. A quick after action hot water rinse that removes heavy grit or dirt and cuts cleanup time later to have clean a weapon and get it ready for a more formal, clean and breakdown of reassembly, or an after action review. It's also a common best practice that it you'll find, organizations like those involved in emergency response or disaster recovery also do to figure out what are the lessons learned, what do we do in the moment, how did our plan survive reality, what can we improve for next time. So that's that's hot wash. Got it. And and and why are we talking about this, Doug? Why why do you think that this concept is, is so important as we enter the the new fiscal year? Well, in the federal arena, having an objective look at processes and patterns and outcomes is critical because it costs big money to play in the federal arena. Research shows that companies spend anywhere from 30,000 to $233,000 in cash and sweat equity on the road to trying to win their first federal contract, let alone their subsequent ones. So to be able to capture lessons learned while they're fresh and figure out what's the best way to try again for the next cycle is a critical element of a good business practice and great stewarding of resources. It's a foundation but not a substitute for a plan for the new fiscal year. When you're looking at why go ahead. Go ahead. No. You go ahead. Well, when you're saying why should GovDash hot wash and I love the expressions of the people here in this picture going, yeah. Really? Us? How come? Just the tag cloud alone says a whole lot. There's so many benefits to doing it. But the number one thing that ought to be really compelling is that it's free money sitting on the table. I have yet to meet a sales and marketing team who don't think, oh, if only we had more money for x. Doherty had you have that conversation in your company, Sean, people going, oh, can we have some more money to do stuff? Mhmm. You're looking back, first of all, and mopping up is one of the easiest ways to find those resources. So it's that's the big motivator no matter what. This is if you think about an investment portfolio, then a great portfolio manager rebalances is constantly rejuggling where your investment is going so that you're always, you know, having your money and your resources work hard for you. A hot wash lets you do the same thing. Got it. And and so I I think that something really interesting when when we had our conversations about this is that as you have up up on the slide here, you think of, the federal sales spend as an investment rather than, as an expense. And and that should be, like, the the mindset, for these organizations that are running these sorts of activities. So do you mind elaborating a little bit more about why you believe that and also what you mean by this, looking at it as more of an investment rather than just another line item on the expense sheet? Absolutely. As business owners, you've got a a pool of resources. That includes human resources. It includes temporal resources, time. It includes cash. It includes the physical assets. All of those things, that mix, you deployed them in a particular way over the last twelve months. Companies that wanna grow often need more resources in order to support that growth. If you are a wise steward of resources, then the first thing you do is look at better ways to use what you already have before you go seeking more investment, before you decide that, decide how you're going to use the increase in working capital that you may have gotten from profitable operations of the year you just finished. How can you you make better use of what you actually have? That's just simply wise stewardship that we all need to be paying attention to as business owners. And so I know we'll get into, some more of the specifics as it relates to, like, what what does this hot wash actually look like for, for for any given company. But when it comes to just just thinking about, the the idea of doing it generally and making sure that it's, like, a good use of of of time, and that the money that we we had spent prior was a good use of those funds. Given that so many of these companies are are spending 6 figures, or more on an annual basis on BD and sales, how does the hot wash actually help them ensure that the money either wasn't wasted or if it was, how we can do a better job in the following year, of using that pool? Hot wash starts by just looking at broadly speaking, looking at the plan we had, what we wanted to achieve, what actually happened. And this is starting to get it can get into uncomfortable territory looking at the results that we got and how that compared to what we hoped for just objectively. What are the facts without trying to assign blame, feeling bad because we're all human. We put our hearts and souls into this, and it can feel really uncomfortable when things don't turn out the way we hoped. And there's a lot of people and a lot of factors involved. Being able to have those hard conversations and say, alright. Based on based on facts, based on goals, how can we make the most of the resources that we had, and then where does it make sense to add more? The and and make those decisions clearly at the beginning of the year rather than wrangling about them in a lot of confusion month to month. That's the benefit of one of the benefits of doing this. Does that ring true with your experience, Sean? Yeah. It does. I'd say, especially when, at our scale and, when things are happening very quickly, we we try to do this, this retroactive look, even more and more often, like, on a on a monthly basis as well, which which we found to be incredibly helpful. And I've got a tool that I'm gonna mention, Ashley. You mentioned monthly monthly and quarterly. There are there's I have a favorite tool I'm gonna share at the end that, is a simple proven powerful way to take what may be key performance indicators that distill out of hot wash and be able to work with them week to week, month to month, and quarter by quarter for a and keep momentum on a whole year plan. Awesome. And so, like I said before, I know we're gonna jump into kind of tactically what this looks like, for for for a business, and that a lot of it is looking at, okay, like, how how did things go and how how can we get better. I know that, as you've shared with me, it's also really important to, celebrate your wins too as you're going through this process. And so, the the team understands, like, the things that did go well. Why did those go well and learn from them. But also, just from, like, a a cultural resilience standpoint, it's important. Your take is that it's really important to celebrate those. So why do you think that, celebrating those as part of the process and and sort of having that, like, happy side of this, is more than just a nice to have thing to do. It celebration is not frivolous, and I come really hard to this. I'm the usual who are our West Wing fans? You remember the constant refrain, what's next? Oh, we won something. That's nice. What's next? And, I have to be dragged kicking and screaming to the party. I am not a party girl. I was really brought up short to read hard research that documents that the a consistent regular, not just once a year a big party, but a, cadence of recognizing the small wins, recognizing those events, those achievements that experience shows are proven milestones on the road to the goals we want to achieve. The the stopping to do that builds the kind of intestinal fortitude we need to get through hard times. And if there is ever a market that is characterized by hard times, that would be GovDash. There is nothing easy about this. And so if anybody could have looked back, turned the clock back a year, and said, want some extra resilience in the bank in case stuff goes tango uniform? Would you say yes? Probably. So being able to do that now, look ahead and say, build in, not a culture of fake awards. You've gotta talk to your people and find out what kinds of things are meaningful. Sometimes just pure recognition, being able to be acknowledged for the consistent day to day effort, but consistent day to day effort, not just sort of, oh, you did a nice thing once, that lead the the unsung daily work that had if it got finished in a month or in a week or in a quarter, recognizing that as well helps build our ability to stick together and be there for each other when the going gets tough. And so celebration isn't the annual party. If you don't have a culture that has that as one of the elements, then considering talking about that and taking what you learned from hot wash and saying, how could we weave that into the year ahead is important. So celebration and hot wash are not the same thing, but it's worth when you're looking back and then looking ahead, seeing how can they relate to each other and be part of the plan moving ahead. Mhmm. Yeah. There there are lessons in in both the, the the good and the bad, that we can take with us. So I know a lot of people on the call right now are big fans of sort of figuring out tactically, like, how can these lessons be applied. Right? So, I'd love to to get your take on, what are the the types of companies or, personas or or leaders within those companies that most need to be doing an exercise like like the the hot washer. Great. So government contractors that wanna grow. Not everybody wants to grow. Some people are there's business owners that wanna just hover at the edge of large, small, and just stay there. Fine. If you wanna grow, hot wash is critically important because you're gonna be needing more resources. If you're growing fast, great reason to hot wash. Again, your, things may have been happening at a pace where you're not even seeing all the things that have that are going on. So a pause to say, alright. What are all the things going on in our our environment? Things we can control, things we can't, surprises, let's really take stock. If you're facing a make or break year for whatever reason, if you're approaching a critical transition, and that might include, just about to size out of your five year average that has left you small and suddenly you're not gonna be, or you're coming to the end of a mentor protege agreement or the end of your time to be able to leverage an IDIQ or a partnership. Eight day graduation, that's a really important transition. Moving into the mid tier, losing and gaining key certifications, those are all situations that if that sounds like you, I wanna encourage you to think about the value a hot wash can bring you. And so once a, once a company decides that they they want to, do some of this or or maybe even a step before that when, they're aware of this idea, and it's it's come up as a topic, like, hey. Maybe we should consider this. What would you say are, like, some of the common reasons, distractions or maybe excuses that we're able to come up with that that actually, dissuade us from from going ahead and and performing a hot wash? And and how do you, on on top of that, like, how do you help people to get past those and, actually convince them that this this is a good use of time? I don't I wish I could convince anybody of anything. This is such an important topic, and all I can do is put it out there and go, please think about this because I want you to be successful. The big factors that tend to stop people, first of all, it's over. Could we please just close the door on this? That it it's just it's done. Can we be done? Some people are in a great position. They're standing up new contracts. Oh, I hope that's your your position. Sometimes they're just overtaken by this. There's just so much going on. We don't have time for this. It's a nice idea. Maybe next year. Sometimes it's I don't know how to do this. I don't have time to learn something new. Please make this go away. I just I don't have time. Lack of resources as well. We don't have the energy. I don't think I can afford to get people's time. They have too much to do. Just no. Mhmm. One of the biggest reasons is very, very human. And that anybody here, drop it in the chat, will don't like conflict, don't like yucky feelings, don't like the last time you sat in a room and did a loss review. I remember doing loss reviews when I worked at IBM in the late eighties. And the thing that really I found gut wrenching was everything was always the sales rep's fault. Even if the company couldn't build the machine the company wanted in time for them to get with the thing that they wanted delivered and installed. Everything was still the sales rep's fault. It was awful. And so if you're anticipating a painful experience, why would you step up to that? Does that sound like reasons why you may have backed away from something like that in your experience, Sean? Yeah. I think I think that's, an underrated set of points there, that, like, in anything that a, a team or a business does. One with the conflict side, that's something that that that's a skill that a lot of people have to develop. And two, people just get really busy, and it's very easy to get caught up in whatever you're whatever you're looking towards for the next week, right, rather than pausing for a second to figure out how how how could things have actually gone better before. But that's so useful to do because that next week or or maybe not in the immediate term, but a month or a quarter out, the changes that you make based on that retroactive review, could could could make all the difference, right, and actually lead to you having a much more positive outcome. So, I totally hear you on that, and and I think that's something that every business in in every every vertical out there, actually does, does struggle with. Yeah. Anything else to add on that? So that four box matrix, you've probably seen the, the important and the urgent. You've got the things that are not important and not urgent, important and urgent, important but not urgent, and urgent but not important. And the hot wash can very easily fall into the important but not urgent, and it just drifts off. But the return on the invested time is huge. And, you know, people think, well, why would I go through this painful experience? And then at the end of it, what's there gonna be? There's gonna be change. Anybody like change? Well, speaking of, change, so I'd like to run through, sort of like a realistic example here. And so once somebody actually commits to doing a hot wash, what are the key goals that, to just start they should just they should have in mind going into it generally? The, great point. I would say that the goals of the federal sales hot was you wanna review the plan versus actual. You want to understand the actions that you took and the results that you got. Identifying your key success factors. And so you many organizations have key performance indicators, KPIs. And so this is your chance if you don't have them to create them. If you do, just say, alright. How what is the causality of the thing we're doing and the outcome that we want? Are these tracking? And if not, are we trying to do one thing that has no relation at all to the outcome we're looking for? Figure out what have we learned from that. And consider what are the new tools and skills we're going to need. Artificial intelligence is right under the spotlight, and that's the the core of your profession, Sean. Anybody that is not that has not increased their knowledge of and their facility and exploration of using AI tools is missing some powerful opportunities to understand the marketplace and to work more fashion effectively and efficiently. I'll save my own hairy dog stories about that for another time. Mhmm. But it's been a really remarkable year for learning how to leverage AI and figuring out what makes sense for me as a very small company, and that's gonna be different from what a larger team is gonna need. Improving your planning and operational processes. Do more of what works well, drop or adapt what doesn't, and innovate to tackle new challenges. Those are all great goals of a federal sales hot wash. I skipped past, and this is valuable, the importance of having hard conversations to support change. One of the writers and thinkers that I always turn to when I'm thinking about high growth organizations and successful organizations is Brene Brown. And her latest book, Strong Ground, has just been published. In an environment that is filled with increased complexity and volatility, having those hard hard conversations and being ready for change means that instead of just playing not to, playing not to lose, and becoming complacent, we're ready to embrace change. Understanding that in a push for growth, what got us here won't get us there. We're in a time of tremendous digital transformation. But in order to embrace that successfully, we also have to understand why we do what we do, how we do what we do as well. Understanding the transformation of hearts and heads and hands that have to happen as well as the tools that we're using. And to be able to find ways to walk our talk, to take the values that we say is at the heart of what we do and actually align those with the way we behave, the way we interact with each other, the way we interact with our clients. And so all of those are markers of strong organizations and help us survive, not just survive, but also thrive. Mhmm. By the way, Vijay, I was thinking in the chat, and I saw Brian called out the the Eisenhower matrix that you're referencing before. Love love to see that. Yeah. So so continuing on there, I know that, you've said before that this isn't just about looking at at the numbers. Right? Like, that that's sort of what we're gonna see, at a cursory glance, but the, and and and that's extremely important. But underneath that, it's actually about figuring out, okay, but what which actions led to certain results and creating that link, in our mind so that we can learn from it. Can you give an example of how that actually plays out, as we're running one of these exercises? Sure. Some examples that, I hope will resonate and sound familiar. One is to look at key success factors and validate or revise the key performance indicators so that you can, instead of just saying, here's always the things that we do and always what we get, the market is changing. And so it's a wise move to review and refine those key performance indicators so that we can also link innovation to growth and new results. Business intelligence audit is critical. The sources that we can use and how efficiently and effectively we can draw from them are changing all the time. Federal government systems, that provide free data are being revised and overhauled, and the other tools that are out there to not only gather sources, but also to analyze those are changing. And so looking at the tools that we're using, the free data sources, paid subscriptions, and how the way we're using them is helping us or maybe not to identify leads, to convert leads, turn them into real business is important. There are some tools that and I I have them. I think we all have them that we buy them and they just make us feel good, and we don't necessarily use them as heavily as the price tag on those tools would justify. Letting go of those things can be important and free up resources to tap innovations. So that'll let you redeploy the outlay for subscriptions and tools that honestly delivered nothing and adjust the commitment or execution for things that are underperforming. There might be a different level of commitment to an event or a tool than the one you're having. Maybe you don't need as many seats on insert number of expensive database, or maybe you there's another tool that's come up that's worth trying. Honoring lessons learned and the concept of failing forward is an uncomfortable but powerful thing to do. I'd be curious if this is something you do in your company. Drop us a note in the chat. How often, if ever, have you and your company honored someone who took a risk, was daring, made a calculated risk, tried something hard? It might not have worked, but, boy, we learned something valuable from that. Those are hard things to do. Being able having having a culture that encourages calculated risk taking and honors what we learn is a powerful engine for growth. Are we able to invest confidently in new skills and resources? There's no courage without vulnerability. Research shows this. Brene Brown talked about gatherings that she had in front of groups of high performing military units, and they talked about what courage means in the military context. And she tells the story of just asking the question and waiting what seemed to be forever for an answer to come from the people she was meeting with. Is there courage without vulnerability? And, finally, person put up a hand and says, no, ma'am. There is no courage without vulnerability. On that note, so so when it comes to, like, part of the reason people need to have courage in in situations like this are running exercises like this is dependent on who is actually in the room, right, when you're when you're having these discussions. People are gonna change how they may change how they they talk about things, depending on, like, who is actually there and who was involved with some of the the prior initiatives that they're reviewing. So who do you actually like to see in the room, when running a hot wash? Is it just the sales leaders? Do you recommend pulling in folks from, maybe like the capture and and the proposal teams? How how do you think about who should actually be there when the exercises run? I wanna start with a critical distinction between three different swim lanes that sometimes if you're a one person company, then you're doing all these things. But Mhmm. The government contracting arena has a real allergy to using the s word. Sales to say, oh, I do business development. Let's be real clear on what these three things are, sales, marketing, and business development. And all of them, if you have people who everybody who does all three of those roles in my view are critical players in the hot wash. Business development creates the long term value from customers, markets, and relationships. Business development is about creating the environment that is going to be productive and constructive to grow the business. That's business development. K? Marketing is about helping people find you. Sales is about helping people choose you. And marketing and business development then support sales. So sales is about helping them choose you. Marketing and BD get to that point. So proposal writing, for example, is also part of the sales process. Every single person who is customer facing, and that includes the person who makes sure the invoices are correct, the subject matter expert in the account, I'm a big fan of the Maxim, we are all in sales. Sales. I want you to, if you had to finish the sentence, sales is, Sean, what would you say sales is? And if you're listening here, put finish the, finish the sentence sales is. And, Sam, if you can read to us what's popping up in the chat. Sales is. I want you to finish that sentence. How would you finish it, Sean? Yeah. I I have a very specific answer for for GovDash. And so the way that we think about sales internally, like, sales is, helping government contractors that will actually benefit from our product, decide to go with GovDash. That's how we think about it internally. Yep. Help. That's what that's that's a company specific version of the phrase helping them Oh, you want me to go general? Yep. So I so you gave me a specific one, which I love. If you had to do a more general definition, how what would how would you finish the sentence sales is? Yeah. I think the way to to sort of generalize what I our our our more specific company version of that, is is sales is helping helping the buyers that will actually benefit from the value that you're providing, Identify and select your solution. Mhmm. Julia says sales is never ending. That's that's also true. Here's another one that I like. Sales is the continual renewal of consent to stay in connection. So take that one. See what you think of it. Sales is a continual renewal of consent, of which I'm a big fan to stay in connection, and sales brings home the win. So who takes part? Participants may include and if you're talking about a federal sales hot wash, specifically, for sure the c suite, sales and BD leadership, anybody who's got a direct frontline sales role, sales support, that might be the people who are researching contacts, who are helping plan calls, capture management, proposal development, contract administration. You see things that work and don't work. Account and program management, your leading subject matter experts, your program managers who are in the account, frontline service delivery, key partners and resellers. Those are all potential participants. The broader the perspective you can get, the stronger is gonna be your ability to say, how can we all work together better rather than having a small group of people locked in a room, point fingers at people who aren't there, and look for other people to blame. That's not gonna be real productive. Mhmm. So I've noticed that when, when when you, talk about this, you sometimes recommend a facilitator. And so I'd like to hear, like, why you think that's an important thing to do, and when when that makes sense, what maybe what type of business that makes sense for or what what environment they're in. And then also, maybe specifically, like, do you recommend that facilitator is a a third party external to the company, or or should it be someone that's, maybe at the company but not directly living one of these roles that you've already talked about? Love this question. And having the the right leader to not only lead the session but help plan it can make all the difference because you're bringing together people for often, at least a half day, maybe a full day, and getting the most out of that session. And we're not talking about just squeezing the most data, but getting the biggest return on your human capital and temporal investment is something you'll wanna do. It is hard if you're the business owner or a unit leader to lead the discussion, but also have opinions at the same time. That it's it's nearly impossible. The leaders gotta be able to create a custom agenda and a process that works for you and your company, to engage all the participants, including some of the people who often don't say a whole lot, but have great insight and perspective that we all need to hear. Let's not always see the same hands, to quote Tom Lehrer. Minimizing or avoiding corporate leadership bias. There are, there's a there can be a big tendency to just say, oh, yeah. This is what the leader is saying, so let's all just go along with that. It's the same old, same old. I don't wanna say anything. I don't wanna stand out. Using creative approaches to discussion. You don't have to do weird stuff. Doing pattern interrupt, getting people to think a little differently can help break out new ideas. Somebody who can adapt the process. Let's say you've got a plan for doing the meeting and things are stuck. They're not working as well. Or maybe you need to really shake things up. Someone that I wanted to, I'll mention in a moment, Brian, Tarlow, who is a, visual facilitator. If you have ever done or seen one of those sessions where somebody is doing a graphic rendering of the discussion in process, it just we're all, many humans are highly visual, and this is a completely different way than taking the notes on on your I thing. Super great way to just stimulate thinking. So making sure your leader can gain everyone's trust and confidence quickly. Sometimes you've got fiefdoms and, alliances and silos that are already set inside the company. And to be have have somebody in from, from outside the the unit that's getting together, somebody who has professional facilitation skills can make all the difference. Somebody who can sense and manage conflict constructively is critical. Conflict is hard. And having the same old reactions that we do when stuff comes up can cause our brains to shut down instead of hearts and minds to be open to sharing and to hearing new ideas. The concept of safe space for candid conversation is can be easy to say but hard to do if it's not your profession. Twenty over twenty five years ago, I did some professional training in facilitation, and that left me with the profound understanding that this is a a calling in a profession. It's not just something you take a class in and suddenly you can bolt it on as an add on to all the other skill sets you have. The person who can do that is rare. Be able to lead with positive neutral energy and authority, that's the session I wanna be in. And to make sure that you've got a good recording and reporting and that the person who's recording and reporting, that maybe somebody who's not even leading the session as well, but you've got other tools or people that have that specific role. Awesome. And so, Judy, I'd like to get into, some more of the tactical aspects to, to everything we're talking about here. And so, I I have a few questions I'd like to ask you for for these. It'd be helpful if you maybe you could provide, like, a a brief, sort of example or or a story tied to it, that will will help sort of materialize what we're we're, trying to get at from from the tactical implementation here. So Mhmm. Let's start with the the plan itself. How do you help companies actually compare what they said they were going to do, maybe in the in the prior period, versus what actually ended up happening? I like to suggest that there are some key topics that people consider with, consider for hot wash. And so that can be, I've I've pulled out six that are just a, a starting idea, and I can talk about those a little. Does that sound helpful? Yeah. I think so. Okay. Let me just, flip a slide over here for just a second, and let's do that then. So key topics include the federal business plan itself, just in terms of the whether that's dollars, activities, wins, proposals, the number of things, the specific things you're going after, the sales activities that you're intending to support achieving those goals, the business intelligence that you relied on, and I have some specific ideas about the different types of business intelligence, Then the implementation strategy. You've had a plan, but how did that track with what you actually did with the plan to carry it out? Data, win rates, which can tell you a great deal, including how you made that win decision, what the rate is, and whether that's whether you're happy with that win rate or it is way below industry average, which, by the way, is about 20% in GovCon. And customer access, how easy were we to get to? Now, I we could talk about all of those. We can talk about a couple of them. Your call, Sean. What do you where you wanna go? Yeah. May maybe we start with the the latter point there, and and then tie that, tie that back to an example as well. So, customer access? Yes. I I think that's one of the based off our last discussion as well, that's that's one of the most important topics for, all the businesses that that we work with right now. Okay. So I'm gonna go and, and so this is a really timely topic as well because contract consolidation is making all is putting all that up in the air right now. So hang on for a second, and I'm just gonna flip slides for a sec because we've got and if you are looking for slides that you're seeing zip on by, we'll make sure you get the file. So let's flip on over to hang on a second here, how could they find us? How could they reach us? Just a sec, And we'll do that. Yeah. How could they reach us? Yeah. How could they reach us? One second. There we go. Contract vehicles. It used to be before the contract consolidation move and the executive order from March that the simple way to do that would be to look at past contract award data and see what contract vehicles the people we wanna reach are actually using. Now we've gotta start with that, but then we've gotta have conversations with the people that we know in the account, in the federal agency as well. And ask them what do they think is gonna happen, what's the plan in the agency, and, what's their best guess for whether the contract vehicles that they like, which may be specific to that agency, are being pulled or folded back into GSA. Then answering the question, can the people we wanna do business with how easily can they reach us through the contract vehicles we're on and through the contract vehicles that they are expecting they're gonna have to use or be pushed to use in the year ahead. Then to look at what did we do to make people more aware of the contract vehicles we have, which new ones are we gonna need to be in position to prime, Where do we need partners? And what vehicles should we walk away from? And that it's, right now, figuring out how contract consolidation is gonna play in our current environment is important. And remember as well, especially when governments, you we have a government shutdown and we're gonna be starting up again, to remember that as we get past momentum of of that restart, there are new thresholds for simplified acquisition and micro purchase. And so as you're resuming conversations, especially in a new fiscal year, having those conversations about what small problems can we solve for less than $15,000, What things what contribution can we help our federal contacts make to achieving their mission for less than $350,000? Those can help gain traction, establish some past performance, and build trust as we're moving into the new fiscal year. So, Judy, when it comes to, the call here, I wanna make sure that we have time to answer some questions from the from the group as well. Before we do that, though, I know that you have, a bunch of just, like, best practices, as it relates to everything we've been talking about today. And I think those are really important to cover, and then no one can jump over to q and a. So when it comes to, best practices here, I would love to know so so I know, like, in your guide, you talk about getting past, what what you call funnel vision. Do you mind explaining, to to the group or anyone that that hasn't, heard that term yet what that means? Sure. Final vision is to look at the big picture, not just what did we start, how did we winnow it down, and then which ones did we win. That's a mechanical process. But to look more broadly and say what patterns did we see, what was in our control and out of our control, and what was happening in our year, what was happening for our federal buyers, our federal customers as well. Almost all of them lost staff. Some of them were moved into other, were folded into other agencies. The sometimes the people who were doing key tasks just stopped returning our calls. They weren't even there. It it many of our federal agencies had a really traumatic experience this year as well. It'd be really interesting to look back at the numbers. So looking at our revenue in the context of what are all the other things happening organizationally is helpful. That what issues or concerns, broadly speaking, do we have looking forward? When we look back, what are the untapped opportunities looking back? What did you what did we miss that we could have made something of? What's the relationship between the actions we took and the outcomes we got? I love this question. Where did our wins come from? If we look at the stuff that we won, my bet is that 90% or more of the stuff you won had a foundation in a strong relationship or multiple relationships. There in my view, there are very few purely mechanical wins in GovCon. This is a relationship game, and it becomes more so every year. Who introduces us? Where did that relationship come from? And how can we do more of those relationship based things? One of the best success stories I have is with, Shenaga technical innovations, one of the Shenaga companies. And this company, while its company president was a woman army veteran, the company had sized out of eight a. They were vanilla small business was all they they had. They couldn't tap into a lot of other preferences. And Heather LeCroy, the company president, said took a step back and said, where does our business really come from? Our business comes from relationships. Let's retool the things that we're doing and really concentrate all the efforts of our team on building stronger relationships from top to bottom. In less than eighteen months, this company went from being the worst performing unit to being the the unit that everybody wanted to emulate, and they had millions of dollars of new wins to support that. This is the kind of power there is in having getting out of funnel vision. So looking at your inside and outside rainmakers, who brings in your business within the company and who are your partners who are always introducing you, Why do they love you? Ask them. Why do you why do you really choose us? Why do you come back to us? They'll tell you. And that painful loss review, if you had to look back, what did you miss? What should you have really seen? How is the way that our federal agencies are behaving changing this year? This was a year characterized by change. Says side preferences by category. What we are seeing is overall continued support for small business. But what we what we may be seeing as well is a dimming of the, the spotlight on the individual small business programs. Check that out. Verify whether or not that's what's happening when you're looking ahead. What are your win win rates by agency? What are you doing differently in each? Where are you winning more and winning less? And are you winning more business of the more profitable lines of business? How does that sound for bigger picture questions, Sean? Those are perfect. And and I think, before we head into q and a, I think going off of this, something I'd love for you to share with with the group, and, I'll be taking this as a lesson as well, is, what would you recommend be, like, the first action, that someone watching this webinar that is interested in in running a hot watch, at their business, going into going into the new year here, what what is the first action that you recommend them taking? Make the commitment. The first so I I've got a a real quick, real quick, spotlight summary, session when I get past best practices. So let me just flip over to that, and we'll we'll give it to you. Alright. So Perfect. Here we go. We got some best practices for the session. But summary steps, Decide you're gonna do it. You're gonna have to do some information gathering. And the, file folder I have for this includes a a little bit of a sample of a prework questionnaire. But remember that if you ask questions, then your implicit promise is you're gonna do something with the things that you learn. And that includes sorting out what are we gonna cover in our hot wash and what are we gonna also make the commitment to cover in the days and weeks following. Decide who's going to be there. Get it on their calendar. Get their commitment for that full amount of time. Choose your session leader. Make sure it's I wanna encourage you to make sure it's somebody that's got some professional facilitation chops, and I'm gonna pop back out for a second to, no. I'll do this in the I'll do this in ending resource. Choose your session leaders, and I've got a resource where you can just find a facilitator and also point of contact at the Mid Atlantic Facilitation Network who will just talk with you about tell me about facilitation really. Pick your date. Set your agenda. Determine your rules of engagement. How are we gonna be with each other? What's on? What's off? What are we doing? Maybe there are things we always do, and there may be things that we haven't done this before, but let's not do this thing. We've had problems with this. So this thing that gets everybody all excited in a bad way, let's not do this. Here's the things we're not doing. Rules of engagement, everybody's on the same page. Hold your session, and make sure you've got accountability and dates for the follow-up that comes. Otherwise, it's been a nice break with snacks. That's it. We nobody can afford a nice break with snacks. Awesome. Okay. Well, as Judy said, we'll we'll yeah. Let let's go to questions. I think we're, we're right on time. So, way to way to land it there, Judy. And if you've got questions, great. But I also would like to know you can also drop into the, drop into the chat. I would love to know what your, your takeaway is from our session today. What was real what really landed for you? What was valuable? We're going, ah, hey. That makes sense. Alright. Love to know. Judy, so yeah, we we've got a question right in the chat here from Julia. So do you recommend hot washes after each bid or on a regular basis looking at themes across bids? Makes a lot of sense to do a do a review at the end of each bit. And remember as well, externally, we talk about a debriefing or a post award conversation. Debriefings are in FAR part 15. There's very specific conditions under which you can request one. They don't have to provide one, and there's a list of what should or shouldn't or can't and can't be in one of those things. But to do that review internally makes lots of sense. That, for me, is a hallmark of a learning organization. And so if as well, if you just wait till the end for a finger pointing session ever nobody's looking forward to, that's building up a, culture of anxiety and blame. Baking into your everyday, your year long process, we're a learning organization. We are always learning. We're always supporting each other. We're always growing. That, to me, that's a company I would wanna work in. I don't know about you, but I'm in. Great question, Julia. Agree. I I have a question for you, Judy. So, I I think a lot of this is, a big part of this is from a a cultural standpoint. How do you actually get people to have these conversations without it turning into, a fight, right, into finger pointing? And I know you hit on that a lot. Is is there any, like, key thing that you've seen that works really well for just kind of level setting with the organization from a cultural standpoint saying, like, hey. We're gonna be able to have this discussion. We should all go into it knowing that this is just about getting better, and we're gonna try to approach it as neutrally as possible. Is is there any sort of conversation like that that that happens? This is exactly why I love the resources that a professional facilitator can bring to the table. That because I'm, it was in studying what goes into professional facilitation that I realized all the subtleties that go into that. So, while one of the, resources I wanna just put on the screen right now before people may have to disappear at the top, that hang on. There we are. Mid Atlantic Facilitators Network, mafn.org/find. Find a facilitator. You can put together a request form, but as well, chat to so a person that I would suggest, and he was, has been in and out of this webinar, Brian Tarallo. While he has a four eight zero, area code, our phone numbers are now more about our history than our geography. He's in Northern Virginia, and he's part of the Mid Atlantic Facilitators Network. Check the math and website. Talk to Brian. Ask him how is this done. I am well, I would like to think that I can just get people to talk to each other. I know that that is not my profession. I just have to go and sit on one of our family FaceTime calls when we're trying to figure out where we're going for Thanksgiving, and I just go down without a trace so I know. And talk about an organization you're embedded in and why you're it's not your meeting, that would be a great example. Just, so being able to get professional help and guidance, when you're bringing together that your human capital and your temporal capital, your time is probably one of the best decisions that you can make. What other questions have we got? We've got another, I was reading this. So another great question from Judy here. So, in Judy team, they they currently do, all our potwashes post submission before debrief. And so given that, do you have recommendations for for balancing the desire for that consistency, with with also the needs to not overwhelm people's calendars, right, and reduce the amount of meetings. And then the additional context here is I'm thinking in particular about companies bidding three or more proposals a month, between traditional bids and and task orders. Great question. I, I don't know the answer. Everybody's cadence is unique. So you're gonna have to look at what what how many meetings you're already in. If you're doing three proposals a month, that's already a ton of meetings. And so Mhmm. I don't have a hard answer for that. Again, that may be something that professional facilitation can help you figure out, what's gonna work. It may be as well that you're grouping together your, types of proposals or submissions to a given agency. So you're looking at things that are commonalities rather than well, we had one for professional engineering services, and we had another one for logistics, and we had another one for health care staffing. And they're all the different agencies. So it may be a really unproductive session to say, slam together a discussion about all those things. Thanks, Julia. I'm glad that's landing for you. Let's see. Yeah. Appreciate it, Julia. Yeah. Hey. We're coming up to the top of the hour, and I had some resources. Would it be okay to share those, Sean? Of of course. Go ahead. Alright. Things to so Mid Atlantic Facilitators Network, that is a biggie. In addition to Mid Atlantic Facilitators Network, the other resources so, get out your phone. I've got a QR code here for you. And if you wanna get this this whole slide deck because we've got other things as well. Here you go. Just a second. Reflect to gather best practices and steps. There we go. Complimentary guide, federal sales hot wash, how to turn last year's spend into this year's growth. At this QR code, it's gonna get you a landing page, and you can get the full complimentary guide with all this year's updates and and good thinking. And so I wanna encourage you to go and get this and download it and share it with friends. Resource number two, I talked about a system to use key performance indicators and to have a weekly cadence as well as quarterly milestones on implementing your full plan. Patrick Thean and his book Rhythm, it's an easy read. It's a simple powerful system. I have used it for my own business. The case studies that he uses are inspiring. And if they don't motivate you to go, yeah, this is something we should be doing, then I don't know what will. And he has a ton of free resources. We love free resources on his website. The book itself is a great investment. So if you're not using a a weekly cadence, quarterly markers, and baking in key performance indicators into your business plan now, I wanna encourage you to do that. Resource number three, and I'm just three quarters the way through this book right now. Renee Brown's strong ground is focused on practical, actionable insights that illuminate mindsets and skill sets that you need to be a high performing organization. And she also has a hub on her website, a dare to lead hub that includes, again, free resources, worksheets, things that you can use to support building a strong, well connected, high trust organization because research shows that high performing organizations are also high trust organizations. Awesome. Well, as we're coming up on the hour here, I just wanna say thank you, Judy. As always, this was tremendously helpful, for me and I and I think, or I hope for everyone else as well. I imagine so. I said in the beginning, Judy is CEO of Summit Insight LLC. It's a fantastic organization. We'll make the materials from today available to everyone. I hope we have, another,