Name: Past Performance as the North Star
Uploaded: 2025-10-22T16:16:18.941Z
Duration: 52 min 47 s
Description: Past Performance as the North Star

Transcript for "Past Performance as the North Star": Well, welcome everybody, to a another webinar. I am really, loving these webinars every month. I really look forward to them, and I appreciate, everyone who, you know, has been joining us. I'm really excited about this one in particular because it is, a topic that I love to talk about, but also it's really timely. We are going through, you know, a wild time in GovCon. I don't need to tell you guys that. It has definitely been a year and then some. But this is a time for the next hour that I hope that we can, all sort of refocus. I'm gonna give you my top strategies, for you know, this is this is a unique time, but we've faced downtimes and shutdowns in the government, many times over, and we've also faced challenges. And, when things get tough, when opportunities seem to, you know, slow down, when things get complicated, this is where we have to pivot, and we have to, find ways to win. And there are definitely ways to win, and there are things that we can be doing right now to position ourselves, for winning when things open back up. So that's what we're gonna be talking about today. For those of you that don't know me, my name is Meryl Angelicola. I am the CCO of GovDash, our chief customer officer. We are really focused on responsible AI for GovCon across the entire workflow. Today is not gonna be a sales pitch or anything like that. In fact, we are not really even gonna touch on GovDash, but it's important context to know because, these are problems that we're solving. And everything that I'm gonna talk to you guys about today, the foundation of, you know, a winning architecture anatomy within GovCon, that's what we've built GovDash on. Right? I've been there since the very beginning, with the founders, and I've helped with, you know, build the product, and this is really what we have structured it, for. So the other thing that I do is I'm the founder of proposal team. You may have seen us on LinkedIn. We share a lot of proposal themed memes, but we are a nonprofit for GovCon talent development in the space. So we provide free training to folks that want to pivot from other industries into GovCon because we want to bring people in, the best and the brightest, and we wanna make that more accessible than it has historically been. And then probably most importantly, I have twenty plus years in the industry. So I started in GovCon when I was 19. I turned 40 this year, so quite literally over half my life I've spent, in the trenches doing what you guys do every day, so capture proposals, contracts, and delivery. I've had a really unique career trajectory where I started, managing contracts on-site at CDC, and then, I started managing the proposals that we would submit because we had a a lot of, proposals, you know, contracts come up for rebid. So I would manage those, and I got hooked. And then I moved to capture, so I was doing all three, and then got into contract. So I really had an opportunity to see the whole life cycle, from start to finish. And we're gonna talk about that today a little bit too is that that's a big part of this, the way that, you know, we see this in our perspective of business development being holistic rather than siloed off, and why that really matters in times like now. The biggest thing that if you get anything out of this, session today, the goal is to win the contract. It's not to submit the proposal. It's to win the contract, but that's not it. We don't just wanna win. Right? So we don't wanna just submit a bunch of losing proposals. And, honestly, we don't just wanna win any opportunity. We want to win opportunities that we can deliver on well and and that become past performance that we can then leverage to grow, our book of business and our bottom line and our revenue because we win other contracts. I will say this over and over again. If you ever work for me, you will hear me say this to all my teams in capture and proposals. The only thing worse than losing is winning at the wrong opportunity. If you've ever been in this situation, you know exactly what I'm talking about, the ones where, maybe price did not align well with the technical approach, and you end up, you know, breaking even or sometimes losing money, ones where no one checked OCI to make sure that winning the opportunity wouldn't preclude you from bidding other bigger opportunities, things that you really just couldn't deliver on, things that put your company at risk. You don't wanna win an opportunity just for the sake of winning it. Now and I'm not saying that you don't wanna stretch yourself and you can't, you know, pivot and do things that are difficult. Right? Like, that's the whole nature of the beast. But, when you're going after things, one, you don't wanna just submit proposals that you don't have a chance of winning. Right? So we need to find a way to to figure out where that sweet spot is. But the second thing is you want to win things that you can deliver on and make money on when you win them. And that is one of the things we're gonna be talking about today as well. There is a pivot point that happens in times like this. So right now, let's just name the challenges that we're facing. One, probably one of the most heartbreaking challenges is so many of our GovDash colleagues, whether they are on the government side or in the industry, are have been impacted by layoffs and reductions in force and so many different things. And so the landscape of who you know and your relationships for many people, that's changing. And that is a big part of GovDash. And so one of the things that people are facing right now is, okay. I used to have a Rolodex. I used to work with these people within an within an agency, or I used to work with these people within a company. And either, you know, the person is no longer at this industry or at this agency or this person is no longer at the company, and you're you're looking at a smaller Rolodex or different Rolodex than you have in the past. And sometimes it's a little bit like starting over. The other challenges that we're facing is we're obviously in a government shutdown right now. And so the opportunities, they're still out there. They're still happening, but they're definitely slowed down because people are not, you know, in procurement shops. Right? They're not moving things along. And then there's just uncertainty at the end of this. Like, where what is it gonna look like? What what are we gonna be doing? So what I want to share with you guys is so I've never worked in GovCon. I when I first started, I used to hear rumors of this time period where, like, GovCon was just happening. Right? Like, it was so easy to win a contract, and people were flying proposals, and, you know, delivering them by hand. I came in right at the very end of that, right when we were in sort of a drought. And it got better from there, but, it was not easy to win contracts twenty years ago either. There was a lot of things that play another riff. Right? There was there's a lot of similar things happening. Email delivery was also becoming the thing, and technology was helping to change the process much like AI is helping to change the process now too. So, I see a lot of parallels in when I where I first started, and where we are today. And there's some things that are different, but there there are a lot of parallels. The good news on this, and what I can promise you, is that the government is an ecosystem. It is the largest consumer in our country of goods and services. It takes a ton to to run an ecosystem like the federal government, not even mentioning state and local. Right now, they are in a strategic pause, but they are going to buy again. The industry is critical to that. The federal government has never been able to do this 100% on its own. This is not something that's going to magically happen. And so things may look different. Right? We're gonna see changes. We have seen changes. But the bottom line is that the government needs goods and services to operate, and they need industry to partner with in order to procure those goods and services. So our goal with this time right now is, one, don't lose hope, don't lose faith, because things are going to open up again. The goal is to make sure that we are positioned well when things inevitably open back up. This time period right now is an opportunity to position your company and yourselves better than you were before. Right? And to emerge out of this with a better foundation, better strategy, a better trajectory, and a clearer path forward. And, again, this is what we're gonna talk about today. Very important here, though. So I 100% realized that, again, this is a a different world. Right? Like, we are we are in unprecedented times, and so it's gonna require us to pivot. And I work with, folks that are changing careers. Right? And my biggest thing that I say to them is no one's ever starting over from scratch. Right? Unless you've never worked a day in your life, and even then, you have skills and experience. And it's the same thing with GovCon companies. Even if, you lost a contract or some of the people that you worked with are no longer at an agency or your you know, the opportunities you thought were gonna come out this year are not there, you're not starting over. You have incredible past performance and capabilities that, are yours, and nobody can take those away from you even if they look different moving forward. And this is your pivot point. Changing direction strategy while keeping one important thing steady or unchanging, that's the definition of a pivot. And your pivot point is your capabilities and past performance. In science, it's also referred to as a center of gravity. So the axis with which your activities are spinning around, and that's very appropriate for what we're gonna talk about today. Every company has a center of gravity, and it's unique. So this is just a, you know, a very high level view. It can contain a lot of different things. But what that looks like are, you know, your past performance and your contracts, your relationships, even if someone you worked with at one agency is now at a different agency or they're at another company. Same thing if someone you worked with at a company is at a different company. Those are your relationships. Those don't go away. An area of expertise, that is one hundred percent one of your differentiators as a company. Your reputation, your resources, and your results. This is your center of gravity, and all of the activities that you do, our goal in this period is to find that center of gravity and be really intentional and strategic about making sure that we've got one foot in that center of gravity. Like, we're playing basketball. Right? We're we're gonna pivot around. We're gonna look around, but we've got one foot planted securely in our value proposition, or our capabilities. We'll talk about both of them here in a little bit. They're two different things. But making sure that we are firmly planted there, and then we are pivoting to find what makes sense, and the opportunities where we have the greatest chance of winning. Now I know for a fact that companies can get very hung up in the center of gravity. Sometimes that center of gravity can feel like an anchor, and it can be very limiting. Like, we don't do that. We only do this. That's not the kind of capture that I run. Right? I am very pro think of the possibilities. You know, we things are never black and white. Like, let's let's look at our capabilities and see how they are applicable to these new areas, right, and these new opportunities. This doesn't mean that you have to be confined to a box, but it does mean that you're going to be shifting your perspective. So a slight shift in perspective, a pivot can help you go from seeing the center of gravity, as something that limits you to something that will take you to new places. It's going you know, there's a lot within your orbit. It's not a small box. It's a it's a large area of things that make sense with your center of gravity and your capabilities, but you gotta find that center of gravity first. And, it's crazy that you would think that in this industry, like, we we talk a lot about past performance, but it's not common for companies to really sit down and say, okay. Like, sometimes this is referred to as BD, right, or strategic BD. Like, what what landscapes are we going after? What agencies? What capabilities? I mean, this is something that happens over and over again, and most companies just don't have time because they're chasing one opportunity after another. And one gift that we have right now, in many cases, is the gift of time. Right? We've got a little bit of extra breathing room to do this. And so it's now or never, and, I'm gonna show you how I do this today. Before I continue, though, let me check QA. It doesn't look like we have any questions. I did wanna mention, so put your questions, in our, you know, the chat box. So when you're, you know, chatting, we've got our pro team, in the box here helping. And so they are going to put your questions. Not only are they gonna help answer them, but they're gonna put your questions, then consolidate them for me. And I'm gonna pause throughout this and and answer a few of them. If we don't get all the questions answered, though, don't worry. We will answer them after and send them out to the team QA style and GovDash. Alright. Okay. So, we talked about pivot point. This is your center of gravity. What this becomes is your guide, and this is your past performance and your capabilities. Remember your resources, your contracts, your area of expertise, your relationships, your results, all of those things are critical, and they equal your pivot point, your center of gravity. They also become your guide. And this is where we move into the North Star. Right? Like, where as a company, where are you going? Being able to see that North Star and being able to make sure your entire organization understands that too and they're working towards that same goal and that same point is really, really critical. And before you can do that, you have to define it yourself. The reason this is important and the reason this is not limiting is your past performance and capabilities help you find the possibilities where your chances for success are strongest. So it is really not one small pivot point. Right? It's not one small area that your company can perform on. It really it creates a larger area, and this is the goal. This is where we wanna stay within. Right? The this is the area where your you have the highest chance of success. It's not this little pivot point here. It's not small. You're not combined, but it's going to illuminate and shed light on where you really should be and where you're focusing and where you have the highest chances of success and winning. And during this time period, this is what we're gonna focus on. On. Right? This is what I want you guys to focus on. This is critical. And we wanna have laser focus on this because this is one time when we actually have, extra breathing room. These are the three strategies we're gonna talk about today. One is gathering the data, IDing the right opportunity, and then making the value tangible. This is a three part, exercise. I've taken every team I've ever led through this exercise, downtime or not. Usually, it's right after, the end of fiscal year is when things are quietest, so we just happen to, hit this perfect storm here. So it's definitely that time period as well. But, this is what I do with every team I work through. I'm gonna show you guys how to do it with your team, and then we'll provide this recording after and some materials. And if, you need feel free to use them and repurpose them with your own team as well. The first is gathering the data, and this is a really critical piece of the puzzle. You cannot leverage what you don't know. And if you are on this call, chances are very high that you have experienced data chaos within your organization. I've worked with a lot of companies, and there's not one that didn't have a data problem. Right? GovDash creates a ton of paperwork, a ton of information. They also have a lot of activity that gets lost and never gets recorded. And all of that the pressure of that and not having all the information you need or not knowing where something is, it's a constant looming, cloud over a company. Right? And there's always a project to make that better and to reduce that friction. The reason that is is because people realize they're sitting on a gold mine of data. You've all been in situations with proposals or capture where you can't track something now that you need, but you know you have it. This is where we're gonna start. So at a minimum, you have to get an inventory of your past performance down. Past performance is your differentiator in the age of AI. It's something that AI cannot fake. It is unique to your organization, and it is an evaluation criteria that the government uses over and over and over again to judge whether or not you are low risk. Right? Whether they can trust you, to carry out the work that you're saying. And and it has to be relevant. It has to be recent. So you want to start by gathering a list of every contract that you have ever been awarded, prime or sub, and making sure, at a minimum, you have a contract document and a PWS or or SAU document. It may not be a long document, but you need to have something that has a period of performance, a value, and some sort of signature, and a statement of work. You could even gather this for commercial work if you're just getting started in GovCon. But for for experienced GovCon companies, this is the record. Right? And when the government evaluates and if you get protested against or they're gonna they're gonna wanna see that you have these minimum documents in place. This is what they're evaluating. So we're gonna start here, but we're not gonna end here. We are once we get this this documentation and this inventory, we've got a contract and PWS document for every single contract. Now this is where the real work begins, and this is one of the most valuable things you can do during this time. We're gonna go and find everything we can find. We're gonna uncover any stone, overturn any stone that we can find, look for deliverables, status reports, metrics, CPARS, employee interviews, kudos from customers, any outcomes or metrics that we can document, resumes. This is gonna look different for every company. You know your contracts best. And so sit down with your delivery people and say, like, what are the artifacts that we can gather about our contracts? Because we all know that the PWS is only a a fraction of the story. Right? And this is where we need to start, and we need to be able to justify everything we're doing in the scope. But it's not where we don't just base our proposals off of PWS documents. We don't just base our RFIs off of PWS documents. We want to humanize, that piece of the puzzle. Right? And so we have to gather that, and that's not something that the government is going to write into a contract. These are things that happen as a result of performing on the contract. And so this is where your delivery folks come in, and the folks that are closest to the work, you gotta get them in the trench. You gotta get in the trenches with them and really understand, the work that you've done and then document it and collect it. And these things need to go into your inventory of past performance. The more information you have, the bigger this area, right, this this illuminated area of where you have the highest changes for success is going to be. The smaller this pivot point, right, when you just have your contract in PWS, that's a very small pivot point. And your area of success is gonna be smaller, right, the area that you focus on. But more information that you have about what you've done, how you've done it, the results that happen as you know, by performing the work, that's going to increase your area of your pivot point or your center of gravity. It's gonna give you a lot more possibilities. And so this is really critical. You cannot do anything that I talk about after this point without doing this here. And the number one thing that you can do, and this is anytime I've managed a group of people or run capture, gone in and helped fix, you know, the BD process of a team that was struggling, The first thing that I do and the most impactful thing that I do is connect the BD department. So your capture BD and deliver or and proposal folks, connect them with delivery and the people that are doing the work. This is something that rarely happens. They are usually two silos, two different areas of the company. Once a contract gets awarded I really want to get submitted. The the BD team is already on to the next thing. Right? And so they very rarely get to connect with what happens in the following five years. But that is a a really, really big injustice, and it is not equipping your team with the information that they need. It's also not equipping your team with connecting to that human element. At the end of the day, we're selling to humans. Right? Evaluators are humans. We need to be able to understand why we're going after something or why we'd be a good fit. And connecting those folks on your BD team to the folks that are delivering and can talk about the work they're doing, is the most valuable thing that you can do. What this looks like in practice is, some things that I've done in the past is I would invite somebody from delivery to our weekly meeting, for ten minutes of the meeting, and I would just ask them some questions. Like, what are, you know, some of the things you've you're most proud about that you've done, you know, on this contract? Or what are some of the outcomes? How did we improve, the experiences for our customers? What were, a what's the challenges that you overcame? Right? Like, how did how we made it better? These are questions like, rarely do people get to talk about the work that they've done. So one, it's helping your team, delivery folks on the ground, realize that they're valued. But it's also helping your business development team, like, understand the work that's being done outside of just what's in the PWS. The other benefit of this is that it helps them build relationships with the delivery team before a proposal happens and they need to get in contact with them to help them write something or to ask them questions, the folks on the ground typically become your subject matter experts to contribute to a proposal. You're helping your team build relationships preemptively, and that is just good all around. So if you do one thing that I tell you, to do, this is the one thing that I hope that you do, is if you only have time for one thing, figure out a way to get your delivery folks and your BD capture and proposal teams in the same room, at a more frequent rate. Alright. And then I've got a quick story for you guys. So, this is the reason this is important is that paper is not human. Right? And so it's really tough to connect to the humanity of something, when you're just reading about it on, you know, paper. And it's especially hard to connect with the humanity of something when an evaluator is reading a proposal and the proposal was written by AI, and AI was said information by somebody who just read it in a PWS document. Right? That's the that's a recipe for very generic and not, compelling proposals. And so we've got it we've gotta create that human connection, and the humanity, has to come through in our proposals. And proposals are evaluated and scored, so I'm not saying that we are creating a rogue marketing document. But within the evaluation criteria, when we're answering questions, when we are talking about, why we have a strength, right, and and we're going for strength. The way that we do that is by communicating our value effectively, and we're communicating to humans. So that is important. We want that to come through. And one of my favorite things about GovCon is that proposals turn into contracts that impact real people. And if you work with proposal team, you'll hear me say this over and over again. This is why I love GovCon, and it's important to remember. I have a quick story for you. This is my daughter here. On the right hand side, she is a scientist, in the making. She loves science. She thinks it's awesome. This is a robotics kit that the folks at GovDash, the engineers actually sent her, which was super touching and a great story in and of itself. But the reason I wanted to tell you this story is that, about oh gosh. I don't even know how long now. But in my earlier in my career, I managed a proposal, for a company that was going after, the Mars rover support contract. So this is a contract that was helping to collect data and, processing some previously collected data with NASA. It was a very big proposal, very big contract, and it was a nightmare to manage. I I get stressed out just thinking about it. Every single bullet point in the entire proposal disappeared no less than five times. So I literally spent, like, five hours manually inserting bullet points, like, two days before it was due. Because every time someone would get in the document, the bullet points would disappear. And that was not fun. I'll tell you what. I did not wanna spend my Sunday doing that. It was not fun to spend five hours manually putting in bullet points one by one. However, my daughter, when she was in third grade, came home, and she had a, like, a magazine foldout that her her teacher had given her about the Mars rover and all of those pictures. So we ended up winning the contract. And years later, my daughter came home and had pictures from the Mars rover and information that we had collected, which was super cool. And we ended up spending five hours that weekend just going through everything, learning about it, and she thought it was the coolest thing ever. And that was one of the things that started her excitement about robots and, science and all of that. And so all that to say, what started off as a very tedious, not fun, not humanizing experience of manually placing bullet points in a proposal, I really got to connect to the outcome of what that work looks like. Right? We won the contract, and then people performed work on that contract. And it actually resulted in something that inspired my daughter. Right? And these are the you know, kids become, the future of our country, and they're going to be researching, and they're gonna be pushing us forward and stuff like that. I mean, that is things that we don't normally get to, connect with as BD folks or proposal folks or capture folks. And so bringing your team in on this, this is gonna help them be excited. This is going to help them understand the why behind the work, but it's really gonna help them connect with your past performance. And when people connect with past performance, that's how they remember it. Right? And we want them utilizing that and connecting with that pivot point. It's the common goal you guys are all sharing and you're moving towards it. So alright. Before I move on to this section, I'm gonna check QA. Doesn't look like we have any questions. Sam, is there do we have any in chat? Looks like we are all good. Okay. Great. Don't be shy. We will totally pause to answer questions. I know this is a lot of information. Okay. So the right opportunity. Let's talk about this. Now that you have your past performance set, you know your capabilities, you know the general area with which you have the highest chance of success. Right? Because, again, within a proposal, you're going to be talking about your past performance is going to be evaluated, where you have relationships, where you have expertise. All of that happens within that area that's been illuminated and that focus area. Your past performance is a great goal to help guide you. It's a great guide to guide you towards the right opportunities. Within this environment, the possibilities for opportunities may not be endless, but they are plentiful. So if you've ever logged in to Sam or Ebuy or any of the millions of different places that opportunities can come from, you know this. Right? And you've stared at a sea of opportunities and wondered which one was the one that was gonna be good for you. Because we have done the work of gathering our past performance, understanding it, this this now gets a lot easier for us. Right? So this is my tried and true way of, assessing an opportunity and and really guiding my team to picking the right opportunities. This is a critical point in the process, and it's a formula. So with my team, what I tell them is there's there's three main areas here. We have existing partners, existing capabilities, and existing or similar customers. These are the three areas that I look at when I'm looking at an opportunity. We talked about pivot points. We wanna have an anchor in at least two of those. So is this something that we've done before with an existing or similar customer? Okay. Great. That's two. So I'm gonna this is where they overlap. This is one that we wanna take a look at. Is this a partner that we've worked with before? We never worked with the agency, but it's a similar capability to what we've done. Okay. Great. This is overlap. This is something that's worth our time to look at. Is this with an existing or similar customer? We really it's kind of a stretch, our capabilities. Like, we could we could say we've done, you know, some things that are similar. We've got some gaps, though. We need to get some partners, but we have an existing partner that's doing this work already. Right? And so the risk there is less. We have overlap. So what you wanna look at are the areas here. Doesn't have to be all three, but the areas where you've got overlap in two of these out of the three of these, points. Right? So whenever I look at an opportunity, we're deciding whether or not to put something on our pipeline, and I'm helping my team to identify opportunities. This is what I teach them, and this is these are the rules. Like, let's show me where we've got overlap and show me why, we've got crossover in two of these three. Now this middle point here where it's with an existing partner, existing capabilities, existing and similar customers, this is a sweet spot. Does not happen often, but you definitely wanna find those. And these are also your recompetes. Right? And so that's why they're so important. And you have to look at your recompetes as competitive, especially in this day and age. Don't take anything for granted. So, that's where these three out of three opportunities come in. But two out of three is great, and we can work with that. And if you can make a case for your capabilities and it's with a similar partner so for example, I manage a lot of contracts at the CDC, and this is my personal story. So, I first started out, like I said, managing, scientific contracts at the CDC, like epidemiology, that I was young. It was my first job that I had. I lived in Colorado, and I was the only Colorado employee. So that's where a lot of our CDC contracts were. I was walking the halls, getting to know these, you know, microbiologists that were studying the life cycle of a tick and mosquito borne illnesses, and I did really badly in high school biology. I'll just say that. So I was not an expert by any means, but they were super passionate about it. I got to know them, so I got to understand our past performance. Later on, when, a couple years later, I was still managing those contracts, and they asked me to start doing capture, and they wanted to get into NIH. And I found an opportunity within NIH that, was for similar services. It had other services underneath it. It's a very large contract. It was, like, $11,000,000,000 at the time. It's since since been split apart, but it was for all their support services. It was not the exact customer. It was, you know, a similar customer, but it was for existing capabilities. We didn't have a partner that worked there, did this work. It was a totally new company that we wanted to partner with. But because we had really great alignment in what we were doing for a similar agency, that gave us the leverage we needed to talk to the prime. And I'm gonna tell you guys about that here in just a minute. I'll give you more information on that. But keep that in mind and tuck that away for next time. That's one example of how that can work. But start thinking about your past performance and what an opportunity that falls into each of these categories would look like for you. And, again, we love it when this happens in the middle. It doesn't happen often, so don't get locked into just this sweet spot. This is, again, how pivot points can, you know, become anchors or limiting. So don't limit yourself to just these. Look for them, but really look here in in these crossover areas. The reason this is important is because choosing well is the only path to winning well. We talked before about the only thing worse than losing is winning the wrong opportunity. If you do not choose well and you skip this step and you don't evaluate opportunities against what your pivot point is or your center of gravity, you're gonna get lost in space. You are no longer tethered, and you can make some really bad decisions. You either go after the wrong opportunities, waste money and time, and lose, or you actually win them and you lose money or you can't deliver and it impacts your, you know, opportunities moving forward. So very important that you select well and you teach your teams how to select well and you give them the information to do that. Because because, again, the possibilities may not be endless, but they're plentiful. There's a lot of wrong opportunities out there for your organization. You gotta figure out the way to find the ones that are within your sweet spot that give you the highest chance of success. One of the ways to do this. So prime opportunities right now may be a little slower because we're in a shutdown and the nature of where we're at. However, there are still existing contracts out there, that are very critical to the government, especially if you are a small business. One of my favorite ways to do this is, to when I'm looking at contracts, I'm not just looking at what's gonna come out for recompete in, you know, in the near future. I'm looking at contracts that have already been awarded to large companies. I wanna look at their PWS documents because they've already been competed and they're currently in performance. That information is out there. And so now I wanna look at it, and I wanna assess it against my capabilities. And I want to see, like, is there do I have a lot of really strong capabilities here? Do I have a lot of alignment? Do I have a similar customer? Whatever that may be. Is this a a partner I've worked with in the past? Look at all their contracts, approach them, and say, hey. Listen. I looked at this specific contract. This is what we have to offer. This is where we've done this work in the past, and these are the results that we got. And I think we can really help you. That is something that you can do even if the government is shut down. Contracts that are already being, already within their period of performance, companies all the time need replacement small businesses. Small businesses may get too large, right, or they realize that they don't have great options in a particular area, especially if you have a socioeconomic set aside. Look at full and open contracts that have already been awarded. Don't limit yourself to just what you can prime, especially ones that have already, you know, already within their period of performance. Not only can you have an opportunity to get on during the period of performance, but if you do that, and you build relationships now when they come up for recompete, then you have an in. Right? And you've got a trajectory or path forward with this company in a relationship. So I told you guys the story about, you know, how I saw that that, opportunity in NIH. My boss at the time told me I was crazy and not to waste time on it, but I was like, I know I'm crazy, but I'm also really competitive, and I I know that we can do this work. So because I understood our past performance, I I made a list of a 100 people with Kelly government services because that that was the prime at the time. We didn't know them. And I just started calling them. Now, this day and age, you could probably use LinkedIn, but, like, don't don't underestimate the the power of a phone call. I started calling down the list until I got someone that would actually talk to me. I got a lot of no's and a lot of people hang up on me. So I understand that's not easy. But I had our our selling points ready. Right? And we're gonna talk about this as our last point. I had our value proposition ready. I knew that we had done this work well because I had access to the data about our past performance and our metrics and the outcomes and all of that. And so I could articulate why we would be a great partner and why we had alignment. And I'd picked the opportunity right well because it was something within our sweet spot. And when I got them on the phone, they were, very nice, first of all. So shout out to Pete. He gave me a chance twenty years ago, and I will never, forget that. But he actually brought us in, and we got to talk to him, and they added us to their team. That became one of our largest contracts. And my boss at the time had told me, you know, not to to do it. He actually ended up starting a company and becoming a supplier on that that contract as well. So things like that can have a really big impact on your business, and this, again, was a long time ago. Right? So this is when things were slow back then as well. We were many shutdowns, right, were happening. It was the norm. We had a very long shutdown that sent everybody home. Similar things were happening back then. There are still opportunities out there. And I tell you the story not this is one story where I happened to do it the right way. Before that, there are many stories where I did it the wrong way and, where I just found something off the street and, like, yes. I think we can do this, and you submit a proposal. There's a lot of temptation to do that. But if you do it the right way and you look at you get all the data that you need to get, you pick the right opportunity based on that data and that analysis, your chances of winning. Right? You're already setting yourself up for success because you're within your sweet spot, and you know you can tell a good story and you got the data to back it up. Alright? And then the other side here is RFI. So even when, RFPs are not being released, or things are slower, you don't have to wait for the government to request an RFI before you send one over. So if you identify opportunities or you identify previously awarded opportunities, within agencies that fall into that sweet spot, go ahead and and use leverage that data that you've collected about your past performance and your capabilities, that is your superpower now. So use that and use technology and AI and write RFIs even if they're not being asked for. Send out those call them white papers if you want, but give that information to customers before they ask for it because that's your opportunity to influence. Right? And they are much more likely to speak to you when they are not assessing RFIs or it's not, you know, seen as, like, an, you know, an open, procurement. This is an issue in GovCon. Right? Like, they they should be able to talk to you during the RFI period. A lot of times, they think that they can't. But if you're proactively reaching out to them before an RFI even exists, you're getting yourself in front of them. You're you know, give them a reason to talk to you. Say, hey. This is our expertise. We noticed you guys are doing a lot of work in this area. I'd love to just talk to you about it and offer you you know, just ask you a couple questions and see if there's any way that, you know, our subject matter expertise can help. Just have a conversation. Contracting officers, in my experience, are much more likely to talk to you in that situation, than they are during an active RFI and especially during active, RFP. Alright. This is our final piece. I'm gonna look at QA. Alright. We've got some questions. Jared. So hi, Jared. Nice to to see you again. Jared is an awesome capture manager. Everybody, I'm gonna embarrass him, but he's amazing. So what is your recommendation on getting into the organization that is harder to break into if you don't have any customer relationships such as NIH? So that's a great, very timely question. It's exactly what I described to you as. So as a small business, I would look at existing contracts that are being done right now, that are within their period of performance and are full and open. And I would reach out to those companies. And I I would have your value proposition ready, which is what we're gonna talk about in this final piece. Don't just say, hey. I'm a small company, and I meet this socioeconomic, status, which I know you would never do, but that's the the trap a lot of small companies fall into. Really think about the opportunity that you identified, the contract, the scope of work, and how you can contribute to that and why you'd be a great partner. And lead with that. Use technology to to write something very tailored to them, and use that to get their attention. And lead with that, have a document ready, make the phone calls, but it is it is a lot easier to break into an organization or an agency, with a partner than it is just to to win a prime contract, right out the gate. So those strategic partnerships are gonna be really important. But in order to do that, you have to know why, you'd be a good fit. And the first step to that is getting your data ready and identifying the right opportunity, even if that's one that's already, you know, being worked on and that's current. What are your strategies for energizing product delivery folks to want to be involved in discussions early on? That's a great question. So understanding they're busy and giving them, hey. This is only gonna be a ten minute time period. I just want you to come talk about all the great work that you're doing. That's how I would frame it to our delivery folks. And people don't typically ask them about the work that they're doing. Right? And what I found is that, folks were very willing to spend ten minutes and, talk about the things that they were proud of, the ways that they've fixed, you know, issues, made things better, and then the teams that they were working with. That's something that really, you know, spoke to them and was something they wanted to do. So we weren't asking them to do anything at that point. We didn't need them to give us their weekend. It's really important to to build relationships with folks and show them that you care about the work that they're doing before you need them for something. So start small with those ten minute meetings and invite them to talk through, you know, what what they're doing. Alright. So we're gonna move on to this last piece here, making the value tangible. This is the final thing that I want you guys to focus on in this time period. The reality is that when you are submitting an RFI, when you're going after a partner and you have an opportunity you want them to add you to or when when you're submitting a proposal, you're doing the same thing. You're selling your company as the best option for the job at hand. Before you can do this, though, to them, you have to first sell it to yourself. So if you can't articulate and your team can't articulate why you are the best option for the job at hand before you start writing or before you start talking to somebody, then no one else is going to see it either. And this seems like common sense, but you would be amazed at how many companies skip the solution part, right, where they create a solution. They they are able to articulate how they're gonna solve the problem that the customer has. They can't even identify what the problem is. So before you ever submit any proposal or talk to anybody, your litmus test is to ask yourself and your team, okay, what is the problem that they have and articulate to me how we're going to solve it. If nobody can do that, then you're not gonna write a winning proposal. You might get lucky and win, but it's not one that, you're gonna win intentionally. So that is the exercise that has to happen. This is how you solution. This is this is how you create proposals that are not just generic. Right? And they're really gonna talk to the customer. The biggest thing to realize here is that your past performance and capabilities are not tangible value. That's not the same thing as a solution. Your past performance and capabilities help you find the possibilities where tangible value is the strongest, and that's great. So this is they help you find the opportunities where you're gonna be able to have tangible value, but they are not the tangible value itself. You can't just say, hey. We're an eight a company, and we've done this work before. That's not gonna cut it this day and age. I worked for large companies, had smaller companies coming to me, and the ones that led with that, there's so many of them. But the ones that actually took time to look at the opportunity and articulate why they were the best fit were were the ones that really got through to us. So the way to do this is first identifying the problem. So what problem will this solve or our will our, role in their procurement or giving us, you know, this contract? What what will we solve? How does your value solve it? Right? What you bring to the table. Is it that you can find the best, epidemiologist because you have a team of 25 of them already and you're tapped into the local university? And let me show you these are where all of their folks came from, and these are the great this is the great work that they've done and blah blah blah. Like, these are our retention rates. That could be one. You know, small business, that could be one avenue. Or is it we implemented these technology systems and we reduced downtime by x percent and save them x amount of money, you can't articulate that without the data that we did in step one. And you won't find opportunities to where this is applicable, where you have a great story to tell without identifying the right opportunities that align with that data. By doing the first two steps, you're setting yourself up for being able to answer these questions well because you have past performance and capabilities that align with this and expertise. So, again, identify the problem. What problem will you be solving? How are we going to solve the problem? Why is that the right choice? So that's your feature. Problem solution feature. Why why do they want you to solve their problem this way? What's what's the benefit of that? And the benefit is how will their lives improve? So problem, solution, feature, benefit. These are the four things that you want to be able to articulate, about an opportunity before you start writing, before you, talk to a single person or write a capability statement or an RFI. This is a litmus test. So when you bring your teams on, one, you are giving them access to your data and your past performance and capabilities. Two, when they bring an opportunity to the table, ask them to show you where it falls into, that chart where it has crossover between either a customer capabilities or partner, two out of the three, and then ask them to help articulate, these four pieces right here. And if you can answer all of those steps with an opportunity, you are in the right spot. Right? This is an opportunity where you have a chance of winning, and then you can validate this with the customer. Before anyone else can see it, though, so before any of your writers can write to it, before you can sell it to another person, you have to be able to see it and you have to make this tangible for your team to be able to see. So it's not enough for one person to be able to articulate it. You have to make it so that everybody who's writing a proposal or who's, you know, selling the value to a particular partner or customer, they also are able to articulate this. And so the first step is getting it on paper and then communicating that to your team and making sure everybody understands it. And, again, this only happens when you have the data to pick the right opportunities. Right? Two out of the three. And once you do that, you are then able to so, like, let's say, for example, you know, we found an opportunity here within this sweet spot, where it's existing capabilities and similar customers. Now you're gonna be able to pull from your data and look at, like, where have we done this? How do we make things better? What benefits did we bring? What resources did it give us? How do we prove all of the above? Right? Or if it's something with an existing partner and a similar customer, why are we trusted? Who are we trusted by? How do we earn that trust? How does that benefit everybody? How do we prove all of the above? And here with existing partners and capabilities, where have we done this? Who are we trusted by? How do we earn that trust? How does that benefit everybody, and how do we prove it? These are the questions that your you as a team need to be able to answer, and they're gonna guide how you present yourself to that customer or to that partner. Again, the right data plus the right opportunity equals the right solution, and that is how you went well. And that is everything I had for you guys today. Doesn't look like we have any other questions, but I just wanna thank you again for your time. Again, if you want to see GovDash and how we build, this approach into everything we do, it is genuine genuinely built into everything we do. So we have a past performance inventory. That's your first step, and it feeds and informs every other part of the process. Let us know. Reach out. But, also, if you're struggling during this time, if you got general questions about how, to pivot, I'm an open book. I love proposals, and GovCon, and I miss, you know, being in the trenches. So send me a message on LinkedIn, and I'm happy to just, you know, give you some advice. We all gotta stick together during this time. So thank you, everybody. I appreciate it.