Name: Building your Govcon Market Intelligence Toolkit
Uploaded: 2025-09-17T16:18:02.310Z
Duration: 58 min 24 s
Description: Building your Govcon Market Intelligence Toolkit

Transcript for "Building your Govcon Market Intelligence Toolkit": Alright, guys. It's the top of the hour. We're gonna get started here. Thank you so much again for everyone taking the time out of the busy quarter four to joining, join us today. My name is Britney Winkler, and I have Brian Lindholm with here, with me today. So, yeah, Britney Winkler. I am the go to market manager of enablement and programs at GovDash. And, you know, I'm the one behind a lot of the industry reports that you see, the newsletter that we have that comes out the top of every month, and, yeah, just doing a lot of different webinars and having a lot of fun with it. Really excited today that I have Brian Lindholm, from FedSavvy Strategies, joining me here today. And we're just gonna, you know, talk all things market intel, how to build your GovCon toolkit, and everything that surrounds that, so spending trends, competitor performance, agency priorities. But I did wanna give Brian now a few minutes to introduce himself, that savvy strategies, and just, you know, a little bit more of what we're gonna cover today. Thank you, Brittany. I'm looking forward to this conversation with you. Yeah. I'm Brian Lindholm. I'm the managing principal, founder, etcetera, for Dead Savvy Strategies for this business about thirteen years ago on sort of a a quest to make competitive intelligence better. So we're recovering corporate competitive intelligence guy. I wanted to have more room to experiment to really work on having a lot of room for creativity, develop our own platform, our own techniques. That's what, I've been doing for the last thirteen years of doing that. I've been involved in a lot of large bids, $100,000,000, $500, billion dollar bids as the, competitive intelligence resource for companies. But really, that's what we're all about. We do nothing but market intelligence, competitive intelligence. So the long term forecasting and planning to do more tactical work, which is always a lot of fun. So I'm really excited to be chatting. I think, embracing our collective inner nerds here as, Brittany and I will will will nerd out. But I saw it a few times and get on my my glasses with a little tape in the middle just to all get into care with that. But very much excited to share some ideas with all of you and and hear your questions too. So, make sure this is useful for you because I think you're not here for for, you know, good looks or not. You're here to hear what Britney and I can offer to you to help with, knowledge. Yeah. Thank you so much, Brian. Yeah. Just a huge reminder to everyone, you know, put your questions in the chat here. We want this to be a toolkit. Something that you can walk away with today to, you know, start building your own toolkit for GovDash market intelligence, not just, you know, hearing high level insights, but also walking away with the strategies to put that in play. So, you know, there's a lot we're gonna cover today. We're just gonna dive right in. First thing we would love to talk about with everyone here is the role of market intel in GovDash. So, you know, why data insights matter more than ever, how federal clients, competitors, and budgets can be understood through available data out there, and the cost of getting it wrong or ignoring it, fostering critical thinking, and answering questions vital to the business. So let's get started, Brian. Okay. Yeah. I I think, you know, I'll just I guess maybe add a a bit of a thought here in terms of the why it's important. I think to say we live in interesting times would be a gross understatement. This year has been incredibly disruptive, and I'm sure many companies in terms of their work in the wonderful federal contract market were spending over half a trillion dollars of contracts every year. And who's spending what agencies that have been, you know, had significant cuts. In some cases, they've had have had plus ups. Disruption on the customer side. So there's a lot of moving pieces. I I think if you were to just rewind the clock one year ago, I think you could see the stark reality of how different now is versus a one year ago. It's been I've been doing this work for twenty five years, and I think I cannot think of a situation where we have that kind of radical shift in a lot of things. So the intel piece, I think, in many cases, is actually quite important to help make sense out of all this, to help capture bid proposal teams. And frankly, the p and l, leadership of companies make better decisions. That's always been my mantra is I'm here to help foster critical thinking and making decisions. So that's what this is all about, is to have your toolkit to allow you to do your job whether you're in a CI role, if you're in a b b role, it doesn't matter. These toolkits are gonna be, I think, very important for you to help make sense out of this. Because if you don't have a sense about where you're navigating towards, you're gonna be just floundering around and you're gonna fail. And they just it's an incredibly different environment we live in. So if you don't adapt to it, you're gonna get crushed. So just is that is that start to be simple? I mean, seeing companies who've who've lost half their value and less than a year. That's that's incredible to see that. Not because they did anything wrong. It just was then the market changed. So, I think that helped us get a little bit more to understand and appreciate the world market intelligence and how it's gonna foster good business decisions. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I think that's exactly right. And when we're talking about, you know, change that's unexpected or, you know, we don't even realize it's happening yet, the first thing I think of is Doge canceling, you know, hundreds of thousands of contracts earlier this year. That was a shift. You know? Some people could have forecasted. Other ones, you know, just had no idea what was happening and how to navigate and pivot when that was happening to them. So I think, yeah, definitely just being aware of, you know, not only what your company is doing and the services and the agency you're going after, but also looking at policy and just the news in general. It's just, such valuable intel, you know, to kind of forecast what is gonna be happening with, you know, your business and the services you provide. So I think that's, you know, all very valuable stuff here. And, you know, I I really wanna get into just what building the toolkit looks like, what are the data sources that go in there, you know, what you're using different sources for, where you're getting this intel from, how to organize and analyze the data, and really transforming that data into actionable insights. So, you know, when we were talking previously, Brian brought up a really great point, and it was start with the questions you need to answer first, research, and then the output comes second. So I would love for you to kinda dive more into what exactly you meant by that and what everyone, you know, here can learn from that as well. Yeah. I know. It's it's a it's a very important thing. I'm I'm glad you brought that up because I get questions about, hey. What what databases do you use? Like, stop right there. That's not the first question you ask. Something that I know I learned over time, and this is a big transformation in terms of how I look at these type of problems, is really to embrace it's actually you can borrow some techniques on the intelligence community. In fact, I really this is something that's very powerful for me, people I would work with, who I would learn these things from. And one of the fundamental concepts that you were getting at it for the I wanted to to support it with the whole group here is the fundamentals of the intelligence process. What does that mean? There are really four functions, not steps, functions. There's a very big distinction of this. Mhmm. If you think about a model, right, what are the questions I'm trying to resolve? You go through a collection function. I need to then collect intelligence to help answer those questions. As I get that data that comes in, then I'm gonna do analysis on what I have found so far, and you will find that the last function is production of actually putting something out the door that can be used. But it is this iterative process. I would tell you I've been doing this a long time. I like to believe I'm reasonably knowledgeable about things. Whenever I do these type of I go this process, I will find something as a surprise. Like, I did not expect to see that. That was a new piece of information that in some ways changes my model of how I'm looking at the problem. And it may be for the best. It could be, well, gosh. I really missed that one. I need to make a lot of adjustments here. But it is that iterative approach and mindset that it's not linear. We're not baking a cake. This is an error process that you go through in the functions. To embrace that concept and to make sure that you're comfortable with, you're gonna be wrong. Sometimes you may be really wrong about what you think was what to expect. Well, you have to start somewhere. And that iterative process of think about model, collect, analysis, production. Those four functions, they build on each other, and it's a very important concept to understand. Once you get there, you're already halfway to success, truthfully. That's when the the toolkit becomes important. That's when you can have some go to resources that reliably are useful for the type of questions you typically are trying to find answers to. So if nothing else remember, nothing else I say here or to share with you, that intelligence process, I would tell you, I've used this for many years. It has served me extremely well to make sure I'm critical, which is why my firm gets hired by people because we're really good at critical thinking and being open and creative about it. So I'll I'll get up that soapbox here for now, but we may come back to it at some point here. Yeah. Yeah. For sure. And I I I almost think, you know, if when you're researching, if your questions aren't changing based on what you're finding out, I think you're, you know, kind of going down the wrong route. I think you should always be open minded with the questions you have and also ready to pivot, you know, and change your ideas when you're finding out something super interesting. I mean, earlier when we were just speaking more to this event, we found you know, Brian told me that, Alabama was, you know, I think the second largest spending for DOD. Is that correct? Huntsville. Huntsville. Yeah. Huntsville, Alabama is. Mhmm. Yeah. And that's something, you know, I didn't know right now on the top of my head. So just thinking about that, I already have so many ideas, you know, of research I can do with that, and, you know, what I can put into that. So that that's really, really cool. You know, I wanted to talk a little bit about actual, federal data sources. So, you know, I know there's tons out there. There's hundreds of free resources out there that provide federal data that's public to everyone. But not everyone out there knows exactly, you know, what those resources are or, you know, how to use them. They can all be used for, you know, very similar things, but also very different things. So I would love, you know, Brian, your take on that. What are some of the tools that you use that you have in your toolkit right now when you're writing, you know, articles and research for FedSavvy? Yeah. That's a lot, actually. We we really embrace open source intelligence. It's kind of our our our way we operate. We actually don't subscribe to any databases at all. It's all open source. Doesn't mean that subscription databases aren't a valid resource. I don't want to to to say that. That's not necessarily accurate. It's just a choice. So there's a lot of philosophy behind that choice that that with a whole different discussion. But, fundamentally, there's a lot of free resources you can use. I wanna focus on the trade craft versus the getting worked up over the sources. I mean, something like USA spending, I think, is a great it's a it's a go to resource for just spending data. I sam.gov via the legacy FPDS, I'll keep it nice here. I'm not saying anything else, but it's a it's a resource you can use. I personally think UBS spending is better because I think the user interface is simpler. You can pull large datasets very quickly. It's just a much cleaner experience. Also, if you ever wanna get into the programming round, the API to interact with it is a lot better and a lot better documented. If you wanna get really nerdy and start pulling data directly that way, that's the way to go. You know, every agency, they get their own forecast. I take those with a grain of salt. Those agency forecast, all the say out loud, are trash. They're not current. They're not up to date. They're misleading. Some agencies like DHS actually do a great job with that. Yeah. I got they their website, I think, is the best out there. Hands down. I don't normally say good things about DHS procurement, but but that is a resource that I have to give them tons of credit for putting that out there if you have some transparency. LinkedIn LinkedIn is a weapon. If you're not leveraging LinkedIn for not just, like, people that the people have, but what they talk about, so many leads. I spend probably too much time in LinkedIn, but it is a weapon, that if you're not utilizing it, you are negligent. And there's a whole other techniques around that job posting to talk about what what companies are hiring, and something that no. Industry trade news is always good to have a couple in your lineup you go to to get leads. One thing that I see when we talked about that, event tomorrow, both well, both you and I will be presenting at different times for me is, looking at protests and protest decisions. That's a a treasure trove of nuanced data about how agencies operate, how they evaluate, and how competitors of yours actually operate. And something that I think a lot of people don't leverage very effectively, but, oh, man, there are some beautiful, beautiful things in there. If you're not utilizing it, you are negligent. Those are some of my go to resources. There's other ones that I I go to that use, but those are ones that are, I think, reliable. They are accessible. Now I think what I just talked about will cost you a dollar of subscription. Again, not the subscription databases are bad. I don't wanna say that that's not accurate. But if you wanna then focus on the trade craft and use that intelligence process to make use out of these collection resources, these resources will answer many of the questions you have as you do business development and capture. So those I I mean, anyone that you go to, Britney, that that you like, that you're a big fan of? I'm curious. So learn from you too. Yeah. I mean, I use, you know, as much as I can. I try to diversify, you know, what I'm going to. You know, I'm excited to hear more about the protests and how you use that info to kind of guide your research. I mean, I think that's super interesting. I think, you know, not enough people in GovCon use protests, for the intel and value it really has behind it when you're doing that and looking at it as closely as you are. But, you know, just on the top of my head, I love USA spending. I love I'm a huge fan of dashboards. I I love building things on Tableau. So anything that has a dashboard that's super easy to use, oh my god. Sign me up. So, you know, I love that you can really filter down to find anything you really want. Any question, USA probably has an answer for it. But also forecast, you know, I, I'm a huge fan of the forecast. I love just kind of looking at what's up and coming. You know, I agree, Brian. A lot of it is kind of just take it with a grain of salt. Not every opportunity in that forecast is, you know, going to happen set in stone, but it gives you a really great idea of, you know, where an edge agency is heading with their thought process of the services that they need for that year. But, again, you know, just nothing set in stone, and there's so many other resources out there to to help you, you know, figure out what you're looking for. But, yeah, to your point about paying for services, you know, I myself don't pay for any service. I I love using the raw public data, because, you know, I I know that when I'm searching for stuff, it's gonna be unbiased, and it's gonna be very, you know, just clear data points that can help me answer my own questions. But, you know, yeah, I'm not a huge fan of paying for services like that. Yeah. And then LinkedIn as well. LinkedIn is is huge resource. You can find out, you know, where people are getting hired, what, you know, job what companies are winning awards, just people in the know. There's amazing influencers out there like Brian, yourself that are, you know, creating great articles for free that everyone in GovCon should be taking advantage of and learning from people that have been in the field for, you know, twenty plus years. So I I love reading all that as well. Great. But one thing I almost forgot though is IT dashboard. IT dashboard is something that people often don't use, which is a shame. Just wanted to learn about IT investments and the direction they're taking. Man, there's some great I I I I hate how much that website changes constantly in terms of how they lay it out. It's so annoying that they keep changing. Just just stick with it. But it is a treasure trove in terms of data, in terms of IT investments, what the tech stack might look like, who's who in the zoo, where it is in its stage of maturity. If I'm working on IT related, then I'm gonna be looking that as a resource. So to to see that, to not be utilized is a real shame. Yeah. Yeah. And I I just totally forgot about this one, but, you know, top of my head, favorite ones that I've been using recently this year are the GSA GWAC sales dashboard. It is so intuitive. I love it. It's so accurate. You know, I've done the data to really make sure that these numbers are accurate, but just intel on that's two, aligned to a stars three, really key, GWACs, and it gives you, you know, a 100% of the data, updated every minute. So that's another great resource. But, you know, again, if there's, you know, something we didn't mention today, but, you know, you wanna find out more info on a specific vehicle, a company, or anything, there's resources out there. All you have to do is really just research and look for those resources. So Right. We've mentioned so many here today. I think that's an amazing start. So, yeah, after, you know, building your toolkit, once you find these data sources, you're figuring out your questions. How do we actually go from, you know, doing the research to actually applying this market and tell Brian? You know, there has to be an end game to this. You know, you can't just spend years of doing research, although that's, you know, what I love to do. But, you know, ultimately, what does the outcome look like, and how are you turning this intel into what can be a competitive advantage? Yeah. I I think this this goes back to that intelligence process I talked about. There's a linkage here to to address to your question. That that process is is ongoing and it it never stops. You're never undone. It's no. It's it's always ongoing in interest. And the reason I tie those things together because in order to make this useful, to apply it, I'm always collecting. And that's something I learned the hard way in my business where we go through these kind of like, okay. Start project, collect like a madman, make sense out of it, bovonic. But I realized I was like, I wasn't gaining a lot. I wasn't leveraging constant ongoing learning because the ongoing learning part helps you pick up on subtle changes, which gets to your your question though, is to understand something. I may want to look at if I was a business of mine I'm interested in, and there are many I'm interested in, where we'll look at what's the trend with their job postings. What can I see with their on contract growth? Are they getting geared up for a big competition going forward by doing some subtle key hires that may not be where the obligatory retired general admiral, SES, etcetera, someone a little bit not quite as a little profile. Those markers, it's like, I'm gonna borrow the Wayne Gretzky quote. Don't look for where the puck is now. Look for the puck's going. That tells me where the puck is going. I think that's an important thing that makes you be understand. It looks for where the puck is going. So I'll look at, can I see a trend in their job postings? Has there been a technical discipline they've been really pushing for? Is there a geography where those postings have been? Let's say, it's a sudden surge of things in Chantilly, Virginia. Well, it's in Chantilly, NRL. That's not accidental. You're not going to Chantilly for the scenery. K? Chantilly is perfectly nice. I'm not knocking Chantilly, Virginia. But you're not there because it's a it's a gigantic, frightening metropolis. There's a there's a reason for it. So we gotta think about what might be the reason. And as you do this ongoing collection and you're beginning to make sense that as you go to keep an I'll call we actually have an analyst notebook of things we observe about a business. It helps you pick up on that, which I think then helps them to see where they're going. That can be applied in both a very tactical setting on a specific bid or if I'm looking as a competitor. Now flip side, if I look at an agency or two or three that I'm interested, that's my core part of my business. Mhmm. Is there a trend I can see in like, you you you touched on the protest speed earlier on. If I see a series of, let's say, protest decisions, I might pick up on a trend in the evaluation practices of an agency. Now, obviously, it's gonna vary from from competition to competition. That's true. So our selection boards are not static. There's not some sort of single group of people that that's their entire job. That's another job that's assigned, which I know a lot of these guys go, oh, god. I gotta do this again, sit in a proposal tank, read proposals for three months. Not the right idea of a good time, but it is what it is. But there's always trends with how an agency operates, the values they have, the mission they have, all these things factor into their decision making trends. It's not absolute. It's not like a like a lot of free Newtonian laws or anything. It's it it it's gonna add and flow. But if I'm collecting information, let's say, using protests, decisions around the agency, or perhaps my own DeepRigs, by the way, which is another charge of the struggle data people often squander. Either they don't ask for them or they don't use them systematically. That can help you understand that, hey. This agency is becoming more price sensitive. Or, you know what, there's something I've observed in their evaluation practices changing their outcome. Why would I not wanna get ahead of that? That's really, to be quite blunt, foolish. If you have the opportunity, then you should be utilizing that. I think that's these are things that we should be thinking about. It's just one of many things. We could talk to her for hours about how to apply it. But those are things very real outcomes, very tangible outcomes that can help shape how you do pricing, could shape what things you go after. And that's I mean, I I could go on and on here, but that those are some things I think that we have to think about. But the end game is, does this am I engaging in practices that affect what I did on, how my solution, and even, frankly, who I compete with or team with? These are things I'm thinking through as I'm collecting intelligence, making sense out of it. Remember, is is it a roof? I'm a sound like a broken record here right now, but that's an important thing to make sure we don't lose sight of that help me make changes as I go through as opposed to what unfortunately happens, lots of little silos where people aren't talking. They're not looking big picture. They're not even trying to because they're they're they're too busy, you know, chasing a contract. They go from contract, but they're not linking thinking big picture. They're not using intelligence or the company itself does not invest in that. So we actually foster that resource. I I built a competitive intelligence function from nothing As a corporate guy, I basically, I dreamed it up because I thought we were doing things in a very silly manner. I, you know, got into an argument with my boss, said, alright. Fix it. Alright. I will. And then try to build that so it became a resource. Yeah. Which was not an easy journey. Very character building. Put it that way. But it's that that investment though of time and effort and people to make it worthwhile, which I think brings it all the way back home to how do we apply this Right? Looking at these subtle changes, we can't expect some sort of monumental change. If something monumentally happens, guess what? That's been building for years, most likely. Mhmm. So you could have picked up on it. You would have been paying attention. So just just some things to consider. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I I I'm really agree with all of that. I mean, I think there's way to, you know, not only doing your research, but I think, you know, having a game plan for how you're gonna turn that into actionable insights for you to have strategies and a game plan for, you know especially right now, you know, there's the last few weeks of quarter four. If you weren't already doing, you know, the hard work months ago, you know, you might not be in the best shape right now. But, you know, you can always turn that around and start, you know, next year, getting stronger just, you know, by taking a little bit of these key market intel tools, to help, you know, you get there. But I think yeah. I mean, there's just so much that goes into this. All of this is just very important. But, you know, I just would love to hear more from you, Brian, just about, you know, the mistakes and pitfalls that you've seen. I know a little, later on in the talk, we're gonna be talking about, you know, real world examples of how, you know, key players in this industry of GovCon have used market intel to be extremely successful, but also really great examples of mistakes and pitfalls. So just, you know, starting that conversation off, let's hit on, you know, a few key mistakes, that you've seen, you know, being in this industry for, you know, such a long time, just seeing so much, change, you know, especially with key players, not always, you know, meeting the standard or hitting the mark or, you know, getting where they need to be, but also, you know, smaller players coming in and changing the game. So, yeah, what are some mistakes that you've seen, you know, people, incumbents, that are used to winning kind of doing here with the collection of data, forecasting, using market intel? Yeah. There it was a oh, boy. There are a lot of mistakes they have. I know. I know. I've made I've made them all too. I told my my own employees, like, listen. There's no mistake you're gonna make. I have not made 10,000 times over. Yeah. You gotta learn from it, though. I think the first mistake just it seems like it might be a motto thing, master the obvious, but it's still a mistake I see a lot of people make is that they jump into the research task, the collection phase, without establishing what they're trying to really look for. If they feel like they're getting something done, It's about as productive as running on a treadmill. You're you're maybe getting some exercise, but you're going nowhere. You're just basically in your place in one spot. Always pause. What are the fundamental questions I'm trying to resolve? When we do our own intelligence work, before we do anything, we establish a model. That's the first step we do that help make sure that we are using the right sources, that we're gonna be operating with some sense about what we're expecting to see, what we're expecting to learn as opposed to just the, I'm gonna start googling things for half an hour and somehow magic will happen. I'll chat GPT something and then I'm all done. Another part that I get that often happens in our competitive intel world is rument, rumor based intelligence. And we were all guilty of this, myself included. Let's be honest about it. Let's all have the confession here. We're all using rumor. I heard a guy it's like the Ferris Bueller's day off scene where, you know, Ferris Bueller's I heard Ferris is sick from so and so and so and so and so and so. Like, what's the basis of that? I think those can be great starting sources, but they have to be verified. Otherwise, I can't take them seriously. It might be a good lead to pursue. That maybe it's something that's more heard that's interesting. Great. Good for you. But if I can't verify that or validate the source that that's actually and corroborate it, I have a hard time taking it seriously. It's like, I can't put weight in this. Yeah. The same thing is, like like, templates. I've got a template. I'm pulling up my template. That's like the tail wagging the dog. Templates are wonderful guides to help get you to help focus your energy. But if you look at the template and go, well, it's not only addressing the question I'm trying to solve. Well, then your template's wrong and your template stinks and throw in the trash. You cannot let some sort of process dictate how you do things. You need to focus on getting questions answered. And if it means drawing up a new template or a new process, then do it. But no one's gonna care if you follow the process that your process stunk. These are all kind of, like, failures or just assuming that the the opportunity to be a copy paste job or the last opportunity to reconvene will be the the incumbents that show in, etcetera, etcetera. Wrong. When I came to this business twenty some years ago, incumbents were king. They were almost unbeatable unless they did something galactically stupid or the requirements changed. It was a renewed competition. Now it's not the case. Incumbency means two things, jack and squat. I've seen I've I've been a part of team. We took out incumbents, and we just fileted them. And we've been I've been a part of team where we had all the right things. CPARS were beautiful and then just so loose. If someone came up with their mousetrap. So incumbency means nothing anymore. It really is not that useful. Not to say it's I shouldn't say nothing. That's not that's a bit overdramatic. It's not as powerful a note that people think of this. Not even close. So and some examples of this segues into using effective intelligence, though. Mhmm. There's a couple of things that I think I've seen. I I love case studies and, like, that's where Prodesk can be very helpful as a case that we're thinking we can involve it directly. There was one really impressive takeaway that Lumentum did not that long ago against VSC corporation on NavSea on this PMS three two six contract with former hotel sales support. Brilliant takeaway job. But what the market intel piece was is Inventum understood how NAVSEA operates. And NAVSEA is what I will call frugal. It's the best way to describe NAVSEA and how they operate. But they capitalize on that by making some very subtle changes in the staffing model. Nothing radical, nothing crazy, but they found some ways to reduce labor costs overall without without creating risk. They can successfully demonstrate, I can cut some costs here. They only underbid them by, like, 4%, but they won't. Because they capitalize on the frugal nature. They ask the other customers who are more risk averse for switching, Might have said, yeah. 4% savings is not worth the risk. I'm not the juice is not worth the squeeze on this one. Now I'm gonna do it. But Nancy, no. 4%. Let's save you $20,000,000. I like that. I'm all set. So, and they they made the award and Anentum did a great job and they won. IBM had a competition years ago where the cheese was fundamentally moved and they completely missed it. Against Accenture for the CBP, the data service data center service contract, where CBP was making a radical change. Like, we're gonna be moving a lot of our stuff to a commercial cloud environment. We need to get out of the data center business. That was the that was the time. IBM, I I don't know what was going on with IBM's high, but they were just sort of placed like, none none none none none none none none none none none we're gonna keep doing what we're doing. Like, then they did the same thing they did before. Did you not understand? They're doing a radical shift, and you're ignoring that. Accenture did not miss that. They knew the radical shift was happening, and they they did accordingly. Reading the protest decision showing what IBM did on that and by the way, I'm not knocking these copies for the record. It's but they put on a public display. So, you know, you're gonna learn from this. But it was clear that they just ignored the requirements. Like, no. We're gonna keep we're gonna we're gonna copy paste what we did before. That'll be they'll be fine. Nope. You missed the mark of what CBC was looking for and Accenture took them out handily. And Accenture, I think their price was actually double. IBMs. They won because they paid attention. They saw where the puck was moving on the ice and they moved towards the puck where the IBM was still trying to figure out how to lace up on that one, which is too bad, but it is what it is. But these just means examples of where the subtleties of how needs he works or how the requirements have changed radically to adapt to it, adjust with. That's what the purpose of intelligence is to help people understand this part. So those are some examples I think are very pointed, but there's thousand examples just like that. Yeah. No. I definitely agree. These are two very great examples. I mean, I think yeah. The first one, with Seaport, you wrote an amazing article. It's on set savvy if anyone wants to check it out. But this, you know, it's super interesting. It just really tells, you know, doing the research on, you know, the agency, the changes that are going on with that. I mean, a contract that you win five or ten years ago is not gonna be the same, you know, when you're going up for recompete. You know, daily lives change, policy changes, agency missions changes. So just, you know, requirements certifications, just being on you know, meeting the standard, but also exceeding it. Just, you know, that was a really great kind of storytelling of how, you know, those two companies were just yeah. I mean, very similar with what they're producing and service wise, but just that difference, I think you said 4% was, like, $20,000,000. Yeah. And then, you know, that was ultimately what was, you know, leading to the decision making, for NAVSEA. So just, yeah, super interesting insights. I think yeah. I mean, market intel is not always top of mind for, you know, especially these huge players like IBM, Boeing, Accenture. But, you know, I think it's super important whenever you're looking at, you know, what's happening down the line with no matter what kind of contract, agency you're targeting, makes. It's all very relevant to kind of keep on the top of your mind there. Not very much so. It's, you can pick up on some subtleties that in the solution process, you can exploit in a good way. It will tune up your solution so you know how you're gonna match up against what that agency is actually they may say one thing or your capture team says, I think this is a kind of a tribal knowledge. I take tribal knowledge with a with a with a great install. Like, that's great. If I can't verify this and validate it, I'm having a hard time taking it seriously. If I can verify and validate it, I'm on board. Sign me up, man. But I'll use that type of data as not to challenge you. Like, listen. You say this is a commonly held belief. The data says otherwise that perhaps this is a tribal bit of knowledge that is out of date that we cannot validate. This may have been true ten years ago, but the world has changed. So let's make sure we use this as a way to keep ahead of it and adapt. Yes. Yes. Totally. And I think, you know, that reminds me of something that I always say, I think, in every talk or event I give about data is, you know, everything is changing every single day, but data doesn't change. You know, you can look at past years. You can look at the past five to ten years of what has happened in an agency, in a company, in a certain service area. You can really use that to forecast, you know, what is gonna happen in the future, share the policy and, you know, certification requirements and just everything is going to change. But, you know, that's a really great starting point to kind of doing your due diligence to, you know, forecast the best way you can. A lot of, you know, what I'm hearing right now is companies saying, you know, it's quarter four. We don't know where we're gonna be October 1. But, you know, if you've been in the industry for a while, there is data to back that up if, you know, potentially where you're gonna be, not only your company, but the services, you know, you're providing to agencies, where those agencies are gonna be October 1. Budgets for 2026 already came out a few months ago. I mean, that is a huge tool itself just projecting, you know, kind of services and contracts that you're gonna be, you know, providing and getting on and vehicles have, you know, forecast and just so much data surrounding them as well. You know, you're on Oasis plus. I mean, you can do your due diligence to find out what is happening with that vehicle. Right. Agencies. I mean, there's just so much that goes into it that I think, you know, not enough people take advantage of to kind of projecting where they're gonna be, you know, October 1 of the new year. But what's your take on that, Brian? I mean, that's what I'm hearing a lot. We don't know where we're gonna be October 1. What do you think can kinda go in there to kind of help people forecast? Yeah. I I I think it's this usual dramatic dance that happened there. Here, it's the same old same old thing. I I do remember a time when we actually had budgets passed well in advance of the fiscal year starting. Of course, that was when I had no gray whatsoever. I had more hair on top of my head. It's been a long time since that's been in practice. So this is always this this sort of weird soap opera that happened every year, but every year it gets resolved in some way, shape, or form. I think we can read the political tea leaves that that presidential budget and and the what was at least notionally path has not all been all the way, through the full budget process will likely be the case. Right? That's that's you can see this is aligned with the agency, you know, the the administration's priorities and where their values are. Now the short version is defense, and DHS and to a lesser degree FAA, are gonna do pretty well. And then everywhere else, sorry, but you're in, not a great spot. It's called what it is. Right? I think we have to be honest about this. And there are some monumental programs that have happened like Golden Dome, then and then there's, like, the brand new air traffic control system, which is gonna be less opportunity for the but the things like Golden Dome and and other programs, the seven or so major priorities that are spelled out. If that's where I if I need to make a pivot with my business, then I need to make sure I'm looking at where I fit in those bigger programs. Because the reality is for the next three years, at least the next three years, is defense where in Homeland Security, where the money's gonna be. And that's very obvious. I I I take budgets with a grain of salt. Those are political documents, but I think the momentum is very clear and the shift there. So, that's, a high level I guess, some talk about what to expect. And then the tricky part is if you don't know those spaces, to get smart on them, to look at who they're awarding to, what they're awarding about. It's where a protest can come in handy or at least looking at they're like, you hit on OASIS. Like, I'd be wondering myself, if I'm, let's say, an OASIS holder, who actually buys on it? That's not everybody. Whether it's it's on paper, everyone can use it, but in practice, who actually uses it? That's something that I always think about is, that's great. In theory, well, I've got access to everything. Yeah. That's nice. It's not really, though. Meanwhile, on planet Earth, we need to go on national data. Like, the schedules are accessed by everyone. Yeah. But there are some agencies who favor them and there's some that just don't like them. And the money the thing I remind myself and the client, you follow the money, we'll find the truth, and the truth will set you free. Yes. And so if you follow that adage, you follow that, you will find the truth, and you will have a better chance to understand where the pucks are moving on the ice. So I I could go on only about that, but I think that gives you some sense about where things we expect are. Whole spending data, look at the budgets, see where they are. Keep in mind that budget numbers do not translate to contract reality. It's a lot of that budget is consumed internally. You will never see a dime, with a lot of you have to think about the nature of the budget. Is this something you translate to the context or not? That's a whole different discussion now. Yeah. No. I totally agree. When I'm looking at the numbers, I mean, you, congress puts out, you know, what agency what each agency is kind of allotted for that year. But, you know, even if it's a trillion dollar amount, you have to really look at, okay, what's actually being obligated for contracts this year for prime subcontracting. And if you look at that number, it's it's, you know, sometimes in the millions or billions compared to a trillion number. And that's ultimately, you know, what I care about when I'm doing the research, when I'm looking at, okay, what is, you know, HHS obligated to spend in contracts this year? And then, you know, looking at potentially who is that gonna go to. Not only who who it's gone to in the past, but, you know, with new businesses, there's JVs created every day. Small businesses are taking an uprise. So, I mean, it's it's all really interesting stuff. But yeah. Thank you so much for that, Brian. Yeah. Just really interesting stuff. And then, you know, I also put in the chat here, the example with, Antrim and the Seaport that we were just talking about, real world example Alright. The recompete, everything that went into that. I linked that report in there so you guys go read it yourself. I mean, it's very interesting data, to take a look at, and I think it's, you know, very relevant for everyone in the industry, no matter if you're in, you know, pursuing seaport or not. I think it's just very, very valuable takeaways here. And then, you know, the last thing that you know, just to kind of summarize everything that we've talked about. I know it's been so much, but just, you know, practical takeaways. If we you know, we're sitting down right now, to create a checklist, of, you know, market intel as it's full hits. What would the checkbooks, look like? You know, what would the process behind it look like? So just taking in, you know, from your extensive experience in this industry, Brian, you know, what does that look like? I I think a checklist is is not gonna be maybe what people think it looks like. I think the biggest part is to embrace the critical thinking involved with a with market intel with a true intelligence process. That's where you start. And then there's this subset of things you do underneath each of those functions to help you get there. So if you remember nothing else, I I cannot harp on that enough. It's the thinking process that you go through to help shape you. And and beyond and the the to get laid more on the weeds, though, is I would like to have, like, a go to series of resources where here's my my go to collection resources, but then understand what I should expect to find there. Because I don't wanna just do pray and spray or Google My Way to Happiness or chat GPC mode to happiness because then you're not really the master of your own destiny. You're letting whatever pops up in the, you know, the SEO or what ChatGPT is still having delusions about that day about to drive what you do. Right? And it gotta be and they're they're resource that are useful. I use them all the time myself, but I do so with a skeptical mind. I think from a collection perspective, I've got a go to list of if I want to know this, here's why I go. If I want to know this, here's why I go. Like like LinkedIn, there's a lot of answers you get on LinkedIn, by the way. There's a question LinkedIn will get you here, but you can learn the nuance about contracts, how they're staffed. People sometimes lose clips, think ships, and people like to talk. So I'm gonna leverage it, guys. That's just how it goes. But in these resources, here's what the resource is to get this answer, to help you get through it quicker without kind of fumbling around the dark. I think that's not a bad, like, a checklist to go through. So I'm a big fan of that, but remember, it's the process. But also, there's who my go to SMEs. Right? There may be SMEs in terms of your company. The I can go to Bob Smith or Jane Doe on whatever topic it is. Don't don't ignore them because they can be wonderfully useful. And I did propose a work order in my career. I was like my go to people in terms of the company I worked for to get answers on different topics. They helped me work through something that maybe I didn't fully understand. And those are great things to look at. So, you know, those are things I would I would just as a takeaway for all of you to consider, as your sort of checklist of sorts. But remember, critical thinking rules everything. If you can master that and being diligent and and and rigorous in how you approach problems, you're gonna solve half your problem by swinging that as opposed to what I'll call Google keyword monkeys who think that Google will tell them all they need to know or chat GPT. That doesn't do this thinking for you. There's still this big gray mass between your two ears you need to use. And if you can learn how to use that effectively, then tell you what, you'll do fine. Yeah. All great points, Ryan. I, you know, a 100% agree with that. You know, just really practical use. I have a tab, you know, in my Google Chrome here that has, you know, hundreds of tools that I use. And, you know, it looks different every day by, you know, what I'm looking at if I'm doing, you know, a competitive analysis for a specific company, if I'm, you know, looking at capture or BD. I mean, it looks different every day, right, for whatever questions you have. But I think, you know, a great takeaway is just being ready to pivot, and change, you know, when things unexpected happen. Yeah. Remember, I think the the to your point, is something I remember right in my mind. My team on Semper Gumby, always flexible. Yes. Great points. Alright. Let's go into some questions. I know we had a few in here. Let me get to them. Thinking what was Lou here had yes. They wanna know, Brian, do you have any opinions on whether paid subscriptions are required to make LinkedIn useful? I think you can get by without ASAP pushing. Mhmm. I I think there is some usefulness though because there's some things in this this coming from a true old fart who used LinkedIn actually when it came out. And LinkedIn has changed quite a lot since its origin back in the day when it was first launched. You can get by with getting some basic information. You might find yourself limited though in terms of what you can see and how often you can see records. You'll get kind of actually, people that work with me will make it, like, okay. The LinkedIn's gonna give you a time out. You're using it too much, and they'll time you out. I myself have a a basic subscription with LinkedIn. In fact, I'm an old fart and they grandbother me in forever, for for some things. But I find that to be useful to not be metered, but also to access. There's some link there's some other higher end ones, like sales navigator, which can provide a lot of good visibility to people part and then also engage them if you want to. It's not just I wouldn't look at it as just a sales tool. If you really find it useful, maybe give it a try. If you don't like it, then just ditch it, and see it'll give you a bit more, I think, visibility and access to people. So on the human intelligence part of it, at least the the data part of the human intelligence, not the human intelligence. We go to a trade show, meetings, etcetera, and talk to people and learn from them directly. But in terms of gathering information about what they say, what they do, and then seeing more about them, it could be useful. Could you get by without it? I think so. I think it's a matter of your budget and how often you find yourself using it. I think give it a try for a month or two if you go, this is really helpful. I love it. This is stinky. Ditch it and just kill it. But it it depends on on what you're actually doing though with it. So, it again, unfortunately, I give you a bit of a lawyer like answer where it depends. But, unfortunately, it does depend. I'm not an attorney though just to be clear though. Yeah. No. I totally agree. I myself, I have premium. I mean, I I don't haven't always had it, but I find that, you know, when I do have it, I'm able to get more out of that platform, especially if you're an avid user. If you're scrolling on there like it's Facebook every day, I mean, you know, why not pay, you know, the extra subscription to get more out of the platform, not only for networking, but also just, you know, being in the know. I mean, it's it's a very great resource. And, yeah, if you don't wanna pay, it's still very great from what you get out of it, just being free. Yeah. So let's go into the next question. That was really great. What is an example of an ignored resource for intel that has hidden gems? Oh, boy. I I I'm gonna sound like a broken record here, but I can't decide to snuff protest decisions and debriefs. In part because let's be honest about it. Reading these things is like is like watching paint dry. It's it's often incredibly dry and incredibly boring and very tedious to get through. I think I had to get a little bit of muscle mass in terms of when I would go through large scale reading a protest decision to make sense out of them. A just b would be painful. I wanna put an ice pick on my eye to stop reading the damn thing, but they're useful. But it's not something people use very often because it can be daunting or intimidating with all the legal mumbo jumbo in there. And it's a matter of, I think, getting a technique of how to read through them efficiently. Now I've read through God that some of these darn things, so I can I can blow through them in very short order and make sense out of what I see? But it's something that isn't often paid attention to because people will get used to, like, the the database subscriptions. They'll download your suspending data very commonly. They'll peruse and back up because it's it's I think the the information there is more discreet and more maybe carefully called out or a little easier to process and digest, whereas you really have to read through something like a protest decision or your own debrief with a more a degree of patience to read, do, and find the answers. There's a lot of just chaff and junk in there. Like, I can care less about this case law. I'm not an attorney. I don't give a damn about this. Then we get to the good stuff. And then to find ones that are actually useful, you might find some protest that comes up or decision comes up and you go, this this teaches to be nothing. This is more legal mumbo jumbo I don't really care about. I wanna look at competition. That's what I wanna figure out is competition. So it's something that I don't see a lot of people. They go, I read the protest. Did you really read it though? Or did you just kinda go blah blah blah blah? It's like my dog. I talked to my dog and they do something. They have to walk a walk a walk a. They're like, they heard they heard treat, they heard car, and then the rest of the filter out. The same thing with these things. There's a lot you have to filter out to get the good stuff. So it can be tedious and boring, but it yeah. She can be. You'll get information about competition and your customers. You will not find somewhere else. I guarantee you, you will not find it somewhere else unless you're conducting a very industrial espionage or you're inside that customer in the source selection room. So to squander it, I think, is foolish, but that's just my own opinion. Yeah. Yeah. That's great. My my dogs behind me just heard treat and car, and I think they they're a lot of you're just universal terms all dogs know, but that's funny. Be right. Alright. Last question here, then I wanna save a few minutes just to kind of, you know, plug in a few more things. But, you know, Brian, what is a fatal flaw? I know we talked about flaws and mistakes, but, you know, if you can think of just one thing that you've seen regularly, you know, during your experience in GovDash, What is a fatal flaw that you've seen in intel analysis, that you've noticed? Oh, boy. I I'm I'm I'm this is a boy. It's a bit of a big one here. So I a fatal flaw and there's a specific term for this that just escapes me right now is this is bias towards interpreting what you want to say. That's a a big problem. You see and I I I'll give you an example that kinda ties to this where a group of arguably very smart people will do what our dog just did. They're like, blah blah blah, something something I wanna hear, and they ignore the rest. And that that anchoring into what you want the world to look like, I come in and call this the island of wishful thinking, where you look at a competitor, for example, you look at an opportunity, you only see what fits your narrative. I see this firsthand. Constant has to be, like, I gotta be I gotta be the jerk in the room now. I gotta say it. I hate being that guy, but I gotta be that guy. Fine. I remember one with the with the incumbent on the Department of State contract, and we went through two days of black hat stuff. I mean, we were going in the lead of five competitors. Two of them, in the end, like, used to they've got a real chance. They really got a shot. And then everyone agreed to that as they went as we did the debrief, though. It's like this weird Stockholm syndrome was happening in the room. It was just bizarre where then there's a lot of what I'll call the yeah buts. Yeah, but this, yeah, but there's a I could see them unraveling what we did for two days. Like, are you they just wanted to hear that they were the most awesome one in town because they were getting stress fractures from Penn Hill in the back. Oh, we're awesome. We're awesome. We can't be beat. We're special little snowflake. No. You're not. You're totally debatable. We by our own analysis, we found those three competitors out of those five are legitimate threats. They have the goods to beat you. Let's not get them disrespect. Let's treat them with respect and compete with them in mind that this is what they can do, when, how we make adjustments. That fail fall happens so often. This is where you see company lose even though they had every right to win. They find a way to talk themselves into a loss because of ego, because of preconceived notions of whatever it is. They get anchored in what they want what was it and anchored in past data and they forget to pay attention to what they just did and to take it seriously. That sounds maybe like a master guide this thing, but I think anyone in this webinar right now has probably experienced that firsthand where, yeah, we all lost our mind. We just completely disregarded clear evidence that we were in trouble, and then we lost, which is a real shame. But it happens so routinely. You might have to deal with situations that are uncomfortable, that aren't giving you the answer you wanna hear. But sometimes, that answer, you don't wanna hear what you need to hear to make an informed decision. So I'll I'll leave that alone, but that's sort of the the guy I end up being often is, k. You think this is the case, but the evidence says that this conclusion you had upfront is actually wrong. Now let's make sure we take this in stride, we accept it's gonna be tough, and and proceed. But proceed with eyes wide open as opposed to shutting our eyes and just going, no, no, no, no, no, no. We don't wanna hear it. It doesn't fit our narrative. No. No. No. No. It's it gets really silly. Yeah. All great points. Problem. Yeah. Alright. We got a few minutes left. I just wanted to, you know, thank Brian again for joining, you know, me and GovDash on this talk. It was such great insights. This event was recorded so you can watch it, you know, at a later date. Everyone that signed up to attend is gonna be getting this in their email later on today. But I also quickly wanted to kinda plug in tomorrow. Me and Brian are gonna be doing separate talks, but it's at the APMP Mission twenty twenty five adapt event. And, you know, Brian is gonna be going over a lot of market intel protest insights, how to use that to your advantage. And now I'm gonna be talking about, business and development capture and strategy. So, you know, if you wanna hear more of us, talk a little bit more, you know, you can join us at AT and T tomorrow. But anything else you wanna leave the audience with here today, Brian, before we sign off? No. I I appreciate, the time to talk with you, Britney. It's been a lot of fun to, I guess, geek out. So, I guess I I forgot my pocket protector. I should've wear that next time. We do we'll talk this again. But, no, I I hopefully, this was educational for all of you, and I think if something else, I hope it challenged what you believe and what you may understand to be the case. It's always it's we always need to be learning. And that sounds very cliche, but I think it is true. And I I appreciate the opportunity to work to talk with you, Britney, about this to help foster, I think, some learning out there to learn from what's worked and what's not worked. So I'm very thankful for the opportunity and, look forward to doing this again sometime.