This is the second in a series of articles on how tech startups can pursue and win Federal business opportunities.
The Magic Formula to Get Noticed and Generate Federal Business Opportunities
Congratulations! You’re a technology startup. It’s an exciting place to be. You’ve got seed funding and maybe a couple of rounds of venture capital, and you have paying commercial customers using your technology. Then at the latest strategic planning meeting or sales stand-up, somebody on the management team says, “Hey, I bet the Federal Government can use this cool technology. They’re a mess!” (or words to that effect)
So how do you get noticed and learn about and capitalize on Federal business opportunities?
It starts with determining your Federal fit. We talked about that in a prior post on How to Assess Your Federal Fit. Once you’ve gotten that far, you need to get the messaging down, or what most of us in the sales world call a Unique Value Proposition, or UVP, to effectively pursue Federal business opportunities. Follow this simple (to say) formula:
Mission Need + Competitive Advantage = Agency-Specific UVP
Center that around your innovative technology, and you now have something to go to market with.
Determine Mission Needs
Each Federal agency has a stated mission, or missions, and they’re not hard to find. It’s kind of what gets the employees up in the morning, or should be anyway. Does this mean I’m suggesting you develop a UVP for each Federal agency you pursue? You betcha.
Luckily, agency missions are not hard to find. Sometimes there is more than one. Just go to their websites and rummage around, because they are all there in one form or another, and provide direction as to where you’ll find Federal business opportunities for your tech startup. Because sometimes the Government tends to be wordy and confusing, Wikipedia often has things summed up well in their very first sentence of an agency listing. For example,
- U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (or ICE) is an American federal law enforcement agency under the United States Department of Homeland Security (DHS) responsible for identifying, investigating, and dismantling vulnerabilities regarding the nation’s border, economic, transportation, and infrastructure security.
- The National Security Agency/Central Security Service (NSA/CSS) leads the U.S. Government in cryptology that encompasses both Signals Intelligence (SIGINT) and Information Assurance (IA) products and services, and enables Computer Network Operations (CNO) in order to gain a decision advantage for the Nation and our allies under all circumstances.
And some are better than others with the mission statement not saying all that much in and of itself, ergo…
- The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, CMS, is part of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). Watch a short video to get to know about us and our work, mission, and vision.
Not so great, so go ahead and watch the video if CMS is your target. There is usually a whole bunch of other information that tells you what they do and what they value in that mission, their strategic plans, and more often than not, purchasing forecasts. Now it’s time to align your competitive advantage to those missions to target your best Federal business opportunities.
Stress Your Competitive Advantage
If you are part of a commercially successful tech startup, chances are you are doing something that is better, faster, or cheaper than competitive products. You may be in a category of one, where there are NO competitors (at present) to what you offer. What a great place to be. Putting your competitive advantage into words isn’t as easy as it sounds for many of us. You want to make sure you focus on things that are truly unique and special, and not something everyone else vying for the same Federal business opportunities can claim. It’s worthwhile to check out this refresher on Creating Your Market Game Changer.
Your Federal Agency-Specific UVP
The important thing is, take list of competitive advantages for your commercial customers and apply them to the mission(s) you found that make sense. As an example, from the ICE mission stated earlier:
ABC Technology reduces national security vulnerabilities by aggregating, relating and highlighting data from multiple databases and information sources, simplifying and improving the accuracy and speed of investigations in real time.
Design your talking points and marketing information around this UVP, for each agency, to provide focus for business development and capture activities and maximize your shot at the Federal business opportunities that you want.
In future articles, we’ll get into the different tracks and tactics that tech startups can use to win Government business.
