With professional services growing as a percentage of federal contract dollars, agencies pay close attention to whom its bidders are offering.
Source: Recent bid protests prove importance of contracts’ people component | Federal News Network
Two common measures for sales effectiveness are win rate and pipeline conversion rate. Many confuse or conflate these concepts. “Win rate” has become a generic term used when managers or leaders are looking to quantify a seller or team’s success at closing deals. Win rate is a suitable metric for that purpose, but its value in predictive analytics and forecasting is limited. Sometimes when a business leader is inquiring about win rate, they really need a pipeline conversion rate.
Source: Don’t Confuse Win Rate and Pipeline Conversion Rate – Steve Rietberg
Hindsight is 2020. You don’t want to look back at 2020 and regret missed opportunities. The new year brings a lot of uncertainties – but one thing IS certain. To win, you need to differentiate your company and your offers from the competition.
The GSA 8(a) Streamlined Technology Application Resource for Services (STARS) III multiple-award ID/IQ contract is the follow-on to STARS II, which was awarded to hundreds of companies in July of 2011.
GAO recently sustained protest to an agency’s FAR Part 13 procurement that relied exclusively on CPARS-generated assessment chart rating percentages to evaluate vendors’ past performance. The agency’s goal was to “maximize competition” by considering all past work, rather than just relevant work. While there is no FAR Part 13 regulatory prohibition on doing so, GAO found the CPARS charts incomplete and misleading and the evaluation inconsistent with the terms of the solicitation.
SOURCE: GAO to Agency: Offerors are More than Just a CPARS-Generated Rating Percentage
NOTE: This article first appeared on FCW.com.
The General Services Administration says its work to consolidate two dozen contract schedules into a single schedule is proceeding smoothly, with the agency expecting to publish a consolidated solicitation at the start of fiscal year 2020.
Source: GSA makes progress with schedule consolidation. — Washington Technology
Several years back American, Express OPEN commissioned studies on what it takes for small contractors to succeed in GovCon. Two of the salient issues of the studies that still apply today are these:
Source: Why some small businesses don’t win more business — Washington Technology
In this episode of Project 38, Editor Nick Wakeman and Senior Staff Writer Ross Wilkers discuss some of the major stories they’ve been tracking, from JEDI to the M&A activity that has been reshaping the market.
Source: Reporters Notebook: Top trends driving today’s market — Washington Technology
As we wrote about, the Section 809 Panel had recommended that Congress eliminate most small business set-asides for DoD acquisitions. The Panel suggested replacing small business set-asides with a five percent small business price preference. It looks like Congress heard our concerns—and those voiced throughout industry—and will reject this suggestion.
SOURCE: Congress Expected to Reject Section 809 Panel Recommendation to Eliminate Small-Business Set-Asides
There are tons of valuable government contracting events in the DC metro area, from networking happy hours to training seminars to opportunity overviews. We’ve narrowed down the top 5 events that you should attend in the upcoming weeks.