Introduction to Federal Market Stakeholders - People You Will Talk To

Hey, good morning to those of you out there on the West Coast. Good afternoon to those of you here on the East Coast with me. I'm excited to have you here. We're going to be driving forward pretty quickly because I want to go through a lot of terms. Today is more of a, you know, explain a lot of different roles that are out there related to our federal sales and then maybe give you some scenarios that are in there. But do me a favor, make sure as we go along, people always come back and engage at different times. But if you're in chat, tell us what you sell. Right. That's the biggest thing. You know, one to two words, three words, something simple that makes it easy to see what you sell. And the idea is you want it to sink in. But if you put that into the comments or chat, people come along at different stages and they'll be able to learn about your company. Okay, so let's get rock and roll and talking about who's who in the federal market. In the federal market, you're going to meet a ton of people, especially in, you know, as government contractors, small businesses out there, we're going to run into a lot of people. There's a line in sales that says it doesn't matter what you know, it's not what you know, it's who you know. And so there's a lot of who people out there and these are the people you're going to meet or you're going to want to meet. And we call them stakeholders, right. You can use different terms. Obviously, they're people, right, but they're stakeholders in their groups of stakeholders that are similar. And I'll dive into it a lot and you'll see it in a minute through the training. But these stakeholder groups, when you begin to learn the groups and you begin to learn the individuals that are in the group, you can begin to develop your skills around getting in and opening the door and talking with them. By understanding how to who they are and the responsibilities they have within their organization, whether it's in the federal agencies or within teaming partners in their organization. You'll be able to create a plan that not only you can follow, but you can set this plan for 2026 and you and your company can follow it towards building these relationships, getting in particular doors. And measure yourself week after week, month after month towards the success of how strong is your company based on the people you know. And I guess more importantly, the people that know you. So that's what we're going to be talking about today is understanding who's who in the federal market. I'm going to break it up into a few sections. First, I just want to help you understand that all these people, these stakeholders that I talk about in sales, I call them focus points of entry. So if you think about an agency or trying to get into what are all the different ways you can get into the second, third and fourth thing I'm going to talk about are the three main stakeholder groups that I have put together. First, you got federal buyer group, right? And then the second group I'm going to talk about are your teaming partners you competitive mates. Sometimes these people are competitors, sometimes they're teammates, but they're they're industry like you and me. And then the third group is supporting and I just called it supporting stakeholders out there. These can be free folks that are, you know, I think P tax or something, they can be paid folks like consultants. All of these people support your mission as a government contractor to have success. And so I call these folks supporting stakeholders. And then the last thing I want to just wrap up with, I just want to give you one slide that shows you all of these kind of stakeholders put together and how they can go from, let's say, being independent to being interdependent towards your success. If that's what you're looking for, put stakeholders rock, people rock, something like that in there. Give me a little rock, it wakes me up in the morning. If you don't know who I am, my name is Neil McDonnell. It's funny. I said it wakes me up in the morning. I'm like seven or eight hours into my day right now and it's only noon. I am the President of the GEPCON Chamber of Commerce. I am co founder of a founder of call plan AI. And I want to welcome you to my federal sales training where I provide tips for success in the federal market. After I got out of the army, I spent 20 years as a small business owner myself. And since 2018, I've been teaching people like you that government contracting is not a secret. It's just a process. When we follow a process A to Z, we have repeatable predictable results. This is what I want for you. It's why I came back and did the training over and over again. If you haven't followed me on LinkedIn, make sure you do, especially if you're not in LinkedIn, but you're like on YouTube right now, come on over to join us on LinkedIn because it's a great way for you to connect with my 41,000 followers. And most of those people are in the GEPCON space and open to connecting with you. So it's a great way to piggyback off of my network becomes your network. And then if you haven't subscribed to my newsletter, subscribe to that, the government contracting success newsletter is designed specifically to give you information that will help you as a small business government contractor out there. One last thing tomorrow, I'm going to be talking about, let me scale this up a teeny bit. Tomorrow, I'll be talking about SBA's woman owned certification and how, in my opinion, it fails women owned small businesses. It really does. And I'm going to drive into, frankly, what I think is wrong with it. And then I'm going to leave you with what should be done instead if you're a woman owned small business so that you can have the success that you envisioned when you got that certification. So register for that training tomorrow. I'd love to have you join me. Okay, let's begin first with a this concept and sales about focus, focus points of entry. If you think about trying to get into any customer and it doesn't really matter whether you're in the federal market or commercial, etc. You've got a point of entry that I mean you got a customer you're trying to get into it. And so you need points of entry. I like to sometimes describe it as if you're trying to get into a house you've got the front door you got the back door. Now you need to start getting a little more creative. You got the seller you got the windows on the first floor you can kind of scale a little bit gets the second floor. You can do the Santa Claus routine and go up through the chimney. But one way or another you're getting into that customer right and getting into that building. And these are your points of entry inside of sales with customers. We describe it a little bit differently right and there's three groups or three points of entry for you. And they tend to go one after the other. But in the federal market because we know everybody which is which is a rare thing like if you went to a commercial customer. There's hardly anything about them publicly available similar to what you find in the federal market. So the federal market might be able to start with one two or three but really it's best to begin with the focus is a receptivity. These are the people who are going to listen to you sympathetically right they want to be able to help you they're friendly. They're going to provide you information if they can they're going to provide you introductions but they don't really have any power or just satisfaction. They're just part of that customer pool and they see the potential value you can bring to their to their organization their command their agency. So these people are called focus is a receptivity. The second group once you're kind of getting in and you're learning about that agency trying to get into you want to find the focuses of dissatisfaction. These are the people who have the problems and the goals and so the problems are dissatisfaction they're unhappy with the way things are going or maybe with the current supplier. They've got problems that they're perceiving and just what they're trying to get done for example the match in the federal agencies right now. Everything government contracting was kind of or in the federal government was kind of going the same way for the last 5000 years or whatever right. And then in 2024 it started getting this change in 25 which is bam with the Trump administration coming in with Doge coming in. Everything accelerated everything changed. And so those people inside of those agencies who have a responsibility to run the agency execute the mission now have a different set of problems that they're looking at everything is accelerated on them. For example that's just one problem that might pop up and so you're looking for people who can understand those problems discuss those problems with you and then maybe figure out where you might fit in. So these are focuses of dissatisfaction. They are the people with the problem and and or with the goal right they might be looking five years out and say I want a new battleship or I want a new building or I want AI to be implemented into my facility or I would like clean floors. Whatever it is they could be looking out and that's more goal setting or they could look more immediately saying this is problems and pain points and dissatisfaction that I have. You want to get to these people because in sales this is how you learn about the alignment between what the agency needs and what you offer. So you've got the focus for receptivity then the focus of dissatisfaction and then the third group which is the ultimate group for us in sales are the focus of power. These people influence in the federal government they influence the acquisition approach. So all the decisions that might go into activity around the acquisition process so set aside to woman on small business or contract vehicle things like that. So they influence all that heavily they tend not to have anything to do with the scope the problems. But they influence all of the acquisition related activity they influence whether it moves forward or doesn't whether it kind of drags out whether things are not right the way they need to be etc. And then they also do the final thing right is their sign in the check they approve or prevent contract awards from going forward either going forward at all or going forward to you. And so these people are focused of power. Yes these are really really important people to us but they're not actually as important as the focus of dissatisfaction. If you can't find a solid alignment between the problems and the goals and agency has and what you offer products or services then you won't be able to write a clear compelling compliant and convincing proposal. And so thinking about the focus of dissatisfaction is most important and the focus of power is really just that final check but we call them power because if they don't do their job you're not going to make money. Hopefully that makes sense. Put points of entry into the chat if you're following along points of entry. Okay I'm going to walk through the three groups and actually I might minimize myself here to give you a little bigger slide. I'm going to walk through these three groups are trying to watch my time because I always end at 1230 and I'm off to a USA again today. But the first group of people we're going to be talking about the first group of stakeholders that are important to you as a government contractors trying to sell into the federal agencies are the federal buyer stakeholders. And these people remember I just put them in this group every stakeholder group I talk about will have a focus or a sensitivity a focus of dissatisfaction focus of power. In this particular case I just mixed them around based on what aligned on my slide but let's start with focus of power. So focus of power you've got the contract officer hopefully this one we all know right and in the regular world the civilian agencies we call them a CEO contract officer in the defense side we call them chaos. Contract the officer since CEO stands for commanding officer but you've got contract officer they're the ultimate decision maker in there they signed the contract. I remember having a contract that I was having all this difficulty with the program office into the scope and it was worth five to 10 million was huge contract for us at the time. And but I didn't like it I didn't like what was going on with the program office and this is the time where it really set in this idea that the final decision maker that focus of power is the contract the officer and only the contract the officer because I went back. And I said look I'm not going to sign this contract right it's just too much risk on our part and these guys keep changing their mind I feel like they're setting me up for failure because they like the incumbent and the KO was like no our agreement is with us. If you do what's in the scope of work in the contract then I want you we've already to kind of made that decision I want you we're signing a contract we're done. And so there I'm making a commitment that showed me how powerful they are. A lot of other people can influence the sale but only one person is signing that contract and committing to the government that they're spending taxpayer money wisely by choosing to go with you or with me. All right so you have the contract officer right there with the contract officer is somebody called the contract specialist in the way I paraphrase this or just you know say it on my own is that a contracting specialist is kind of basically a contract officer who's supporting that contract officer. So sometimes they actually are contracting officers and sometimes they're working their way to that but they're in that same space. And so they really the reason that's really important to remember is that if I say the chaos the one signing it that contracting specialist has incredible amount of power. If you ever go into Sam and you see a first point of contact and a second point of contact. Generally the first point of context the contract specialist and the contract officers a second and the idea is that the contracting specialist is working very closely under the guidance and direction of the contract officer. Again I'm not trying to teach job categories but that's how it fits from a sales perspective so these two are really really important for the end of the sale. And then the rest of these people are really important for when you're doing capturing you've got a sales pipeline and you're trying to identify everybody related to the opportunity. You want to know the rest of these people so the contracting officer representative we call them a core in the core. Their job is basically to make sure that the contract that is awarded is being executed. The reason one example why they're so cool is that if you can find them on a contract that is expiring in a year or two and you can build a relationship and begin to have conversations you can find out if there's dissatisfaction in there. You can find out from the core who were the leads on that contract etc. And none of this is underhanded it's having conversations with these people in developing the relationship. Another one I wanted to put in here that I love is the head of contracting activity. The head of contracting activity is basically the boss of the head of procurement for an agency. So they have it all different levels and I like to find the head of contracting activity because sometimes you don't get the feedback from the KO that you're looking for any feedback at all. And so I want to be able to go to their boss there's nothing wrong with going to their boss. If I wasn't doing a good job as a subordinate they'd be going to my boss right. And so just being on the reach out and say hey I'm sure John is busy as a KO but I'd love to get this answer. So you want to understand who the head of contracting activity is in your target agency. So these are focuses of power focus as a receptivity inside of an agency or Osdaboo's that stands for office of small disadvantaged business utilization. So the Osdaboo director is the head of overall small business policy within an agency. They're a good advocate and generally their best help to you is to introduce you to the next person which is small business specialist or how they call it in the defense department is deputy small business programs right. So they got different titles but basically they're all small business professionals and they tend to work closely with the contracting officers trying to figure out where small businesses can support the agency. And so that's why these people are focuses of receptivity and they'd be great people to get introductions to the program office to the acquisition side. All right on the right hand side of this slide I'd put down some people you want to just track on in their various titles but basically you're looking for the program office to find focuses of dissatisfaction. Right so the program office could have a you know program program branch chief division chief. You know if you're looking at something like it you want to find those kind of titles. Another really big title two titles is the program manager deputy program manager. These are important around something called program executive offices for example where they're working on a lot of programs and projects if you can get in there and find them. These are the people are leading the charge they know everything about what's going on in there. By the way let me do a quick side box if you're brand new to government contracting don't start with all these people. If you're working with a small business specialist or more importantly just a small business which you'll see on the next slide. One tip about deputy program manager some agencies like the Navy for example have told the deputy program managers you need to serve as a small business liaison type person. So small businesses want to come in and learn about the program but there's not a dedicated small business specialist then that deputy program manager could kind of help you navigate. So if you go in to talk to an agency don't try to talk to the program manager talk to the deputy program manager. And then I just put other titles right you could come down and there's you got a program and in there you got projects and in there you got products and see a product managers product leads. I want to find these people if I've got an opportunity to go to my pipeline that I want to find all these people related this is kind of my checklist for am I talking to enough people. The last thing I wanted to show you on this slide is when you think about federal buyer stakeholders there's just all sorts of people who are engaged in the acquisition lifecycle or in your case the sales lifecycle right there. So we're thinking about planning requirements early when the idea is being formed etc. But then you got people doing cost estimation and that might be different from those budgeting like who's deciding whether there's budget who's just who's going to tell us whether the budget has been a set aside. Right so we want to identify those people and then there's more as you go along. Yes and I realize I'm talking really really fast on it. You can take snapshots of the slide come back and watch the replay but the idea is there's so many people who can help you have success in an agency or government contracting. If you just begin to understand who they are kind of what their responsibilities are and then get in. All right let's talk about teaming partner stakeholders. I'm going to ignore large business for one second you're never going to talk to ownership because there is no ownership most of the time is stockholders etc. But in a really large business anybody like VP and hire it's not going to be much help to a small business if you see them at a conference. They're phenomenal because you walk up and you talk to them and they go let me point you to Sally or John and that's their direct report. That's what we want. We don't want to talk to a VP at Boeing. We want the VP to introduce me to some directors of the Navy or Army acquisition or something. All right but in the small business world we do want to talk to owners and that's the first one I have here is you want to reach out to a small business owner when you build your relationships with small businesses. These people remember what it was like to start a small business to get their first hundred thousand dollars to get their first contract. They remember what it was like to get rejected by a large or something right and so these are great people if you can build the relationship. Not all of them are going to be in the category that works with you but you can find enough of them that you will be able to grow your company with them. All right in all government contracting firms so whether it's large or small they all have people in roles these three main roles business development capture management. And proposal writing and proposal management right and so business development give you an example. So in a small business our titles are thrown around. Don't think too much about it because generally anybody in a small business has got a title of business development or capture and maybe sometimes even proposal they're stuck doing multiple roles and so they might be doing all three of these roles. But generally business developers are out there building understanding and she building relationships and identify opportunities that then the capture managers when they find the right opportunities can pursue a single opportunity. For example and you'll find all those people so they can have conversations and learn more about that opportunity. And then the proposal manager right. So in a large business though an example is I have a friend who's got a two billion dollar sales goal every single year. He's a business developer he doesn't do any capture his jobs to get in there talk understand where the next five hundred million dollar opportunities coming from and then he passes it forward for approval through that large firm right. Well somebody like him is always looking for inroads and so you might have access into relationships with an agency. So building relationships with these people are really important. So business developer capture manager proposal manager you can find them like on LinkedIn if you're looking at folks. The next one contract vehicle program manager and contracts manager. These are really excellent for large businesses the larger the business the more they have two or three people running their contract vehicles. So if you think about Oasis or Seaport or GSA Master something. If you go into a large business on their website you will find their contract vehicle program manager the person who runs that vehicle not the task orders but the vehicle and then the contracts managers is supporting them. Those two know the program managers who are running those task orders for Booz Allen or G. D. I. T. or whoever right. And so you want to build relationships with the right ones when you're at the right stage right. Don't go knock on their doors and be doing let's say three million or less. The last bullet on the top section small business liaison officers. These people are basically the same as the small business specialists within a federal agency both have a responsibility for engaging with small business industry partners. To see where they might be able to help the agency or in this case the large prime with their needs. So large primes have a need to use small businesses in their contracts they have a responsibility to do that. And so they're always looking for good smalls not smalls with a tag but good small businesses who can contribute. You want to build a relationship with these small business liaison officers in the companies that really do seem like it aligns with you. So that's track that person. And then a couple others I put down here marketing specialists. This is a new one I'm adding as of today. Yesterday I was doing training about a USA conference that's going on right now an army conference and in there I showed 750 exhibitors. And in there I found all these marketing people marketing specialists various titles but marketing specialists. And they are now on my stakeholder list because if they're running the events at a conference then I can use them as a way to get in. Right. Think about points of entry. I can use them as a point of entry. They can be a focus of receptivity. I reach out to us. The conference is great. I loved your booth. Whatever. Can I get 15 minutes of your time or more importantly can you introduce me to the SBLO things like that. So those people are now on my list. You've been warned. And then the last one is program managers. I talked about contract vehicle program managers have the people who run the task orders. Well those people who run the task orders basically service delivery on a contract. Those are kind of program managers. And so you want to find out who's the program managers. One thing to have the sales people like a business developer. It's another to find the people who are actually doing the work. And if you can build those relationships that gives you opportunities to hear about ways you could help that that large prime. And small businesses have the same thing program managers. Hey I wanted to pause for one second and just thank Voltron for being the sponsor of our lives. I really appreciate it because it allows me to focus on the training more than how do I keep providing the training back to you. But Voltron helps you write proposals in minutes not weeks. And these proposals using AI are compliant compelling convincing. And it's really important for you to be able to have those when you're going back to the government and trying to wow them and win contracts. So make sure you check out Voltron thank them in the in the chat for me would you. Okay so and accelerate fast because I'm running out of time like a seven minutes I got a lot to talk about. But so I talked about federal agency stakeholders keep that in mind right. Who are all the people I need to know in a federal agency. If my job as a small business owner or small business business developer is to is to get into agencies find opportunities win contracts. I need to pursue those stakeholders in the federal agencies. I need to pursue teaming partners stakeholders that are out there. Now there's this third group of people who can help you as well. These are different points of entry. Everybody in this group is a focus or receptivity. They are not a focus of power and they're not they're not a focus of dissatisfaction. So the first place I'll start is the small business administration the SBA. They exist to basically help small businesses have a chance at succeeding as an American small business whether it's out to restaurants or as a government contractor inside of the SBA. There's a component that is the government contracting business development side. They're focused on us government contractors and there's two roles that are really helpful to us. One is called the PCR the procurement center representative. This person's job basically is to make sure any contract that could go small business does go small business. They have very few PCR so it's a tough tough job when there's like you know a million contracts activities a year or something. But but they are a great person to reach out and talk to if you're trying to get in the army find the PCR that's related to the army build a relationship. Ask them what conferences are going to where they're at could they introduce you to a KO. So those people are great. The second one I really want you pay attention to is the business opportunity specialist. I appreciate you thanking Voltron. I was looking through the chat the other day and that is such a simple way for us to say thanks to them and to me for bringing this to you every day. So thank you for doing that. So business opportunity specialists they tend to work with a day firms and it's more about auditing but they actually are really good. So for a day firms they send letters and try to push things to a day set aside. But you can also talk to them because they have so many relationships inside of agencies. So build a relationship with your local SBA district office where the the business opportunity specialist and find out you know just begin through the relationship development to learn where they're at most you know where they can help you etc. So the SBA that's one group of free resources available to you stakeholders. The second one which is a pretty big one is partially funded by the Department of Defense and this is the apex accelerators. These people have counselors in there for the most part provide free services especially the part I'm talking about which is just introductions. They can make introductions into the agencies that they support when you look around the country especially the farther away from Maryland and Virginia you go the tighter their relationships are. So if you think about Tinker Air Force Base in Oklahoma the PTAC out there is a really close relationship because there's not that many federal agencies. Compared if you think about Virginia as great as a counselor might be there there's just too many federal stakeholders to engage with. So they know a lot of people but so reach out to your apex accelerator don't have expectations of them. Take responsibility for the relationship with them and help them help you. Sorry I get caught up in movie things help them help you. It's got chamber commerce that's me I'm doing this stuff I make introductions when people ask me for the most part right if it's not going to embarrass me and you say hey can you introduce me. Sure I've been doing that for somebody right now and they've got like 10 meetings set up it's pretty good for them. I can't do it all the time but there's all sorts of organizations like that and there's chambers all around the country. So in rest in Virginia there's a chamber there and they have a very tight relationship with government buyers. The last group on that top set of bullets is professional associations. So there's tons of them out there there's large ones and small ones. There's a group called fast wrote for example out of Dayton Ohio. They come together 20 30 people. These are phenomenal stakeholders to build relationships with who potentially can get you in the door. And then the last one I put here is don't don't ignore the all the capture proposal consultants and people like that who are business development coaches these are people you pay. Right if you think about the group above that's all free but paid consultants right I used to do this myself. Those are good for helping you get in the door to grow your company in the direction you want and so that's a group of stakeholders that if you find the one that meets your need. Then they can really maybe help accelerate your path into an agency or into an opportunity trying to win. I just really quickly wanted to show you this interdependence of stakeholders if you think about all these separate stakeholders. But I bring them back together and I say look I'm trying to get into the Navy. If I start building relationships with the PCR and an eight a small business and a contracting specialist. Pretty soon each one of them is telling me a little bit more a little bit more I'm knowing more and more about the Navy. I'm getting introduced to more people. This is why it's really important to focus on a particular agency as you pursue stakeholders because the interdependence the relationship between all these stakeholders will lead to much bigger success. So this is something for you to just keep in mind. Okay here's what I want you to remember from today's training. First thing don't build your relationships in an ad hoc way have a plan for it right I just showed you the different stakeholder groups and I showed you the points of entry. Take a few days and create a plan around that go I want to get in here. I'm going to go through these people and I'm just going to start writing a name next to each one of those titles Neil gave me type thing right have a plan around that. Truly understand the points of entry and the idea of going through receptivity to dissatisfaction and to power. And sometimes you can kind of go back and forth but understand those points of entry it will increase your awareness of your customer and increase your chances of success. And then the last thing is build from all three of those stakeholder groups that I said really you can almost put a name next to each one of them so hopefully found valuable value in this if you did put stakeholders rock in the chat. Remember tomorrow's training is about women on small businesses and how to have success. Despite the SBA. So I'd love to have you join me. If you're looking to start and build your relationships if you're struggling to have relationships getting into the federal government. My new company is call plan AI the Gupcon Chambers where I do all my free stuff called plan AI is this subscription business I'm building to help people get in the door and start winning. So go check out call plan AI if you're an early subscriber, which means you're helping me build it with your feedback. And I go back and forth. And I learned from you I'll give you 90% off for life on that so I'd love to have you in there. Either way just remember government contracting it is not a secret. It's just a process part of the process is ending on time on my time. I will see you next time. I can't can't believe I just said next time three times. [BLANK_AUDIO] [BLANK_AUDIO] [BLANK_AUDIO] [BLANK_AUDIO]