Sequestration Looms, OFPP Offers 8 Ways to Make Your Customer Happy

• Avoid putting contracting officers on mass email lists. They are already inundated with marketing mail. Instead, send targeted emails about specific capabilities or projects.
• Send technical experts to one-on-one sessions with contracting officers instead of business development and marketing people.
• Go to industry days. OFPP emphasized the point, particularly as agencies’ resources become scarce.
• Give input to contracting officers in the early phases of a procurement. Officials can benefit from comments and insights from industry on acquisition planning.
• Don’t “cut and paste” past solicitations into new bids.
• Tailor each proposal to the evaluation criteria and proposal instructions. Contracting officials and evaluation teams read proposals closely.
• Ask for a debriefing if you lose a competition for a contract. The meeting may help in preparing for future competitions.

OFPP also tells companies in the memo that federal officials are obligated to protect proprietary information and not share it with other competing companies. Contracting officers are generally not limited on how much information they can share regarding existing contracts between agencies.

Officials have vendor communication plans and the Chief Acquisition Officers Council worked with the Integrated Acquisition Environment team at the General Services Administration to develop a new vendor collaboration feature on Federal Business Opportunities website. It lists scheduled collaboration events, such as industry days.

FedBizOps provides quick access to agency vendor communication plans and upcoming vendor collaboration events, such as industry days, pre-request for proposal conferences, and vendor forums. The FedBizOpps website also has a Small Business Central Event Listing where agencies post small business events, such as conferences and training. These events can also help companies make contact with officials in an agency.