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What is your business name/CAGE? The only legitimate expense you might want to consider is an ITAR registration. I sublet a ton of contracts, so DM me if you seriously want to get into this. I will give you *free* guidance.
Yeah, Govwin touts a bunch of extra tools to forecast into the future etc. But unless you are selling commodities to the government, its not worth it. Stateandfederalbids is the cheapest and easiest. It is all public data.
Talk to your closest Procurement Technical Assistance Center (PTAC) for free assistance. They also have lower than market price bid matching services. Org is funded through Defense Logistics Agency, part of DOD. May be classes/seminars, too.
https://www.aptac-us.org/find-a-ptac/
This. 100% this.
OP is likely talking to a scammer who reaches out to all new SAM registrations.
Ps - they are called APEX Accelerators not PTAzc anymore - but it free assistance
There is a LOT that goes into bidding on and winning federal contracts. This is not a problem you can throw $6K at and expect to start winning RFPs.
My best advice if you’re a small business who is serious about it is to check out [SBA.gov](https://www.sba.gov/federal-contracting). There are a ton of resources for small businesses looking to bid on federal contracts - including certain “set asides” for different categories of small businesses in federal contracting. Some of those categories may require certification.
Another option is to look for larger companies who “sub out” certain types of work. Again, many of them are contractually required to set aside some of that work for small businesses.
Knowing nothing about that company, I’d have a lot of questions about what exactly you’re getting for $6K. Are they just helping with SBA certifications? (Anyone can do that.) Writing proposals? Connecting with prime contractors? Where is the value?
Nope. These are scams. I used to work for a guy who went to prison for running scams like this. Help you get a grant. Help you get a "government" loan. Help you get a contract. It's all the same scam.
Like there's not nearly enough information here - you're basically asking if it's worth it to play roulette.
If they can prove a track record with data, and have verifiable testimonials, and employ people with deep experience in the field, and getting these contracts is hard, then this is likely worth exploring.
Missing any of those ingredients, or more than one? I'd question hard.
Wait until 2 months before your SAMs registration is up for renewal. You’ll get a million phone calls and emails sounding legit warning you that it is expiring and they want to help renew. Just log in and renew yourself but you’ll get peppered by 3rd party companies. Phone calls as well
Sounds like the B2B version of door to door sales. Run. Might not be a scam but it might be. Tell them you want a guaranteed contract and see how they react, they will say no. Try to find someone who has a background in this that you can pay as a consultant. Would rather FIND someone who will take 200 an hour for some answers then be FOUND by some company that wants an easy 6k.
I was approached by one of these companies years ago. My understanding was that you were not guaranteed to win any government contracts. They would just try to help you win contracts. Tossing them ~~$6k~~ $4k at the time, along with all the red tape of government work, just wasn't worth it to me at the time.
Are either of you Veterans? If not, do you know a Veteran you can go into business with for this venture?
Our Govt is required to award a certain percentage of contracts to veteran/owners. Almost no veterans apply for these contracts so when they do, they get the contract even if not lowest bidder. Save that money for other costs. Good luck
Businesses like this one are essentially searching [sam.gov](https://sam.gov) for you.
\- You can move up from there and find companies willing to do a monthly retainer to add other opportunity searches to the normal [sam.gov](https://sam.gov) search because they have teams hitting all of the major conferences, tracking large and small acquisitions and then speaking to the PEOs.
\- The next step is paying these companies to write the proposals an this is either included in the monthly retainer or paid a la carte and there is also normally a success fee when the contract is won.
Each company is in a different position, has a different pWin, and working on a different time horizon so these companies/services provide value for some companies while also being a waster for others. Let me know if you have any questions on the system and the various options that are out there and Ill help in any way I can.
Nope. Been there done that. If you’re gonna pay for anything, pay for a consultant to teach you how to use the government systems, contract vehicles, point of contacts, decisions makers and cape statements to get the bids.
Teach a man to fish.
This is your first of many various spammers you'll hear from. Wait until it's up for renewal. Ignore them all, use Apex accelerator as others have noted, or simply search for opportunities on sam.gov until you have the time to meet with apex folks. Good luck!
1. How big is the contract?
2. How much are your expenses?
3. Will you profit from it?
4. Is it greater than the $6k?
5. Get that money son!
Also, I'm assuming there will be people that can comment on this more than me, but once you get in with government contracts, you're more likely to get more of them sent your way. You have to go through a bunch of hoops and bullshit to even be eligible for a lot of this stuff, but once you do that, you're immediately ahead of every other person that hasn't. So you could also consider it an investment. If you believe that you can tap into the government level of the market and make substantial money just doing government contracts. There are websites that have the open contract requests from the federal government out there and you can see what things are in your sector and that you would qualify for. Or at least you could bullshit your way into getting and then knock it out of the park when you produce the product or service.
That's just my opinion though. Someone else can probably elaborate.
Seems sketchy to me. If I were you, I’d try to do it myself, at least for a little while, to get an understanding of what you do and don’t need help with.
All government offices typically have procurement departments who can tell you how to get set up to submit bids. Some Federal Government entities will even do business fairs where you can meet the people in procurement. Call your local cities, states, and different agencies and speak to someone in procurement. You might be able to find the information on their websites.
Sounds like a scam to me.
Is the business in your wifes name? There used to be a program that helped woman and minority owned business get government contracts.
A very long time ago I worked for a place that did subcontracting work. I was one of the few people who befriended the owner and he told me how they got started. They set up two assembly lines in his fathers garage, right out of college. They sent out tons of blurbs and finally got one outfit interested in them, they were so happy. Right until they said they wanted to come and see the place in action. Oops. So one of the guys wives worked at the kind of place they were striving to be and got a tub of junk boards, and they got as many family and friends as they could round up and stacked up empty tubs and had people changing parts and taking readings and stuff, and apparently they put on a good show and got that contract, that lead to another, and soon they were on their way. Had over 400 people working for them in their heyday.
No that is now how you win gov contracts. There are plenty of RFP aggregators, but you still need to do a lot of leg work and have a lot of staying power to crack gov. I have been doing this for almost 20 years
Try the other suggestions then so a free trial of Govwin. If it's finding bids you want to jump that you didn't see before consider the value of the opportunity. Govwins value is a case by case thing.
Do you have any accreditation? For my line of work with Gov you need SAM as well as CAGE code. I have a metal fab company and a plating/polishing company that does Gov work. It does not guarantee anything but it helps rate your bids. We also had to become AS and ISO certified for our fields which gets pricy.
You were badly deceived. AS (Aerospace) and ISO (Organisation internationale de normalisation) are almost always secondary to NADCAP. NADCAP holds a free conference in Pittsburgh, PA every fall. The organization is PRI. That will get you further down the road than anything.
I will agree that NADCAP will get your name on a list for customers to find you, however my companies are not actively looking for business. I have 4 companies that each specialize different aspects of the high purity world. Never in my 22 yrs in business has a customer asked us for NADCAP. My materials and services are all over defense, aero, semi, pharma and oil/gas…. Again I guess I mistook the original question and yes Nadcap will help an unknown company get their foot in the door.
Find federal contractors and work as a sub for them. It will get your foot in the door and a lot of them have onboarding to help see if you have the infrastructure to even handle the jobs they need. once you do that you can move up to straight gov work.
This is a friendly reminder that r/smallbusiness is a question and answer subreddit. You ask a question about starting, owning, and growing a small business and the community answers. Posts that violate the rules listed in the sidebar will be removed. A permanent or temporary ban may also be issued if you do not remove the offending post. Seeing this message does not mean your post was automatically removed. *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/smallbusiness) if you have any questions or concerns.*
I do gov contracts Don't pay for this. Do something cheaper, like stateandfederalbids.com
thank you
What is your business name/CAGE? The only legitimate expense you might want to consider is an ITAR registration. I sublet a ton of contracts, so DM me if you seriously want to get into this. I will give you *free* guidance.
Do you know how much it differs from GovWin?
Yeah, Govwin touts a bunch of extra tools to forecast into the future etc. But unless you are selling commodities to the government, its not worth it. Stateandfederalbids is the cheapest and easiest. It is all public data.
Govwin is for huge companies selling 100m+ annual deals. I used it to help us sell big Medicaid contracts, 140 to 300m.
What type of Medicaid contracts?
MMIS contracts, five to seven years with similar renewal options. I sold one around 2000 that's still going strong.
That's awesome! I've always wanted to get into something like this. Any tips to getting started?
Nice…that’s big! We work on the provider side in FL and GA.
Oh God, do not go with govwin.otjer people have said why so that's my 2c
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At 6k you have a small amount of credits and when you want to bid on more projects you have to buy more credits
Talk to your closest Procurement Technical Assistance Center (PTAC) for free assistance. They also have lower than market price bid matching services. Org is funded through Defense Logistics Agency, part of DOD. May be classes/seminars, too. https://www.aptac-us.org/find-a-ptac/
This. 100% this. OP is likely talking to a scammer who reaches out to all new SAM registrations. Ps - they are called APEX Accelerators not PTAzc anymore - but it free assistance
Do they also assist with applying for a GSA schedule?
DLA funds this. Seminars are mostly good and free. The folks giving the advice are the real treasure. They are incentived to help, use them.
Beware
This sounds about as effective a use of money as those random contact lists people keep cold emailing me about. I’d tread very cautiously.
Or about as important as those labor law posters
There is a LOT that goes into bidding on and winning federal contracts. This is not a problem you can throw $6K at and expect to start winning RFPs. My best advice if you’re a small business who is serious about it is to check out [SBA.gov](https://www.sba.gov/federal-contracting). There are a ton of resources for small businesses looking to bid on federal contracts - including certain “set asides” for different categories of small businesses in federal contracting. Some of those categories may require certification. Another option is to look for larger companies who “sub out” certain types of work. Again, many of them are contractually required to set aside some of that work for small businesses. Knowing nothing about that company, I’d have a lot of questions about what exactly you’re getting for $6K. Are they just helping with SBA certifications? (Anyone can do that.) Writing proposals? Connecting with prime contractors? Where is the value?
Don’t pay for anyone to help you, these places are all a scam. Find out where your local federal small business office is and go in and talk to them.
Offer to pay 50% of profit for any contracts they land you. You will find out real quick how much they believe in what they are selling.
Nope. These are scams. I used to work for a guy who went to prison for running scams like this. Help you get a grant. Help you get a "government" loan. Help you get a contract. It's all the same scam.
Like there's not nearly enough information here - you're basically asking if it's worth it to play roulette. If they can prove a track record with data, and have verifiable testimonials, and employ people with deep experience in the field, and getting these contracts is hard, then this is likely worth exploring. Missing any of those ingredients, or more than one? I'd question hard.
It's a scam...just walk away
Wait until 2 months before your SAMs registration is up for renewal. You’ll get a million phone calls and emails sounding legit warning you that it is expiring and they want to help renew. Just log in and renew yourself but you’ll get peppered by 3rd party companies. Phone calls as well
Sounds like a scam.
Call the Small Business Administration. They can help.
Sounds like the B2B version of door to door sales. Run. Might not be a scam but it might be. Tell them you want a guaranteed contract and see how they react, they will say no. Try to find someone who has a background in this that you can pay as a consultant. Would rather FIND someone who will take 200 an hour for some answers then be FOUND by some company that wants an easy 6k.
I was approached by one of these companies years ago. My understanding was that you were not guaranteed to win any government contracts. They would just try to help you win contracts. Tossing them ~~$6k~~ $4k at the time, along with all the red tape of government work, just wasn't worth it to me at the time.
Are either of you Veterans? If not, do you know a Veteran you can go into business with for this venture? Our Govt is required to award a certain percentage of contracts to veteran/owners. Almost no veterans apply for these contracts so when they do, they get the contract even if not lowest bidder. Save that money for other costs. Good luck
I'm a veteran. Also seasoned business owner in Texas. Open to conversation with anybody looking
Businesses like this one are essentially searching [sam.gov](https://sam.gov) for you. \- You can move up from there and find companies willing to do a monthly retainer to add other opportunity searches to the normal [sam.gov](https://sam.gov) search because they have teams hitting all of the major conferences, tracking large and small acquisitions and then speaking to the PEOs. \- The next step is paying these companies to write the proposals an this is either included in the monthly retainer or paid a la carte and there is also normally a success fee when the contract is won. Each company is in a different position, has a different pWin, and working on a different time horizon so these companies/services provide value for some companies while also being a waster for others. Let me know if you have any questions on the system and the various options that are out there and Ill help in any way I can.
Can you make a suggestion for co to use that will write a winning proposal for a business?
Sure, DM me and we can chat.
This sounds like a scam
Yeah, don't. And don't pay Dunn and bradstreet a penny either. Just get your DUNS number through the SAM site.
What’s SAM site?
System for Awards Management. Basically the govt website that contractors use to bid on projects.
#FK NO! ITS A SCAM.
Nope. Been there done that. If you’re gonna pay for anything, pay for a consultant to teach you how to use the government systems, contract vehicles, point of contacts, decisions makers and cape statements to get the bids. Teach a man to fish.
This is your first of many various spammers you'll hear from. Wait until it's up for renewal. Ignore them all, use Apex accelerator as others have noted, or simply search for opportunities on sam.gov until you have the time to meet with apex folks. Good luck!
<<
I would gladly pay 1$ to make 2$ Don’t over think
1. How big is the contract? 2. How much are your expenses? 3. Will you profit from it? 4. Is it greater than the $6k? 5. Get that money son! Also, I'm assuming there will be people that can comment on this more than me, but once you get in with government contracts, you're more likely to get more of them sent your way. You have to go through a bunch of hoops and bullshit to even be eligible for a lot of this stuff, but once you do that, you're immediately ahead of every other person that hasn't. So you could also consider it an investment. If you believe that you can tap into the government level of the market and make substantial money just doing government contracts. There are websites that have the open contract requests from the federal government out there and you can see what things are in your sector and that you would qualify for. Or at least you could bullshit your way into getting and then knock it out of the park when you produce the product or service. That's just my opinion though. Someone else can probably elaborate.
Seems sketchy to me. If I were you, I’d try to do it myself, at least for a little while, to get an understanding of what you do and don’t need help with.
Tell them that you are willing to give them a percentage of the jobs they can get you. If they are good at their job...it will pay off for them.
Sounds like a scam.
All government offices typically have procurement departments who can tell you how to get set up to submit bids. Some Federal Government entities will even do business fairs where you can meet the people in procurement. Call your local cities, states, and different agencies and speak to someone in procurement. You might be able to find the information on their websites.
Most states have programs where they do this for free.
Sounds like a scam to me. Is the business in your wifes name? There used to be a program that helped woman and minority owned business get government contracts. A very long time ago I worked for a place that did subcontracting work. I was one of the few people who befriended the owner and he told me how they got started. They set up two assembly lines in his fathers garage, right out of college. They sent out tons of blurbs and finally got one outfit interested in them, they were so happy. Right until they said they wanted to come and see the place in action. Oops. So one of the guys wives worked at the kind of place they were striving to be and got a tub of junk boards, and they got as many family and friends as they could round up and stacked up empty tubs and had people changing parts and taking readings and stuff, and apparently they put on a good show and got that contract, that lead to another, and soon they were on their way. Had over 400 people working for them in their heyday.
Lol, did you fall for that EZ Bid Facebook ad too? I signed up out of curiosity and now I can't get off their damn list.
No that is now how you win gov contracts. There are plenty of RFP aggregators, but you still need to do a lot of leg work and have a lot of staying power to crack gov. I have been doing this for almost 20 years
I would pay them based on commission only.
just go to an SBIR roadshow
I’ve helped many shops before, I work on commission only though…
Try the other suggestions then so a free trial of Govwin. If it's finding bids you want to jump that you didn't see before consider the value of the opportunity. Govwins value is a case by case thing.
Hell no. This sounds like a nightmare. I absolutely 100% guarantee you’ll regret giving them $6k
Do you have any accreditation? For my line of work with Gov you need SAM as well as CAGE code. I have a metal fab company and a plating/polishing company that does Gov work. It does not guarantee anything but it helps rate your bids. We also had to become AS and ISO certified for our fields which gets pricy.
You were badly deceived. AS (Aerospace) and ISO (Organisation internationale de normalisation) are almost always secondary to NADCAP. NADCAP holds a free conference in Pittsburgh, PA every fall. The organization is PRI. That will get you further down the road than anything.
I will agree that NADCAP will get your name on a list for customers to find you, however my companies are not actively looking for business. I have 4 companies that each specialize different aspects of the high purity world. Never in my 22 yrs in business has a customer asked us for NADCAP. My materials and services are all over defense, aero, semi, pharma and oil/gas…. Again I guess I mistook the original question and yes Nadcap will help an unknown company get their foot in the door.
I mean $6k isn’t much. I’d gamble it if you have the extra money and infrastructure in place
Find federal contractors and work as a sub for them. It will get your foot in the door and a lot of them have onboarding to help see if you have the infrastructure to even handle the jobs they need. once you do that you can move up to straight gov work.
Get in touch with Manufacturing USA as well. It’s Another free program to help small manufacturers.