The General Services Administration Aims to Help Small Businesses Win Government Contracts. Here’s How You Can Benefit.

By Geoff Williams

So, like many entrepreneurs before you, you’re wondering how to get a federal government contract for your business. That is, you’re wondering how people do it in a way that doesn’t involve passing a hefty check to your congressman’s campaign, in a manner that doesn’t compromise your ethics or integrity and offer the risk of someday wearing an orange jumpsuit and sitting in a cafeteria between a man the size of an ox and a few people who used to work for Enron.

Indeed, there are better ways. One of the best and most recommended is to contact the General Services Administration. The GSA is an independent agency of the United States government that was created in 1949, and its main mission is to assist in managing and supporting the basic functioning of federal agencies. Where do you come in? Obviously, you could be helping in the managing and supporting.

Among the GSA’s duties are supplying products and communications for U.S. government offices. They also offer transportation and office space to federal employees and develop cost-minimizing policies and other management tasks for the government. So, in theory, you could manufacture pencils, have a nationwide, regional, or local taxi service, or be a business consultant specializing in efficiency, and in all cases, the GSA might have need for you. Maybe you have a real-estate agency, an accounting firm, or a catering business. If you can sell it to the government, the GSA might be your broker and best friend. (Definitely your broker, though; they take 0.75 percent of every sale.) Every year, the GSA spends nearly $66 billion and influences the management of federal assets valued at nearly $500 billion, including 8,300 government-owned and -leased buildings and 170,000 vehicles and technology programs, as well as purchasing products ranging from laptop computers to systems that cost more than $100 million.

And while, yes, the GSA works with plenty of corporations and deep-pocketed enterprises, an average of 40 percent-plus of its budget tends to go to small businesses, nearly doubling the mandate set by Congress, which says to devote 23 percent of the money spent on prime and subcontracts to small business. But maybe most encouraging in all of those numbers is the amount of paperwork and hours that you’ll save by working with the GSA. Go it alone, and you’re going to be a mouse in a maze of contracting procedures; maybe the better analogy is that you’re on a raft in an ocean with not a friend in sight.

But with the GSA’s aid as a broker, they’ll help you find the right clients in the government sector, and they’ll assist the government in finding a trusted and competitive (think: cheap) vendor. With any luck, that will be you. True, it can be a hassle to get in good with GSA, but once you’re in, it’s a little like being the member of an affluent and exclusive club. You had to pay your dues, but it’s probably worth it.

The GSA isn’t perfect, of course. It was embarrassed in September 2005 when its chief of staff—someone appointed to the organization—was arrested for corruption. On the other hand, the corruption was exposed in part because of lies told to the GSA ethics officers. And for those entrepreneurs who initially try to get in good with the GSA, it can be an exercise in patience.

“Not everybody needs it,” says Mark Amtower, a nationally respected authority on doing business with the government. “But for the officials who know you’ve come recommended from the GSA, they have a higher comfort level in using you.”

That recommendation involves your business being put on what’s called the GSA Schedule. Being listed on it is akin to vendors “having a Federal ‘hunting license,’” says Amtower, author of Government Marketing Best Practices, as well as a speaker, radio host, and consultant. “It’s not a guarantee of business, but it certainly does provide credibility to the GSA contract holder. It shows that you have been vetted by the GSA, have a competitive price and a product or service that is commercially viable.”

And while being on the schedule isn’t a guarantee of business, Amtower says that if a company is on it and isn’t eventually leveraging that stamp of approval to make money, “they don’t know how to sell anything and are dumber than rocks.”

One method of utilizing the GSA Schedule, according to Amtower: Some business owners don’t pursue federal contracts, but they’ll mention it to contractors who have major accounts with the government—and then they’ll serve as subcontractors.

And it works both ways. Just as government agencies will know that your company is recommended, you’ll be given online access to knowing what projects are available that you can bid on. Typically, companies that are on the GSA Schedule are checking daily to see what’s out there. It becomes part of the business’s culture and lifestyle.

However a business uses its association with the GSA, what it’s almost certain to do is help a company grow exponentially. That’s what happened with Avineon, headquartered in Alexandria, Virginia, and a provider of IT, geospatial, engineering, and program management services. It began as a small startup in 1992 in CEO Karlu Rambhala’s home, using his personal savings, and for the first two years, he drew no salary. After hours, he did accounting projects for other people and during those lean days was refused a bank loan—the rejection letter is framed in his office.

It’s there for good reason. The company is now a $19 million powerhouse with more than 400 employees and subsidiaries in Europe and India. But as his vice president of business development, Charles L. Erdrich, says, GSA has helped the company’s momentum considerably.

“We had worked with the government prior to getting the GSA Schedule, so it wasn’t a springboard or a trigger, but it certainly helped prospective customers see what we were offering and charging,” Erdrich says. “They could go online and learn about us at their site. Yeah, it provided quite a vehicle for us to sell to other agencies.”

And the more federal agencies that GSA helped Avineon work with, the easier it was to attract other government entities. Some of their government contracts include the IRS, the Department of Interior, South Florida Water Management District, the U.S. Mint, and the Naval Sea Systems Command.

Nobody starts working with the GSA quickly. It won’t happen overnight or even in a fortnight. Suzanne Fuller is in the Baltimore office at Global Lead Management Consulting, an international diversity consultancy, headquartered in Cincinnati, Ohio, and she’s been working for about 18 months to get listed on the GSA Schedule, although she expects the firm to be approved any day now. Eighteen months, incidentally, is a typical length of time for getting approved with GSA.

“It’s very labor-intensive,” says Fuller. “Even if an organization decided to outsource the application, which we have, it’s still labor-intensive. The requirements are stricter than they ever have been, ever since 9/11 and then Katrina, where there was a lot of abuse in the system. They’ve been tightening up the requirements. You have to know the right way to word something. Even just a couple of words could make a difference.”

There are workshops that show people how to fill out their GSA applications, notes Fuller, but even then, “I think you have to work with someone who knows how to do it. It’s not an easy process.” She says that the firm that her company has hired to do the application is full of former GSA administrators, “people who do this day-in and day-out, and know how to build a case so it won’t be rejected.” Even with the contractor, Fuller says that she has worked 10 to 15 hours a week in the application process— with the help of two interns.

But the rewards could make all of the toil and trouble worthwhile. “Even if we get just a few clients, it could mean millions of dollars,” says Fuller. What sort of projects might they do? Well, if the Department of Defense is looking for sexual harassment training, they might employ Global Lead Management Consulting. Of course, they might not, adds Fuller. They might hire some other diversity consulting firm. And that’s why “you have to market to the government,” says Fuller. “The GSA has vendor outreach fairs, and I know there are trade magazines that offer leadership breakfast series, and we’re developing an online ad to go to prospective clients.”

Fuller says that the outreach fairs or some type of event are more important than you’d suspect in these days of digital. “I’ve found that a lot of people like it when you show up at the events, and you get face time. That’s how you distinguish yourself from all the companies on the list. And hopefully once you get to know some of these people, you’ll do work for them, and you’ll continue to. People like doing business with whom they know, and as long as you’re doing quality work, usually they’ll support you. But you have to be strategic, even more so than on the private sector side, because it’s like going through a maze. You have to know the rules of engagement, and where to go and who to talk to.”

For instance, she says that if you’re looking to get a government contract, it’s really not the head of the agency you should be conversing with, it’s the contract officer and the program manager— they make the decisions. Or cozy up with the people in GSA’s Office of Small Business Utilization, because they’re often making suggestions to the contract officer and program manager.

And that’s when you begin to see how right Amtower is. It’s not for everyone. “Can you spend the time and effort and money in this market for 18 months before you begin to get your first contract?” asks Amtower. The flip side: “Once you’re in the market, if they like what you do, you’ll have people who will be pretty much wedded to you. They can tell you how they’ll be buying in the immediate and medium-term.”

Not the long-term, though, Amtower cautions. Things change, like laws, lawmakers, and parties in power.

Of course, the same can be said for the private sector, and in the end, one has to remember that government agencies aren’t all that different from any other company, asserts Dr. Joseph Kayne, Cintas professor of entrepreneur at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio. “Just as any business shouldn’t have a customer that’s 80 or 90 percent of their business, my advice would be not to look at a single federal agency as your source of revenue. You don’t want a single federal contract being such a dominant part of your business that you’re solely dependent on their survival for your survival.”

He adds that when it comes to working through the GSA, “don’t approach it any differently than you approach any other customer. It’s important to be the best and show a dramatic difference why you should be the provider of services and goods, compared to your competition.”

Of course, one might wonder, with all the hurdles to get into the government sector, and if it’s not all that different from private enterprise, why bother? And that’s where Amtower really begins to get excited. “If you’re willing to invest the time, there is no other market than the government that can literally say they’re recession-proof. And it’s absolutely a cool game. There’s nothing bigger. Hollywood has its glamorous sets and its backless gowns, while all we have in the government market is money. And if you like money, be here.”