﻿Have you been reaching out to Prime Contractors with no success? Well, you're not alone. In this
video I'm sharing five obstacles to overcome when reaching out to Prime Contractors, let's go.
Hey, welcome back to the channel. If you are looking to grow your government contracting
business, make sure you subscribe to the channel, turn on the notification bell,
so you don't miss out on any of the training that we drop right here on this channel. Now in
the video today, we're going to be talking about prime position, common obstacles,
and what you need to know before that first contract. At the end of this video,
I'll definitely put a link to how you can check out my government contract accelerator program
if you want to learn more about government contracting and take what you're learning
here in this video today to the next level, with some support from me and my community.
And I look forward to seeing you on the inside. If I haven't heard this a million times, I'm reaching
out to prime contractors, but I'm not getting any return calls or any return emails, is that you?
This is why I said you're not alone. Others before you have experienced the same thing. And
unfortunately, most contractors stay stuck right here at this step. Let's get you unstuck.
All right. So let's get into why prime contractors are avoiding your call. The first reason is
you're reaching out to the wrong person. You need to know who is the best contact person
inside of the company. Sometimes it could be the owner, the CEO, and then sometimes it could be
a project manager. Maybe it's the superintendent, or it could be anyone, but you need to figure
out who is the key person that you need to talk to inside that company that has
the pull, the leverage to bring you in. So they're able to make decisions or influence
the key decision maker like maybe the CEO on bringing you on, partnering with the company,
giving your company an opportunity on a contract. That is the person you want to talk to.
So again, it could be the CEO or someone closely connected to that decision maker
and they have influence with that person. So either they have the influence themselves,
or they're connected to the person that has the influence and they have influence input
and pull with that person. The second obstacle is, they don't know you. You go in
guns blazing asking them to, "Hey, let's partner on this opportunity that I have. And let's do
this today or next week or two weeks from now." Pump your brakes, that's too soon. You need to
nurture the relationship first, get to know them, allow them to get to know you. I had a client
a couple years ago, or maybe it was last year. I can't remember. But anyway, he was so baffled
that he reached out to this company, he had this contracting opportunity before him.
It was a good fit for this company and he wanted to partner with them on this opportunity. So he
sent everything over to them and he was waiting to hear back, and waiting to hear back. Of course, he
never heard back and he couldn't understand why. This is why, you can't just find a company and
send over this opportunity and say, "Hey, let's partner on this." And think they're going to just
jump through some hoops number one, and look at the opportunity and say, Okay, let's partner." You
do know looking at a solicitation one takes time, putting together a bid takes time. And then also
they didn't know each other and so that company didn't respond at all. I knew why they didn't,
but my client couldn't understand why they didn't. So of course we had to change that. So definitely
make sure you're nurturing the relationship. Allow them the opportunity to get to know you. Now we do
cover this in phase five of my government contract accelerator program where we talk about business
development, but also in phase four, we talk about those teaming relationships as well.
The third obstacle is certifications. A lot of you guys think that you don't need your
certifications. Now I'm here to tell you, yes, you can win a contract without having a certification,
just depending on what the requirements are. You can become a subcontractor on a contract
without certifications as well. But if you have an advantage, why not use it? So I'm not saying
you don't need your certifications, don't get your certifications. What I'm saying is you can
get a contract without it, but for the purposes of reaching out to a prime contractor and leveraging
what you bring to the table, you want to have all the certifications for which you qualify because
understand, prime contractors on larger contracts, they are required to sub out a portion of the
work to small businesses, woman-owned, service disabled vet, HUBZone, and the like. So make sure
you have all the certifications for which you qualify and then leverage them.
I want you to comment below, have you been reaching out to prime contractors with no success?
A simple yes or no will do. Yes or no. No or yes. Let us know in the comments. Now let me
tell you. I had one student and there were many, but one in particular, I want to focus on here
that they reached out to me. And this was before they joined my program, reached out and they had
reached out to over 50 companies with no success. And they couldn't understand why
they weren't getting responses. Hence what I've already shared with you is one of the reasons why,
but here's the thing I was like, "Are you kidding? You've reached out to 50 companies and you've had
no replies, no nothing, no kiss my butt. No, we're not interested. Nothing." Because to me,
after a few, five to 10, if you're sending emails, a light bulb should have come on and said, "Hey,
I need to do something different." Now here's the other thing,
reaching out to these prime contractors, it tells me if they reached out to 50 real quickly,
that it was something generic that they sent out. You want to make sure
when you're reaching out to these prime contractors that you are making it so,
the conversation is unique to them, unique to that company. So you don't want to have a
template that you're using. Now, you can have a template that you tweak for every prime contractor
that you're reaching out to, for sure. You know that way you have a framework of what you're going
to use, but you don't want to send all the prime contractors the exact same thing. Because then
it's not cultivating the relationship between you and them and it's not nurturing and focusing on
them and what they need and what you bring to the table for them. So you have to learn the
companies that you're reaching out to, which is why I don't see how you could reach out to 50
right away. I'm just saying. And I just want to say this,
reaching out to these prime contractors is really about building relationships that are mutually
beneficial and outrageously profitable. And let me tell you, it's all about quality over quantity.
If you can get the quality, that'll be fine. It's not about quantity when reaching out and
building these mutually beneficial relationships, because I can tell you one, can be a game changer.
And if you get in the game and you do it right, you probably only need maybe three max,
but a lot of times, one is enough. Number four is your business foundation.
A lot of you guys are reaching out to prime contractors and you don't have your foundation
set. Either, you're lacking something in your business foundation, or you're lacking something
in your government foundation. Those are the beginning stepping stones of what you're going
to build your government contracting business on. So you need to have those things in place.
So I'm talking about, you may not have a business entity set up, you don't have a business bank
account set up, you're not registered to do business with the government.
All of these things tell a potential partner, a potential prime, a potential contracting officer
that you're not really serious about your business yet. Because you haven't put the
foundational things in place. And yes, we cover this in phase one of my government contracting
program, my government contract accelerator, because it's so important that you have a solid
foundation that you're building on. It's just like a house. If the foundation is not solid,
it will crumble. It's just like a relationship, if you don't have a solid
foundation built around your relationship, it will crumble. Same thing with your business. So having
your business foundation set, speaks volumes. The fifth thing is resources. I always talk about
resources and that is something you want to make sure you're always building in your business,
resources. As you grow, you're going to need more resources. You take it to the next level,
more resources. Now here's what the obstacles will be. A lot of times you don't have the resources as
far as being able to do the work. Maybe you're lacking money, you don't have the financial
backing that you need to perform on the project. Either, you don't have any workers at all,
or you don't have enough workers to play at the level of the contracts that are coming out or
that the prime contractor would give to you. Or maybe you lack experience. I've had people come
and they just pick stuff out of the air, I guess. I don't know. But they pick a type of business or
they want to do a particular type of government contracts because it makes a lot of money,
but they have no experience in that area. That doesn't go together, come on now. And so they lack
experience in the field of government contracting that they're trying to get into. So if that's
the case, you need to back it up, rethink your strategy and figure out what's your best approach
and what do you have to offer to the government that you have some type of knowledge about.
There you have it: why prime contractors avoid your call and how you can turn it
around and get them to start answering your phone calls and your emails.
Now, if you'd like more help in creating your strategy and your approach to government
contracting and reaching out to these prime contractors, definitely check out my government
contractor accelerator program. Again, we cover what we talked about here today in phase four
and phase five, which is partner and pace inside of the government contractor accelerator program.
I will put the link down below for you guys. Now, for those of you that
you've been hanging out here for a while with me and you haven't subscribed to my channel,
why not? Don't you think it's time that we partner on your government contracting journey.
Go ahead, subscribe to the channel, turn on the notification bell and all of you guys,
like this video. And remember you are just one contract away. Bye for now.