Are you ready for the end of the RFP era?

Pragmatics has certainly done extremely well over the last 30 years, and the federal government has benefited from their high quality service.

Unfortunately the conditions that enabled that success are fading. Federal contractors seeking to grow in the future will need to take a different approach.

Once we had the good fortune to be in business during the era of RFP-centric business development, when companies grew primarily by responding to RFPs, winning a percentage of them, and delivering good service.

But that era is ending.

In the future, companies will need to have a compelling value proposition — an explanation of exactly how government executives will benefit from engaging them — and actively market that value proposition to government customers.

Most federal contractors today lack a compelling value proposition that separates them from the competition.

Their web sites list their services and areas of expertise, and provide vague, general assertions of excellence, innovation, and quality, but fail to explain specifically how customers will benefit from buying from them.

This is unfortunate, because many companies could potentially develop great value stories that separate them from the competition, but those stories remain untapped in the heads of their employees and customers.

In the future, the best performing companies will analyze their past performance, understand exactly how they have added value for their customers, develop compelling stories based on that understanding, and then use those stories to engage federal executives, learn their specific challenges, and craft solutions that resonate.