Jim Kleckner

Although the last step in the bidding process is to submit your bid, your final step in working with the government is never to give up and to apply what you learned throughout the process to every government job opportunity.

Once you're ready to write your proposal, you must know all about the three basic types of solicitations and how to write your proposal based on what type of solicitation you're working with.

Once you have your contract and have delivered product on time and within specifications, it's time to find out how to get paid in a timely fashion.

Now that you've written your proposal, it's time to submit it to the government. Before you send it off, make sure, one last time, that everything necessary in your bid proposal is there.

When you price out your bid, you get to be the expert - but that also means a lot of responsibility. Learn what you need to know to price out your bid to the federal government.

When you want to bid on a government contract, getting the technical data you need, including specifications and drawings, is critical.

Before we address getting the bid package, read the following. If you believe that you can find one bid – that one special bid – and put all your eggs in that basket, consider this: "I've missed more than 9,000 shots in my career. I've lost almost 300 games. Twenty-six times I've...

In Step 2 we discussed finding bid opportunities. Before we dive in, it's important to note that recent statistics show that in 2003 the federal government wrote 10.9 million contracts; 23 percent went to small businesses, meaning small businesses actually got $3 billion more work than they thought they would.

So you're ready to go after the biggest customer in the world: the U.S. federal government. It's time to go to that "buyer" and "sell" your company and what it can do. But before you sell to anyone, first you need to realize whom you're dealing with. The federal government is not a single entity, but a collection of usually small buying activities that work separately to purchase or procure the items they are told to get.

Editor's Note: This is the first in a 10-part series intended to help fabricators develop a plan to obtain a government contract. This series is a follow-up to John DiGiacomo's article "Fact, fiction, and the feds: Dispelling myths about selling to the government." Several steps are necessary to...