Ultimate Lead Guide - Finding Government Contracts

Government is our 4th installment in our Ultimate Lead Guide series. Aside from our Winning With Marketing series, be sure to also check out:

The Introduction
Schools
Places of Worship
Medical Offices
Office Buildings
Car Dealerships
Banks
Gyms (coming 8/14/24)

The purpose of this Finding Leads series is to find leads. It's not meant to find clients which would take an extra step to market to those leads. That said, most of our government clients came to us thanks to SEO. Because SEO is an inbound marketing tactic, I'm not going to add that as a way to find leads. I did want to mention that because all of our later government clients came because they found us on the web. Our recent government contracts were through the USDA, National Park Service, and the State Department and we won them because they googled for a cleaning service and they found us. In addition, we also had the Veterans Administration, the USPS, George Mason University Health Department, Loudoun County government, The Architect of the Capitol (for US Botanic Garden) and Town of Vienna all reached out thanks to SEO, though we lost or passed on these bids. At least on the three government we won, they were temporary gigs only and were not long-term contracts. Oh, and if you didn't see a pattern, I live in the Washington, DC area. 

So tactics aside to win new business, here is my guide on finding government leads to begin with...

Generally we found leads through 1) Published RFPs, 2) Published RFQs, 3) Received ITBs, 4) SAM.gov 5) State Procurement Lists, 6) County, City, Town Procurement Lists, 7) Government Contractors, and 8) 3rd-Party referral,  9) Government employee referral, and 10) Internet Search

Before I begin, I want to define a government lead. It's any entity, paid for by the public, that has a facility that needs to be cleaned (hopefully by you). Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) are not government-based. Examples include the International Red Cross, Organization of American States, World Wildlife Fund, Doctors Without Borders, etc. However, some of these rely on the government and go through a bidding process similar to the government in some cases. We've received Invitations to Bid from a couple of these and the process to win them was the same as winning government bids. 

Published Request for Proposal (RFP)

Usually, by law, if there are ongoing contracted work a government entity or agency will publish a Request for Proposal. They are soliciting the public (you and me) for bids (proposals) so as to compile different options by which to choose a victor to clean that location. I'm broad with this answer here, but I'll show how to find them in a minute. 

Published Request for Qualifications (RFQ)

Sure RFPs are a great way to solicit bids, but some people chase after new contracts without having any experience or any knowledge of the full scope of services. So, contracting officers will publish first a RFQ. They want to know from you your experience as a cleaner before they allow you to bid on the RFP. For example, if the RFP is for a 2,000,000 sqft multi-building facility and the biggest property to date is 100,000 sqft, then you're not ready to clean a property of that size. They'll send out the RFQ to see your experience, sometimes they'll ask for certified financials, and certainly they'll ask for references. They want to know that your experience matches their qualifications. Again, we'll circle back on finding these.

Received Invitations to Bid (ITB)

Early in this blog post I referenced SEO. Everyday there are contracting officers looking for cleaning companies like yours to invite you to bid on their RFP. We received these requests on the regular. They'd reach out and generally email us or they'll mail us a package with the RFP or RFQ enclosed. Simply put: it's an invite. Kinda like a party....but not quite. Not every agency uses these and, in my experience, it wasn't super common, but there's nothing like a large government entity (or NGO) reaching out asking if you'd like to bid.

SAM.gov

It's FREE. It's easy. It's your one-stop shop for all things published federal RFPs. You can go in, for free, and register your business. Once registered, you can search by NAICS code (start with 561720 for cleaning) and search by your service area. And viola! If you save that search you'll always get alerted to new bid opportunities. 

What's a federal building? It's any federal property. These would be military facilities, federal courts, federal prisons, federal park facilities, etc. I'm in the Washington, DC area and every so many buildings here are federal and include many of the museums, the US Capitol, the Library of Congress, Federal Reserve Board Buildings, Ronald Reagan Building, Old Executive Office Building, Congressional Buildings (e.g. Hart, Longworth, Cannon, etc.), and many others. Any federal cleaning RFP would be in support of cleaning these properties. All of these are available on SAM.

State Procurement Lists

SAM only provides federal opportunities. If you want to work with your state or with the states you do business in, you need to register for that state. In the screenshot above, I simply googled "state procurement site" and right away you can see official sites for Pennsylvania, Arizona, Louisiana, Georgia, Ohio, and North Carolina. Super easy. To hone your search, google "________ procurement" or "doing business for _____" and enter your state's name and it'll pop right up. Make sure the link is from the government (usually indicated by a DOT GOV extension). There are 3rd-party aggregates and providers who do provide RFPs, but usually they charge you for this information. This information is always FREE. Never pay for it.

Every state is different. Every process within these states differ. I haven't visited all 50 states' sites to see how each work, so it may take some navigating. I can speak for Virginia. We simply registered, we saved a search like SAM, and you get alerted to new opportunities. 

What type of opportunities can you find in state RFPs? You can find DMVs, state prisons, state offices (e.g. unemployment office, labor board, etc.), public colleges and universities, state museums, etc. 

County, City, Town Procurement Lists

Hopefully by now you see a pattern. There are properties at the federal level. There are properties at the state level. But there are also properties on your local level. These local-governed offices and facilities are not part of the federal government or the state government. Like with state facilities, you need to do the same thing on the county level, your city level, or others like towns or townships, parishes (shout out to my Louisiana peeps), or whatever they are called local to you. 

To find these, google "Doing business for ________" or "_______ procurement" and see what pops up. Generally there is a DOT GOV extension, but not always. There are some local government to me that still operate through the mail only. But look around and the available options will keep you very busy. 

To give an example of the different levels, I live in Fairfax County. There are plenty of federal opportunities here as mentioned. And I have two states (Virginia and Maryland) and the District of Columbia to work with. But locally, there are multiple counties I can do business in. These include Arlington County, Fairfax County, Loudoun County, Prince William County, Fauquier County, and the same for Maryland with Montgomery, PG, and others. Who I reach out to would depend on my service area, right? Aside from county level, you have cities and these include Alexandria, Fairfax City, Towns of Vienna or Herndon, Falls Church, and more on the Virginia side and Rockville, Silver Spring, Frederick, Baltimore, etc. for city-level decision and procurements. 

Properties at these levels include city halls, community centers, public gathering areas, parking facilities, libraries, schools (sometimes), city/county offices, and much more. 

Government Contractors

Government contractors were a big source of cleaning opportunities. There are cleaning companies out there actively winning bids but they're looking to subcontract these opportunities to others. Sometimes their motivation is to scale. Sometimes they win with the promise they'll hire a certified firm like HUBZone, 8(a), Woman-Owned Small Business, MBE, etc. Check out resources from the Small Business Administration on obtaining various certifications. But many contracts require a set-aside for these certified businesses and that may be an advantage to get into these contracts, as a subcontractor at least. We're not certified but we are always contacted by government contractors asking if we are.

Aside from the above, we had contracts with government contractors who were not in the business of cleaning whatsoever, but they referred us to various other contractors for RFP opportunities on the government level. Once you win the trust of a government contractor, they will refer you again and again and again (provided you do a great job).

Third Party Referrals

We are always contacted, daily, by 3rd parties offering to help us find government contracts. I'm contacted through email every single day as well as through LinkedIn. Most of the time, these are scams. If you look on the various cleaning Facebook groups you see this happening all the time. Buyer beware. 

However, there are some 3rd-party referrals that are legit. I had a fellow dad at our kids' school who was a former government contracting officer who broke out on his own. He had a ton of contacts with different government agencies and was a wealth of knowledge with who's who in the DC area. We used him to help us with responding to RFPs and responding to them in the past. 

Government Employee referrals

It was my experience that once we completed a government job, representatives of that agency as government employees, were eager to refer our business to others. Certainly once you get in and clean, go back have those convos. Ask for reviews. And ask if they know of any other facility within their agency our outside of their agency that needs help with cleaning.

Google Search

This one is easy. If you google "cleaning RFP" and put your city name or county or state, you'll find a ton of results. Scroll up on this blog post...the first two pictures came from a simple google search and the first one is just up the highway from me. So easy to find. Play around with Google. Most of what you find will be out of date. There's a finite small window to bid. But many RFPs come back on annual, biannual, or triannual frequencies, depending on any governing law. So if you see something that came up March of 2022, then there's a chance it'll come around 2024 or 2025 and you can schedule in your calendar to google for that RFP identifier (typically a long number) and balance that off any procurement site you're registered with so you'll know when you can bid for that property again.