 All right, we're live Hey All right, we are alive. Hello everyone. Hello all Judy's here Judy, how are you? So glad to have this time with you and your awesome community. It's so much fun to do these conversations and I love hearing the news No, no, that's great Let's make sure everyone can hear us. Can you hear us? I know there's a lag a couple seconds lag, but if you can hear us give us a thumbs up wave your hands Let us know that you can hear us, please. I See my face on the screen. Hi all. Hello. I see Maria and mr. Chill and Nikki Hey Yolanda welcome All right, are we here? Are we in the right place? Hey Yolanda good to see you again All right, Yolanda can hear mr. Chill can hear you welcome back. All right All right, Nikki says ready for some truth nuggets from Judy. She brings it every time Thanks guy. You you bring it out of me. You ask great questions and your community challenges me So it's a really great back and forth. I just love it. I in fact, I told Judy today to Put the smack down on you guys. I said feet. Don't be easy on them I Do not be easy on them today. Make them do some challenging activities some work. All right We will so get your get out a piece of paper and something to write it with and we're gonna do a little bit of A little bit of drawing today because we're gonna be talking about the idea that the business That you want could be as close as the palm of your hand Nice nice nice and before we do that grab your papers grab your pens. I have mine I'm taking my notes. Look at that. Okay, so I have my stuff on the screen. I'm ready to go My notes my date Blank page. I'm ready for Judy today. Okay. I'm taking notes as well. I'm a student We're ne It's you're never too old to learn. You never have too much information Um, we're always always always always have an open mind and again They say that First you're a student and so I'm a student today. Judy. Can I be your student? I would be honored the um, you sort of there's a whole thing about the uh, when the Student is ready. The teacher appears and I think it's also the true the other way around when the teacher is ready The student appears so I'm so glad to be here with everyone today. I love it. I love it I love it and while we're waiting for some more people to come on board Just again for everyone out there. I always say use this like a conference All right, there's 30 people here on the room so far We're probably gonna get up to around a hundred people in a few minutes So definitely let us know again. We see your names on here But tell us your industry and the city and state where you're from And just like a private tutorial. We've got People who have come back again. This is our fourth session together And so, you know, there were always some questions that we didn't quite get to So if you've got something that's on your mind today about how you track down The leads where business comes from that's what i'm all about So tell us about the topic. Tell us again. What does that topic mean? Sure five federal lead sources you need to know starts with thinking about the idea What is a lead? Eric you're a savvy multi-million dollar successful business owner What do you think of when you think of a lead in business terms? How do you define a lead in business terms? Oh, when I when I define a lead Yep um What is it it's something That is taking me one step closer to Closing a deal Okay, so I I I'll you said that we should challenge our folks here today. So if you're here and you're listening Let's drop it in the chat What does a business lead mean? How would you define a business lead? Let's see in the chat what you've got Because I've got a really specific idea in mind, but I'm always curious When you think about it What's a business lead? By the way, I I only see nicky's the only person that followed instructions and put her information in there. Thank you, nicky Where's I see trish is on here. I see eddie's on here maria's on here Okay, mr. Chills on your land is on here. What is it? Who's following instructions? Excellent. There you go. All right. Let's follow some instructions and All right, that's power great Industries logistics All right What else who else is in here? Tony this is before you ask for nicky's information. You got to tell us who you are and what you do Yeah, this isn't a dating channel Come on guys. Tell it. Listen. We want to know about your business who you are There's maria the lead someone or something that has an opportunity to grow your business. You know, all right Maria I like that very much. So let's start here because maria. Did you google that with your big old tree? I'll take that research is good. I didn't ask you had to make it up out of your head. So that's fair That's fair. So a lead. I think of think of a lead In terms of detective stories. All right, so if you're listening you're online with us Just drop in the chat the name of one of your favorite detectives you're Whether it's a television current television series or it's Lupin or her cure paro or Colombo, who's your favorite detective real or historical? Do you have Detectives or detective series. Hold on. Hold on. Hold on. Hold on. Hold on. Hold on. Hold on. You know what? I did used to watch a show with a detective on it Mm-hmm um Matlock Matlock great olivia from lawn order. Thank you very much exactly For many years, I would watch and cis lots of fun. Yep pink panther. Yeah, why not? Who's that pink panther? I don't see that in here. Wow, white and blue. Yes. All right. There you go Or Magnum or new magnum. You've got the whole ensemble cast of blue bloods. Here's why that matters to all of us whether the detectives are putting their heads together in The bar room the squad room the bedroom They're trying to put together what they talk about as leads There they're trying to piece together. What was the story? in espionage terms you hear human intelligence electronic intelligence signals intelligence And human intelligence is very much a part of what we're collecting as business owners When we're trying to piece together stories of who's our buyer and where is that opportunity? in my books a lead In business terms is someone whose position An activity opens the possibility Provides you with some kind of intelligence or information that can lead to opportunity And so a lead is not something that gets pumped out of guvwin or something that is a A line item in a forecast a lead is a human being Really important and so start there So we're going to talk about five federal lead sources You need to know because it's your community. I'm going to give you one big bonus one All right, the short answer Is to start where you are Did you know about the 12x rule? Eric No, what's a 12x rule? 12x rule is this Someone who has already paid you money is 12 times more likely to Do that again Be a purchase for you then somebody who's never heard of you Okay, so your best leads are the people who already know you Like you trust you and have paid you money. These are the people who pay you on time Come back for more. Okay, send their friends They know when your birthday is your picture is on their refrigerator Though that's your that's your a list of current clients, right? Right Right and so Easiest lead Is follow-up conversations Just like the one you were telling me about when we were getting things set up You just actually managed to get some really up close and personal time with your client by getting him the heck out of town Where he couldn't be interrupted right not everybody can or needs to do that But I would bet that lots of people Don't spend as much time as we would like to With our cherished clients the people that we know we like we've enjoyed working with them And it's been a while because we've been so busy out and about and developing other business The first lead source you can tap are the people who are your current clients. What kind of Regular touch regular nurture regular contact what kinds of things have you learned Eric to stay in touch With say the the 20% of your clients who represent the 80% of your referral and return business You know, that's actually a good question Judy because I I think that I've done um A poor job at that before in the past um with the federal agencies I've done a better job because you know When we're on projects I kind of always stop by and say hi and give them progress updates on what we're doing So I'll pop in the office and let them know i'm on site today things like that I'll just stop in and say hey our guys are out there working, you know, just saying quick hi and then i'll leave That's what I that's what I that do for the federal clients because i'm really That's an area where i'm not sure what you can and can't do with the government agencies. Okay That's a great conversation to have it is a great conversation to have I probably feel have the same concerns and fears there are and Here's a couple of things and you know It's really true that sometimes our federal buyers are just as afraid of us as we are of them I will say that bookmark or jot down a note to Take a skim through federal acquisition regulation part three on ethics Part far part three is where you'll find The details and what you can and can't give To a federal buyer And that would be a great topic to come back and talk about maybe a little closer to Thanksgiving among my favorite times to talk about Gift giving to your federal buyers There are so many things you can Give your current clients to show appreciation And these things don't cost a cent And are completely within the bounds of far part three and will leave you Unforgettable and top of mind so there a conversation for another day Okay, okay, and so your current clients are a great source of business Leads you already know them. You know what they like so the first source of a lead is to go back and not only say Hi, i'm in the neighborhood, but Sit and think for a minute What Do you have to pick up a conversation? With that individual person What's going on in their life right now? Have they got a vaccine? Are they thinking and not getting a vaccine? Do they have kids somewhere else? Do they have parents out of town? How's everybody doing? easy Conversations to just reconnect with people Show them you've been thinking of and then you care about them and so You want to be thinking about what does a win look like? For your current client Where else might they need to want to go with their program and also with their professional career? Come bringing things for them show them that you care about them There might be an article an invitation to a webinar. You might be hosting something And so there might be a link to a report Maybe an industry Survey or something exciting that's coming up Share those things with them give them things that they can share with their colleagues So they can be the smart person who knows things and passes them around So that's a little bit of some ideas for how to reconnect with your current clients now One of the things that makes people feel uncomfortable is what if they say I don't need anything right now? breathe One of the things you can write this phrase down. I love this My coach Joan Fletcher many years ago gave this idea to me She says My business is growing and I'm looking for new projects. Wow. Who wouldn't want to talk to you, right? That's exciting. My business is growing. I like that. I'm looking for new projects If you were me, who would you be talking to? Who do you know who might like to have that same? Extraordinary experience that my team and I give you Now you can tell the difference between Your really good clients and your truly great clients because the one that responds saying oh Let me introduce you to Sarah and Joe And Joe As opposed to oh, I know some people you should call Sarah and Joe see the difference right sure Wonderful and so being able to make that easier see Give me a name of one of your clients just a first name Somebody like Rachel so Rachel does not wake up in the morning saying I must go and take a big bucket of cash and dump it on Eric's head now Rachel should do this Should she not? Yes, but Rachel has to learn to do that So you have to encourage her to do that and so Instead you want to make that a little easy for Rachel. You can start the conversation like we talked about Gee if you were me, who would you be talking to and then you show Rachel a list Rachel I've been researching the people in the next office and in programs similar to yours Here's the people I've been looking at if you were me, where would you start? You're making it easy for her, right? Absolutely right time so Starting with the client that you know and additional needs they have other people that might be top of mind for them and Other people that you're asking them to take a look and offer some hints or intelligence on a list you've developed And that's all in the first In the first circle so on your sheet of paper I want you to draw a center circle And I want you to call it current clients Okay, I'm going to draw some here too. Although I have all these markers and I put them all somewhere else So draw one circle Have my circle clients Okay next circle out next circle out Is a group of people they haven't paid you money, but they're Contacts now people so many people walk away From this layer the contacts are the people that include somebody that you Made a proposal to and it wasn't successful. Do you ever call those people back, Eric? Oh, yeah, they didn't I do Sure, I bet you're smart enough to get a debriefing, right? Of course Of course and all my people all my people I get debriefings, right guys Right, of course they do you're you're part of you're part of the coffeeverse. Of course you do you guys you guys I'll get the briefings correct. Yes thumbs up. Yes. Yes. Yes hands up. We all get the briefings Yeah, yes Now do you I am and another hint be sure to get a debriefing even when you win For one thing it shows humility For another thing unless you ask you don't know whether you won by a length Or by a hair What if you are the one that you won on a technicality and everybody in the room is holding their nose going to We have to have that guy You want to know that No one ever submits a perfect proposal You always want to know what could we do better? We want to be the very best vendor from start to finish who's ever worked with you And so imagine what that says about your ability to pay attention to details to listen to really care about the results And so back to the contacts layer contacts might not have bought something from you Your contacts might be people who you find their information On one of the other Sources of contract data you might be these might be the people who are Whose business cards that you have that you've never called them. You've never Gotten back in touch with them. You met them at the conference and it was a year ago and pandemic and you're so embarrassed You're going I don't want to call these people. It'll be you know what? They were also in the same pandemic. I promise you They have also had their world turned upside down When somebody calls you out of the blue Eric, do you feel Grateful or resentful? Oh, no, if someone goes with the blue, I I feel grateful. I don't feel special Exactly. So in fact someone coming out of the blue today and I was just telling Marie and I were talking about that today Someone called me out the blue Yeah, so they're probably going to be glad to hear from you're shaking up the world a little bit Who knows what might happen what you might have for them? And of course if you've done your job, you're coming with some catnip Again, bring a thing. You're probably if you're an ad company that's actively Marketing you've got maybe some new product information Maybe a link to again an article a webinar. You're hosting a thing You've got something to ask them about and so you come bringing come to the party bringing something and so Get back in touch with those folks even if They didn't buy from you if you submitted a proposal you've shown them your very best They're going to remember you for good reasons Even a really successful company in federal contracting Has maybe a 20 or 30 win rate a lot of the time So of course you're going to lose some A lot of the time the buyer wants you to stay in the game if only you're Talking to them and building the relationship. So you're going to come back and play again And again rather than pasting your bids all over creation And so the contacts then there are people that you have met once they haven't bought from you There's all kinds of nurture to be going on in the contacts Layer Okay, let's let's reset just because we got some more people coming online as we talk So let's go ahead and reset first of all if you're new you're welcome to the site You just came on to our channel. Let us know who you are. Let us know where you're from and your company What is it that you do always always always use this opportunity to again promote yourself promote your business The people are going to be watching this for years to come Let us know who you are and what you do and when someone's watching this video two years from now They may just want to connect with you fortunately For us those of us who have the privilege of being on here live Take advantage of the opportunity to ask questions while you have us here This is not always going to be available And if you have the the time and you're able to come on take advantage make sure to give us a thumbs up Leave comments ask questions. We want this to be interactive not a one-way streak. Is that fair judy? It sure is and by the way, maybe maria can drop this link in the chat now Sometimes some people can only stay up for a little bit of time or they can go or they go Can't you write this down? Isn't there a power point somewhere? One of the things that I do is some teaching and recorded on demand courses through another organization called govology Govology has a number of my classes and one of them is called five federal lead sources You need to know it's a fresh recording and it's going to be posted on demand available starting march 25th and so if you put the link there anybody can go and access that and get a full detailed PowerPoint we're getting almost the Whole hour of really what would be the q&a part of that and we're doing that live here, which is great But get all the substance of five federal lead sources. You need to know from the link at govology So thank you maria for dropping that in the in the chat Excellent excellent excellent and again like I said, um, so we're talking about five federal lead sources On your paper and pen the first thing we're supposed to do is draw a circle Okay, judy show let me put you big on the screen judy All right, she drew her first circle. It says client and then the next circle outside of that is contacts See Does anyone else circle look like judy's? No, mine don't Well, that's okay. It's yours when you write it down that makes a big difference So you have clients and then you have contacts right now One of the things I absolutely encourage people do is shift the question you're asking in the federal arena from Instead of asking what can I bid? start looking For the answer to the question who is my buyer and one of the Easiest places to start Is to use differently The source of intelligence that you can find on beta dot sam dot gov soon to be just playing sam dot gov One of the biggest mistakes people make is to look at contract notices Sources sought requests for information and look at those things and go what can I bid today? Stop doing that instead It remember that if you see one of those notices and there's less than 30 days before the bid deadline And you don't know the buyer and you don't know the budget and you don't know the incumbent And you don't know the history your odds of winning are in the single digits the smartest thing you can do is to extract The point of contact information from that bid notice And start there because one of the other things that you and I have have on our slate of discussion is players at all the layers Point of contact that is listed in that bid notice is somewhere usually in either the contracting Layer or the end user layer. There are starting points. So you can start to build out the full set of five Layers with players at each and so contract bid contact bid contract contact notices Are really helpful places to pull out intelligence about who's actively buying These days the kinds of things that I offer And so those notices are incredibly valuable Okay, and when you start there then that kind of Pops us out to some other sources. So when your next source of intelligence tells you that a specific person Is connected in some way with buying what you do Then you can really dig in and say what else can I find out about this person? Because they clearly represent A lead. What else can we find out about who they know? Who they buy from? How often they've purchased? Who else works alongside them you can start to build out the story. What do you think of that as the next layer out? Why do you think contacts? Mm-hmm, and then contract notices Okay Okay, so that's the next circle Okay So, what do you think about that idea using your circle? Let me just make sure we're make sure our circles are the same Hold on There it is. Okay. All right. We're good now. Okay. I see it. Okay. Good. All right. So here we are Contract notices. That's the next one. Okay. So you think of it as organic ripples out all right each ripple Starts to move To the next level of intelligence. All right Now next ripple out then you can start to tap into Federal employee Directories you don't want to start an employee directory and go fishing you want to go hunting You want to be very specific about who you're tracking down and why because now you know some things about them And so you might have a name or a partial email address and so How often Eric have you gone and looked for a federal agency's employee directory? Oh I mean, um Probably less than 5% maybe 2% really wow. I'm really surprised so it for me. No, well I really think this is not a critical thing. All right. I say how cool I'm really glad to bring back on to your radar something that and it's of all of the other things you're doing That one might have kind of fallen off the side a little so it makes me really happy to bring you back a little bit of something into the spotlight Yeah, no, I um Yeah, I I mean I've I haven't gotten a federal directory Well, do you do business with say or want to and who here on the call would love to do business with the Department of Health and Human Services Anybody do you know anybody in your in your community that you know, that's really important Nikki probably wants to work with hhs. Okay. Where are my people who want to work with hhs? Just drop it in the chat. Who wants to work with healthy human services? Yeah senators from medicare and medicaid food and drug administration national institutes of health and probably Where's our hhs people? If hhs Is one of the agencies where you want to do business Your tax dollars and mine have created the single best employee directory of any federal agency If you have not looked up The employee directory in an agency where you want to do business you better believe your competition has They're in there With any of the employee directories. There's no one place you can go now in the government of Canada Oddly enough there is they have one big central online employee directories. Real nice. No, not here And and there's a lot of places that you can pay money for this subscription and that subscription But a lot of the time it only goes down to a certain level really senior public levels right in the ooey gooey really hard to do and so Every single agency They've got a small business page And that's a good starting point, but you can go to the top level of the agency or department site and work down now The amount of data and the level of detail really varies health and human services is one of the best It's a lot more challenging to try to Hunt around if you're looking for specific contacts in the department of veterans affairs, for example Right a lot tougher state department. They got a pdf. It's not bad. It's not nothing The other one's general services and ministry. It kind of comes and goes but there can be some really good employee directory information there HHS you're gonna get If you've got a listing you're likely to not only get a person's name and A street or mailing address and mail stop very important phone number email address title entire collection of wiring diagram of a part of Identifiers of what section and group they're in But in health and human services sometimes it'll also say contractor Helpful because then you know that person is almost dual-headed. They have a dot gov Email address, but they've probably got a dot com with their other identity So it's something else to track down All right, so employee directories if you haven't looked go look Right, so employee directories are the next one. So here's our next part of our diagram. There we go. All right, hold on Okay now employee director Now when we go to the employee directory, what are we looking for? You're starting with somebody's name. Maybe first name. Maybe last name one of the things that we may have talked about before is that when you do Research into past federal contract records. We talked about contract notices. So I was referring to beta dot sam dot gov Notices about things coming up for competition another source that I could spend all day talking about and we're not diving too deep into now Is past federal contract records on the federal procurement data system? or the contract data section Of sam dot gov rather than the contract opportunities part, which we had been mentioning Okay, the federal government collects over 300 different fields of data on every transaction That is based on a contract estimated to be worth more than 25 000 and that data goes back over 30 years I have found stuff available for free Online right now that goes back to 1988 my first years of federal contracting padawan and so When you look at the fields their data fields include an entry for Who created the record? Okay, approved the contract who modified that data record Sometimes you'll get a full email address that's usable Other times you'll get a partial email address or one with funny characters stuck in it You know it ends in mill but there's a bunch of weird stuff in the middle So you start to look at the patterns of the email addresses. You realize you got to drop that stuff out health and human services He has a great employee directory, but the created by approved by modified by fields will have HHS a smith That's it. Well, you know that it's hhs So take that part off a you realize it's the first initial and then smith You can go over to the employee directory take a smith plug it in and see Who's which of the a smiths in the directory are involved in buying what you do? So you're doing detective work. It's kind of fun. Yeah, you feel real smart doing it Which is why I like it It makes me feel like an evil genius and so Employee directories then are your next place to start to track down some details Because once you have one person you want to find out who else works with that person In their department in their unit in their office and start to build out Who are all the people who have job titles? That correspond to the kinds of business cards the kind of job titles the people who typically need what I do Have give me some job titles Eric of the of the kinds of people who buy From you who do business with you in the federal arena For me, particularly we work with engineers We work with Program but I you know depends on good keep you throw this title so engineers one direct facilities manager That might be another one, right? Right. We work construction managers Sometimes they call them project director project executives. Good. Good. Those are all people that I work with Right. So I want everybody who's listening here to drop into the chat At least one title of A typical end user who needs what you do Those are the kinds of titles that you start to search on in the employee directories and some other places Once and so we go out to the next layer And that is one of my favorites How many federal employees Let's put this in the chat. How many federal employees do you think? Have an active profile unlinked in Got a guess by the way Judy's asked this question before now we're going back to I think our first first recording So we're going to see how many people were paying attention to our very first recording And again, also, uh, there's 50 people watching this 26 likes. Give us a thumbs up, please So that we can help this content get pushed out there and shared with the world So give us a thumbs up if you haven't already done that Um, Judy's question on the table is how many active federal employees are unlinked in is that correct? Yes, it is and in the meantime while we're waiting for that Waiting for our our big winner here to get the right number I want to ask marie if you would drop into the chat the link to our govcon personas guide You've heard me talk about the players at all the layers as you're doing your research You heard me talk about you have one contact. You have to find the other ones There's players at five different layers every place you want to do business in the federal government And this is what I call my players and layers methodology And it's important to have that in mind because otherwise if you don't really know What you're looking for I love the quote that my friend Mike Oz red ker gave me when I was researching my first book. You know, he said Judy Sell into the federal government. It's like swimming in the ocean with no mile posts You're in florida eric. That's a pretty grim prospect. That's pretty grim if you if you jump out in that ocean you in trouble Exactly Yeah, and so it can be better So the players and layers methodology you want to make sure that you've identified at least one player at each of these These layers first end user. That's the one that has the job title that You know that they need what you do. They're always using what you do or consuming what you do or influencing the specifications the second one Contracting layer that includes the contracting officer Who has the power of the president of the united states does not have to legally bind Your company to the government of these united states in a contract And it also includes the contract specialist the third layer Is the small business specialist They're often cheerful cheaper full of information You might think some of it's not useful But the more work you do before you talk to them the more helpful they're going to be to you Then Stakeholder this is the head of the agency. This is often the person who's The guest speaker at a big conference. They have the big fancy title. They're actually not your buyer They're the one who gets tied to the stake and tarred and feathered if things go Tango uniform, shall we say if things go badly, they're the one who gets fired. They're the one whose job is at risk and finally Industry incumbent prime contractor A lot of the time you may need to team with them Sometimes you're going to have to get your nose under the tent and push them out But those are your five and user stakeholder contracting small business and industry so set up Your lead tracking set up your lead spreadsheet so that you can see Have I got players at all the layers When I do this so linkedin then let's come back linkedin is a tremendously valuable place to Find and we're looking at numbers of contacts. I will tell you brian. You're about halfway Leland has got it right about just uh just over two million Federal employees have current profiles on linkedin now. Some of them are not really well filled out But when you can see their profile You can find out things like what other agencies they worked at If they're in a federal civilian agency, did they also serve in the military before? Sometimes there's a hobby or school or Other interest connection that you can talk with them about it's an opening for a conversation Sometimes you can take a look and see what other positions they've had Or you can ask them some things about other places they lived or worked urban posted And so the linkedin profile can help round out the picture of who is this person as a human being And give you some other ways to ask some other questions to build a relationship with them or help them and get them to help you with your detective work and so The final one because your tribe is a really hardworking group I promise you five federal leases lead sources you need to know and i'm actually going to give you a sixth one And this one is I think most useful once you've already dug into the other layers And so the final layer is actually the google verse itself Okay, that's the final one because google is like a big fishing net federal employees most of them So some of these techniques aren't going to be as effective if the place you do business your target agencies are inside the intelligence community But your average federal employee is active They've got if they're involved in the contracting layer. They've got their name on all kinds of stuff Many of them publish papers They make presentations at conferences Once you've got a first name and a last name and they're pretty certain about a current Agency for somebody who buys what you do then you can drop them into a what I call a blunt force google query See what you get I like that one Yeah, that's a good one. That's a good one. I like that You know, it doesn't have to be hard and all of these sources work together. You're going to make multiple passes using these six sources With the goal of filling out the players at all the layers every place you want to do business That's going to help you make a good bid no bid decision Because nobody can really afford to be writing novels for strangers So Judy, let's let's rewind. I saw someone just said they came on late. Let's go back. No worries mark. We've got you All right First of all five federal lead sources. We drew out our diagrams. Can you show yours on the screen? I sure will here's our here's our diagram All right, so we drive big circle client in the middle then you have client contacts contract notices employee directories linkedin and google All right, and those are our lead sources now And those are free. These are all free You don't have to pay some big fancy database now to be honest You're going to spend time and you're going to spend money all you get to choose is the mix So sometimes spending it money on a database is a good resource decision But a lot of the time when we're getting started We may have a little more time and a lot less money And so making the most of the free things you have around the house Makes a lot of sense So now those are the lead sources now you said, uh, we've got the players and layers method. So You just went over the players I did Okay, I dropped it in the chat, but just really quickly Let's go through it just for the people that just showed up. We're gonna as a recap Sure Players and layers. Um, you want to read a recap the players at all the layers. I can do that Yeah, just recap the players. Absolutely. Um the You need to know people at five different layers sometimes multiples But if you don't have people at all five of these layers and know who they are You might not be in a really strong position to bid so five layers include Stakeholder that's the base commander the general the cabinet secretary real visible big fancy title They are not your buyer And user Woo, they're almost at the bottom of the pile. They're at the pointy end of the stick. They're the person who's Answering the calls at the help desk. They're the person who's really going to be affected by how well you perform because they're relying on you every day The quality of your product or service to support them. Okay, that's the second one Third one small business specialist. There are thousands of them. They're in every federal department and agency They have inward facing responsibilities to be accountable to the agency's small business goals and commitments And are we're facing responsibilities to help small businesses navigate and to advocate for them in the contracting process And lead them to opportunities Let's see next one industry current prime Competitors competitive mates that are out there in the world And finally contracting so contracting end users stakeholder small business prime Those are your layers And the lead sources to find them or we just went over Lead sources that are absolutely critical start where you are somebody who's already paid you money is 12 times more likely to do that again, then Somebody who's never heard of you to buy from you So all kinds of juicy conversations to have with the people who are your current Customers they bought from you next ripple out Contacts, you know them you've got their contact information from somewhere you've met them Heard of them, but they haven't actually bought something from you Get over the embarrassment of not having called in a while or not having followed up the way that you thought I invite you to my personal no guilt zone pick up the phone call them They'll be glad to hear a friendly voice all right next level out contract notices contract data that includes past contract data As well as agency forecasts as well as current notices about things that are coming up forbid and opening Instead of looking at all of those things and going what can I bid? Start asking yourself the question. Who's my buyer? Who's my federal human? What what else can I find out about that person and the people at the other four layers around them? Next layer out once you've started to identify a good lead You know that because of their activity and their title and their position That they're pointing the way to an opportunity for you and At that point it's productive to take a look at what else you can find out about them in the agency's employee Directory some people will go through the employee directory first and just pull out everybody with a job title You can also waste a lot of time that way. Who likes getting spam? No one Learn about them first. I don't I really Sometimes something will just hit me the wrong way on a day and I will just Take five minutes and bang out at things like why are you emailing me? You don't know anything about my business. You don't know anything about me and I have No interest in talking to you or your company because you didn't bother to find out anything about me Before you wrote to me now. I've killed off five minutes of my life that I could have done something else with but it really annoys me sometimes So there you go So employee directories are the next level out once you've got a couple of clues that somebody's involved in buying what you do You can find out more about the players at the other layers in their agency in their organization Next layer out then can be linked in you can take a look at somebody's Professional profile you can also see what groups they belong to who else they're connected with you can Make a connection request and for the sake of mike do not just hit the connection button Write them a note explain what you've observed why you may be useful to them What's in it for them to connect with you? Even if all they do is say connected and they never even write back to you they lurk they watch you That's very true content. That's very true. I get that all the time people. Yeah I have the uh linkedin Accelerator thing whatever it's called. I have that and I could see who watched me and I can you say I see it Yeah, your 1200 bucks a year does do some interesting things for you You can see who's been looking at you right because data shows that your average federal buyer checks you out 12 times online Before they even talk to you And if they go to your website and they don't find what they're looking for in eight seconds or less they're out of there So your website matters your online profile and your content also really matters and so connect with your folks on linkedin it's a different way to build a different facet of the relationship after you've tried the human intelligence Talking to people that you know following up on some of the other contacts that you've made you've looked at contact data You've gone into the employee directories You've plumbed the depths of linkedin at that point It makes sense to cast the bigger net and say what does google tell me about this person because lots of federal employees They publish they write power points. They write papers. They go to conferences They speak and sometimes you'll find some personal stuff out there as well I'm not suggesting that you go stalk somebody on social media, but Big fat google search brings all kinds of stuff into the net And you can start when you say I like that google search because I often say, you know what If someone just googled me they'd find out a whole lot of stuff and then And then when they google it, oh, that's you and yeah, I just google the person's name And I I can tell you when I'm researching my podcast guests. I google them and Does that mean you saw my personal blog? Of course, I saw everything about you beforehand, but actually the personal blog I was doing I started something I started doing earlier this year because I really wanted to say what does it take How can I kind of navigate that? ooey-gooey space between being all cheerful and buttoned up with lots of good advice This is kind of how I show up sometimes and scare people on your on your youtube or Big hot mess And so I decided, you know, there was only one way to find out and so Um, you can you can see a little bit of that at judy brat dot blog Um, I've been did a whole series of just sort of unbuttoning what's going on with me. What do I what am I thinking about? What are the things I'm struggling with and just trying to be really a little more Vulnerable in a really human way And it's challenging people like people like that. I can tell you um, whenever I'm vulnerable people really respond to the content And the messages so um, and that's why again, I come out humble. I don't claim to know everything I share the things that I've learned the things that I'm doing obviously. I can't teach people things that I don't know So I can only share my experiences and my stories and the things that you know I've embarked upon on my journey and I'm very I've made mistakes. I share those mistakes publicly um, and so again I think that that's that's great and people really do love it Um, I love hearing about your story. I've been waiting for you to bring like your snorkel and your mask You know, I I've been waiting for that stuff to come out. I'm still looking for it. Oh my goodness Well, I have it right across the room there But the um, you're bringing up a very good point because I'm going to be doing data diving at the end of april meantime, um, I if maria can drop something else into the chat um In addition to being a guest on Shows like yours. I also host a webinar series And so anybody who wants to get on the list for those you're welcome to our next one will be called business by association on this coming thursday april march March 25th, and we're going to be talking about ways to build your business and build relationships through the choices you make and the investments of time As well as money in the associations where you want to go play And so nice nice. We'll do we'll do those as well. Those are free And so maria drop that drop that link in the chat Um, are there I saw someone had a question out there Well more of a statement that they said they were having a hard time. I think it was trish Was that you that said I I can't find any of those contacts on linkedin And you may be able to have to be a little bit more successful by using some of the Other choices and sometimes if you use variations in somebody's title that can help a little otherwise sometimes going back to the contacts you have Right and working out from there kind of restarting a little bit instead of Jumping in at level three or four might help a little bit for sure Go ahead No, I could say for me what I've seen like like what julie mentioned If you were to for example trish, uh, if you were to befriend me You would see contacts that were related to me that were like a second tier or third tier contacts out So I think it helps like julie mentioned Even if you can't find the direct person if you can find friends of friends Or people who you know like julie has i'm sure has a big contact list Uh, i'm connected maria Yeah, if you connect with one of us then you're that much step closer Right you connect with one of us you get one step closer to those other folks out there lalani's Connected so we've got some people in the room But remember if you connect with offer a connection request say met you on gov con giants or just gcg So I don't know where you came from because otherwise What's in it for me? I don't know you exactly exactly. So definitely Um, yeah, that's true. You've got to say where and I tell people all the time Especially when you're reaching out to my podcast cast let them know where you came from So it's just not some like she said a cold request because like brian wrote. There's a lot of linkedin lurkers as he says I mean, I love linkedin, but I could tell you what it's the most Spammy place that I've ever been on but I do respond to the people who Let me know that they heard a podcast they listened to me Like you said they heard jude and I talk if someone writes a message like that Then I know they took the time out to research me and know about me if they just said hey Um, I want to help you get more roofing jobs. They don't even realize I don't even do roofing. So I know They didn't bother to learn anything about me And then especially people that says hey, we'll teach you how to do business the government and I go Okay, this guy really doesn't know anything about me No, I I get I I if those are ones that make me just a little crazy Yes, and remember as well that the concept of players and layers just using these free research sources Is also really valuable when you're setting yourself up to prepare for honestly a sales conversation a first conversation with a prospect For goodness sake, look up their linkedin profile Look up what's up with their company or their organization because if you don't have time To learn about your government buyer. They sure as heck do not have time to learn about you That's fair. That's fair. No, no So so we dropped into chat Judy's webinars for everyone out here listening Oh mark has a good point. He said the plus about linked is they may change their company emails But you can still keep in touch on linkedin I'm going to say yes, and one of the big complaints that I get and tell me if you've experienced I know you have eric you and I talked about it. What happens with the people complain. Oh those contracting officers They move all the time and we you know, I've talked about magic of the two for By keeping in touch with people you not only have a contact from where they were they went somewhere else They can often Help you reconnect with the people who are now in the chair where they were and sometimes They'll really dish about the place they left and tell you things They couldn't tell you while they were there That also requires the discipline to know who your people are Stay in touch with them do more than the annual plunk update of your capability statement But have that list of people that you're just hey, how are you doing? Just found this link wondering if you've gone to the society of american military engineers conference this year Just saw this report on On non-destructive testing and a company I just heard of is manufacturing Rapid erection Indestructible buildings that can withstand force 10 on the Richter scale. Why don't you check them out? Here's the link to their website at rapidbuilt.com Love it. Love it. Love it. I'm telling you man. If you if you're not gaining something out of these conversations Uh turn off your tv get off your phone and pay attention because Even I'm getting ideas as Judy's talking about things that I could be doing even further Unfortunately, I I stopped kind of business building but doing business development Just because we've been slammed and we can't manage the stuff that we do have on our table, but Nice problem to have congrats But when I get back to the you know hitting the ground running You know a lot of these things are coming at mine and I can actually Play out with other folks out here who I know are trying to break into some federal agencies and they're not having much success so You know give us a thumbs up saying I'm a lurker. I would use it as a constructive researcher um Somebody who is saying I need oh mr. Chills saying I'm uh learning more about linkedin but need help my The grand guru of linkedin and federal is mark am tower and so do not under any circumstances Send mark a connection request without a note. Oh, I'm not gonna go anywhere Mark's group is government market master. My linkedin group is government contracts made easier It's about a thousand folks on there and I'm always interested in people who want to post some content So you can make a connection request and join if you'd like Remember we talked about five federal elite sources. You need to know if you're joining late or say hey Could you recap that tell us more? I have a teaching a full class on that Another one of my partner hosts called gov ology And so you can go and pick up the link to that specific class And I'm um and if maria can drop the specific link for that class into The chat that would be great. You can go right there pick up the class and it's 90 minutes of goodness Judy listen Trish I um again, jude and I mentioned this where people said that um He said the the dld agencies and primes might share a little less info on linkedin. I totally totally disagree um I have people that work for the largest companies in the country the biggest primes on the planet And they're all over in fact linkedin just sent me a notice that there's over 2 000 Boeing employees on linkedin 2000 so I totally disagree with that Trish. I think again What you've got to do you just got to do it differently Because like she said with two million people on there There has to be some people that work at the dld in fact, there's people that work at the dld that are on this youtube Live that are also on linkedin. I'll tell you an experience. I had that just blew my mind I was um, I've forgotten why it ended up being but somebody Somebody named brian ins had I think sent me a connection request and he sent it to me without I think he sent to me without anything at all and I thought Are you related to michelle gardener ins because i n c e that's a really unusual Last name you don't see it very often. So I wrote and I said are you by any chance said yes, I certainly am. I'm married up And so we correspond a little bit Let me would you I'd love to explore whether or not we have some mutual interests and he said right away Oh, sure that'd be great. I went. Oh good. Oh one thing. I don't have time for odd jeepers Uh, all right fine And so we've nonetheless we found it found a time and I sort of had sent two different zoom links So we were chasing each other all over zoom for five minutes It was embarrassing. But in the meantime, I had actually looked up. All right, where exactly is is he employed? What's he do is an office of the director of national intelligence. Holy crap Who what could I possibly have in common with him? Oh gee my goodness Um, I thought let's just breathe Let's just breathe. Well it turned He was so nice And it turned out he was looking for he had some specific things that he had in mind personally and professionally he was looking for some ideas for building his network and I had some ideas for him There was at least one association that I thought might be Interested in his expertise and we ended up having a couple of things to explore together And I was just so excited to meet somebody who had Had a distinguished career in in the air force and started with aircraft maintenance And we talked about that and we talked about airplanes And all kinds of things and that just came because I followed up from a connection request used a little intuition And it was so I've launched a whole new relationship that I didn't that wasn't even there a week ago for me. It was wonderful Well, that's great. No, I and I we have a lot of similar stories. Maria finds a lot of our podcast guests via linkedin Um, in fact, I talked to some of my podcast guests on link judo you and I talk on linkedin So, you know, it's it actually sometimes it's better than email because it gets you you don't not going inside of your inbox And get lost and never come out. I'll play I I connected with you because I was jealous I was jealous because one of the one of my top gun coaches in my program The federal business intensive is the eight week program that I do with established companies Who are what I call triple fives you got been in business for more than five years more than five million in revenue At least five people involved in the business development and sales. That's that's what I do everything else is gravy and community service and connecting and Being part of the tide that lifts all the boats and As part of as just part of doing that as part of part of outreach Um, you know, I'd love to have conversations with people about what's going on with their businesses and what's up with them If someone is qualified for our federal business intensive that program includes a special private hour with one of our top gun coaches You get to spend a private hour with a former federal acquisition professional and one of my top gun coaches to ryan attencio He is a retired army ranger from the 75th ranger battalion in georgia. I thought ryan's on with eric How come i'm not on with eric one of my coaches is there and i'm not there So who is this eric? I have to I have to find out about his stuff because I thought if my coach can get on there. Why can't I so I really got my attention and ryan is just a wealth of wisdom his particular magical skill is to be able to turn us Let a contractor communicate and craft a statement of work that saves a lot of time for their buyer It makes it easy for buyers defense department buyers to move money from one agency to another use an existing vehicle and Right or word of contract. By the way, um chris. She's talking to you mandula. She's talking to you But she just said that applies to your two i di q's your contracts you have how to move it from one agency to the next That's what she's talking about mipper That's right. You hear that m i pr to mipper the money look it up So but if you're out there and go hey, this is all interesting How do I apply this connect with me on linkedin if your company is in a position to do An eight week intensive private program You know, that's that's what I do and I remember I've been kind of wrestling with us over the last few days How much do I want my business girl? What do I love to do? and Eric my hat is off to you you invest so much in supporting a much bigger community than I do you have what I call the Not just the financial and human and technical capital But the temporal capital and the emotional capital you put in the time in the heart to Really bring together a big community and I realized how much I'm not sure I've got some of that In me, but the particular thing I do if I can keep doing this one Thing it's perfect for you know three to ten people a small small group a group in a small company Those are the folks that really get so much about it. My clients are flying This year. I'm just so impressed with how they're digging in they're doing the work. They're having friendly competitions and We can put all these all these tools all these ideas to work in eight weeks Well, let's put it back together. How do you qualify five five and five our triple five? Clients you've already got at least five million in revenue. All right five million revenue in business for five years Business five years, even if it's not in the federal arena You've got at least five people in the company including at least one in the c-suite Who's doing federal sales and business development? All right, five years in business five million revenue and five people in the company Who are not billable who are not billable? Yeah. All right. Very good. So if you have that Reach out to judy and discuss how you can get involved in her program at that level But again, you have to qualify So if you're listening to this Five months from now six months from now a year from now reach out maria just dropped in there Her actual link so you connect with judy. Where should they connect with you to discuss that particular program? What do you call it by the way? Oh, it is the federal business intensive and Somebody who is interested in booking call. I'll just go and drop. I've got a link for a 15 minute chat And I can share that Um, I might be able to share I can probably drop that into the chat if I really have my act together here So let me see if I can find that Yeah, I do I do a little bit of private consulting. You're absolutely right You can book a a half hour consultation if you would really like to do that So I can get the link to that if you would like by the way When judy's talking about ryan so ryan He in fact came on to my youtube he He actually was the longest guest that i've ever had on youtube He's talking three hours. Okay, uh, brian you and I discussed that particular video Three hours long we were on and it was like action packed from start to finish he Just I mean he dropped so much so much information so much knowledge and I mean it was hard to keep up with It definitely it's like a it's like a whole movie I mean as you could imagine we're on I think it was two hours and 43 minutes We were just we were on and I had to cut him off I mean he was he just kept going and kept going and kept going so he's so passionate It's it's really quite wonderful. I admire him so much and everybody has gifts and his is phenomenal It really really is no right ryan. I mean and by the way ryan has If you look at some of my most intensive comments on youtube they come from ryan Yep, he stays engaged for sure. Yes. He's he's definitely engaged. Oh brian says it took him a week to watch it judy Yeah, three hours. That's like well worth it. Very juicy Yep, absolutely. No, no, it's definitely juicy and again Um, in fact, you know brian, this is what I was talking to you about with your idei q Which you could have done one of those mippers as she said I didn't know the name for it But ryan talked about in our show and that's what we're talking because brian had an idei q and he says it was uh He only had one or two task orders off of it. And so he wasn't able to make Maximize the idei q Very very cool very very cool Anybody who wanted to know a little bit more about the federal business intensive You can go check it out there all the things that they're involved and eric You're so generous the culture of government contracting consulting is a little bit weird because it's always here you are you must show up and Empty out your head and do do not ever dare say anything about what you do Do not ever try to sell anything or nobody will ever talk to you again going Please you're just sucking me dry So thank you for being a wonderful partner. I love I I love to promote other people who are in the government contracting space on what I call my fearless friday Check out my linkedin profiles on fridays because I promote my competitors who here is brave enough To go post something nice website intelligence about somebody that other people might think is your competitor I promote my competitors. That's great every week I want to bring gen more generosity to gov con you put it out there the universe is smart Pay his attention My partners are some of my best sources of leads and it makes us as those of us who are bringing expertise And to the government contracting community It lets us feel like we're not we're we really are all in this together Our special community who work together To serve government Oh, I agree. No, that's that those are facts any questions before we let julie go, you know, julie She uh, she's not like ryan. She's not gonna stick around for three hours with you guys tonight I've got to go You know julie listen julie has things to do today. Okay. She's got big plans for monday night. So Any questions? I don't see any questions out here No, nothing for julie I know julie. There's a there's a little lag. By the way, there's there's 60 people 37 likes Give us a thumbs up. Please. Please. Please. Please Definitely give us a thumbs up and help promote the content Again, you're receiving an hour worth of free Gems valuable information to help you grow your business build your business Take you one step closer if you learn if you learned anything one thing tonight one thing What do you want to do julie put a thumb up in the chat put a thumbs up inside the chat And if you learn more than one thing put more thumbs up if you learn more than one thing for every cool thing you learned tonight How's that if you learn one? Yeah, I want to see it before we go. Let's see Okay, give us a fist bump if you learned something tonight Let us know that you learned something again And julie's got a book out. I have a couple books out um, so You know help promote help show some workbook as well The workbook is new and so it parallels has got lots of exercises including things on the market research From that's one of the parts that's particularly useful It's got a bid no bid checklist and it's ways to implement the seven steps to success in federal contracting Yeah, so, um How's it going? I see julie's nicky's there jayson's there mark b's there Mark says the best way julie if you want to show people you're an expert the best way to do so is to teach Give away your best stuff for free and people will follow you and buy from you. I agree mark b That's what i've been doing like you see like you said, I have 400 plus videos on youtube So, uh, I've all I you know, I've never had a problem of winning a client Never had a problem making a connection because yes, I literally Just just give away everything that's in my brain. So yeah, I love to do that as well thank you for your generosity of letting me talk a little bit about some of the things that I do and making a Little easier for somebody to say oh Maybe that's me No, no, no, listen again. I want hey look I would love for one or two people to sign up for julie's intensive program I would love that Okay, I I mean if you qualify for eligible, I don't see why you wouldn't jump all over it. She's she's Again out of all of the books that I've read and government contracting julie was the one I had the most notes the most tabs the most marked up book That's why you've seen her on my program four times you you have seen no other person on here As often as really oh my goodness Ryan did five episodes of the single shot Okay, right. Ryan did five episodes in one take Well, if you want to know whether or not you find out if You qualify for the federal business intensive You can log on to that and to make an application for the program and there's a couple of quick questions We can see whether or not the situation you're in is a good fit If not, I have other partners if you have already checked out Drawn on eric's resources and you're thinking what else might complement some of the things that i've been working on If i'm not a fit, I will for sure take a look at my fearless friday partners and make some introductions for you I love to do. Oh, listen. Maria. Thank you for your great support Yes, that's always thank you. Maria difference Everyone loves maria the baby goat. So thank you maria. You're always there Always right when we need you to help out. What's the baby goat? Oh, they call her so maria the goat, you know, is greatest of all greats of all time, right? So they call you're the greatest of all time. Well, some people call me the goat. So they call maria the baby goat Oh, no, my sister actually has a 38 acre hobby farm in southern anteria. She has goats. She actually has goats She has goat. They do goat yoga. Maria Maria would like to visit that farm. She's she likes animals And yeah, she might want to visit the farm Well, if you're going up to canada when things open up I am sure that woolly wonderland farm would love to have you make an appointment There you go, maria. What part of canada is it in southern ontario? So it's a place About 90 minutes northeast of toronto called peterborough lakehurst I'm sure we have people that are up there in canada really well you do then you can check out critter visits critter visits dot ca I want to promote my sister's business because she is awesome. Oh, really? Yeah, critter visits dot ca they have chickens and duck and geese and they bring little critters around to senior citizens and to schools as part of educational programs People families can bring home a couple of ducklings and hatch the and sort of and foster ducklings after they're just newly hatched She has all kinds of very cool things and she's actually doing a series of frozen It's still icy up there, but they're finishing their frozen visits now. They have a a unicorn that Brings a little pony a pony trap around all kinds of things. Oh, that's cool Is it uh, yeah, that's her look at that She is awesome I'm telling you share the word it makes me so happy to tell spread the word about my sister karen woolly Wow, my goodness amazing business. We should have shown it sooner I should be honest with you people really do like Other experiences, right? I mean again, they're here for gulf con But at the same time we're all like you said we're humans, right? So we have other experiences to draw from other things. I have to bring my scuba goggles and And my snorkel next time. I'll bring the fun stuff. Eric. I promise. All right, please please Okay I'm gonna twist your arm next time Here we are we're gonna grant a wish Okay, all right grant one wish For the federal contract of your dreams I I They all your wishes come true. Thank you. I appreciate that So, all right. Hey listen, thank you guys so much. Thanks for visiting. Thanks for being with us today I hope you enjoyed the episode look forward to seeing you next week Uh, I was out for a week And then I left on a monday. So I missed the last two monday. So we're we're gonna get back on track get back on schedule for the next four Mondays we have guests So we have guests back to back to back So check us out visit us online If you are not already signed up on our email list make sure you're on our email list so that you do not Miss out on any of our live sessions Judy parting words Go forth Have conversations connect Find your people find your people. Thanks to you as always