 We are here taking a look at the fedbizops.gov website, the most famous website in the world for sourcing government contracts. Today we want to discuss the letter of interest and what is the letter of interest, when do you actually use the letter of interest and how to use it. That's what we're discussing in today's video. But looking right here on fedbizops, we see solicitation, combined synopsis solicitation, sources sought, modification, award notices. And those are typically the main categories when you're on fedbizops. Now Eric, this letter of interest that you talk about, when does this come into play? When on fedbizops, and you see where they're looking for what's called a sources sought, a sources sought means the federal government, their agency in particular, is doing market research to find out what companies are actually out there that can perform this service. And more importantly, which companies are out there that only can perform the service but have an interest in actually performing this service for this particular agency and has the ability to do it at this time frame. And so what you're saying to the government by sending a letter of interest is that, hi, I'm interested in this job and I have the capabilities of doing it. That's the gist of the letter of interest. And this is the one that I say to everyone, if you're interested, I have a sample copy, send me an email and I'll be happy to provide it for you. So let's just discuss some of the parts of the letter of interest that I have here today and what it looks like. In general, you have to have the information from the solicitation. So I'm going to go over here and I'm going to pull one down, particular solicitation that I responded to recently, okay, and this was a sources sought here. And as you can see, it's for Department of the Army, specifically the National Guard Bureau. This job was over in Connecticut. The date was May the 30th, 2018. You have on the solicitation number. So when I'm putting together my sources of letter, obviously at the title of that, you want to put this information right. So you want to reference that agency, you want to reference that office, you want to reference the solicitation number, you want to reference the actual title of the solicitation. And then afterwards, you want to give a brief description about your company. Now once you give the brief description about your company, then you go into, and what I do, I like to make bullet points because it's easier to read. Then I go into the actual details, like for example, the number of employees, office location and address contact information. Always make sure you put your DUNS number and cage code on everything you do. It just makes it easier for the government to look you up and do and find out your SAM profile and your DSPS profile. All right, that way they'll know if you have any certifications or not. So you want to make sure you put that in there. Also you want to put in any relevant experience that you may have, and specifically experience related to that job, that contract in particular. So if they're talking about a painting contract, you want to put experience related painting. If it's a job for IT services, but cybersecurity, you don't want to put networking on there for your IT. You want to put cybersecurity if it's a job that talks about selling specific type of feminine products to the government. You want to reference feminine products that you've sold in the past, maybe even put some of the contact information for the people who help provide those services, whether they're their supplier or one of the subcontractors that work for you, somewhere where the government can verify that you actually did that job. That's the basis of the letter. And again, like I said, if you want a copy of this letter, send me an email. I'm more than happy to provide it to you. Now, one of the things is this letter is very generic that I have. So you want to make sure that when you're crafting your letter, that you crafted towards the actual specific information that they're asking for. So let's go back over here and look at this particular sources sought. And this one says, right here on the page, your submission must include the following and it lists one through five. Number one, a positive statement of intent to bid as a prime contractor. That's very important. Number two, a complete and signed source sought information request form. Now, if you fail to include that request form, what do you think happens? This is where they have to disqualify you or not even consider your particular request for a sources sought, meaning if you're a day and then that's going to be one less a day company that responded to this same thing if you're a woman or hub zone, respectively, a listing of products complete during the past three years. You don't want to put products that were five, six, seven years ago if they're asking for recent projects. They may include both government and private industry jobs. Excellent. And it says particularly list the type of project, dollar value, contract number, location and a point of contact. Indicate whether you're a prime or sub. So a lot of times you guys are asking me out there, well, Eric, I've never been a prime on a government contract. Here it clearly states if you're a subcontractor that qualifies. That shows that you have the relevant experience to pursue this particular opportunity, at least in this particular case. A brief outline of your resources, subcontracts and key personnel that were used to accomplish a contract. Let's talk about that briefly. One of the things that I teach in the GovCon Giants course is you want to actually be prepared for when the opportunity comes. So even if you don't have the team members, even if you don't have the resources, you want to know what is it that you need to accomplish specific jobs that you're pursuing. And we do the same thing at my level. If I'm looking at, let's say I'm bidding jobs in the one to $3 million level and I want to bid jobs in a five to $10 million level, well, I'm going to need some additional resources. So I start planning for that now. Maybe you want to capture resumes of potential future employees. Maybe you want to go ahead and get supplier credit with vendors that you're going to need down the pipeline to do those things. Maybe you want to have a letter in place with your bonding company, letting them know that if you were to be awarded a contract of this level, this magnitude, what would it take to increase your bonding? What would you have to do? And then have a plan in place to accomplish those things. So you want to be ready for the opportunity that you're pursuing. And what does that require? It requires market research in your part. It requires investigating what are the requirements for those jobs and then putting the things in place today. So when the opportunity comes out in the future, you're already prepared, all right? And then the last thing on here is there's a letter from your surety with your maximum bonding capacity per project. So this is a construction project. So again, they want to make sure that you have the bonding capability to do this job. So that is, for the most part, what a letter of interest is and how it applies. Now, some key things to the source of thought is this. If you do not have a small business certification, you can still send in a letter of interest. But again, the purpose of the letter of interest and the source of thought is for the agency to determine where to set aside the project and which one of the respective for small business categories. So that's the purpose and that's the intent. So if you don't have a small business certification, you may either want to pursue one or partner with someone who has one so that you can actually have this thing set aside and make an even smaller pool of competition out there. And then the second thing is, if you're not a prime contractor or you don't intend to bid as a prime contractor, then you won't need a letter of interest and you won't have to respond to source of thought because these are for people who intend to be prime contractors and actually run the entire job, not people who want to be subcontractors. All right, I hope that clarifies things for you. We'll see you next time.