 Today I want to talk about tips for bidding and long-term success in a photo-contract arena. I wrote these down I thought I'd make a video to share them with you. You know I have some people that are actually bidding jobs all the time and they're not having much success or I have people that actually bid projects and one projects and then found out that they made some mistakes along with their bid and so it did not turn out to be as lucrative as they thought. So I want to share some ideas and thoughts with you today. These are a way that I guide myself when I'm looking at bidding projects in the federal marketplace and it's probably a good guide when you're bidding projects anywhere. So the first thing I want to talk about is make sure to get your proposals and writing when you're out there getting pricing from whoever you're getting pricing from whether it be a subcontractor or a material supplier, product supplier, whomever make sure to get it in writing first. I know that time is of the essence and so a lot of times we are in a rush or it's a very quick turnaround period but it doesn't negate the fact that you want to get into writing because the government does not care if at the end of the day the person told you that the product was supposed to be round and it's square if it's supposed to be round they want round. So you don't have the luxury to go back and say look the guy made a mistake. The government doesn't care. They are a machine a big huge machine. Pretend like you're in a factory and look at a factory and you see the little thing the ball go up like this and then it goes up to the side and it drops and then it goes here and it spins around then it goes down to the side and it goes in loops and then it picks it up and throws it back over there and it comes back. It's kind of like that right. So this thing is going up and down the loops and spinning around. They don't care about anything that's happening in your life your personal life or anything happened between you and the guy who told you that this thing was going to be square versus round. So make sure the only way that you can really cover yourself is to get it in writing. You want to make sure that the first thing you do is get stuff in writing. In addition to that I always encourage people to get multiple quotes multiple proposals. Why? Because you have some way to ensure that the pricing is right around the same pricing or the colors around the same colors or that which you're looking for even exists because a lot of times the government asks for some funky stuff out there and you've seen it if you go out here and you look at search that different government bids and jobs you've seen them as some really strange request even within industries that you and I are familiar with and we do the stuff every day day in and day out. Sometimes some of the requests seem a little bit herobranish type right. So make sure that you want to get the stuff in writing and then also one step further is get multiple requests if you can. You may not always have that ability to do that but if you can get multiple quotes multiple prices from different vendors try and do that as well. The second thing is make sure you meet all the criteria. This is critical. Some people out there they watch my video and they're looking at FedBid or bidding on FedBid or Niko or Dibs and they're bidding really like commodity type items. They're bidding like headsets or some sort of headphones and the government is saying they want green headphones but the supplier saying they have every color except green or they may have green but the government says they want army green. They don't want forest green. They want a fatigue type green color. Make sure that you are meeting the specifications. Make sure you meet the requirements. If they say they want their good stuff done in stereo format don't give them mono format. Make sure that you're giving them stereo format. If they're telling you that again like they're saying they want a specific type of hard drive a specific type of backup hard drive system that's like for example four trays as opposed to a three tray hard drive system. Make sure you give them a four tray hard drive system. I don't care if the three trays cheaper. I don't care if they haven't given you back the supplier hasn't given back a price on the four tray system. Don't bid the job. Do not bid a job with something that's different that's less or inferior than what the government's asking for. Make sure that you're giving them exactly what they're asking for even if it doesn't make sense. Give it to them anyways. Why do you say that? Because the government they will pay for their mistakes unlike if you're working in a person's house or in a private sector. The government if they say to give them this item and you know it's not the right item. If it's stated in writing and black and white and you can show it to them then they'll pay for it anyways but if you give them anything different then they're going to say this is not what we agree to and they don't have to pay you. So even a lot of times even if it doesn't make sense to do it you do it anyways. You know one example story that I could think of comes to mind is the government told me to give them this particular floor that they wanted and I gave them the floor color. We you know they went through the samples. I had them sign it. That's another thing. I had them sign it in writing saying this is the color they wanted. Well guess what? Before the floor color came management changed hands and then all of a sudden they didn't want that color but they paid me anyways. So they paid me to take it back restock it so that we could get a new color that came out. Then when the second color came out they didn't like that color either because once it was installed they said it didn't look good with the furniture. So again they paid me to take it out and order a new color and finally on the third try they got exactly what they wanted but every step along the way they paid for it. I didn't give them something that they didn't ask for and I made sure to get it in writing also. All right. Now number three get yourself some supplier credit. There doesn't make any sense to be going out here and attempting to bid jobs or attempting to pursue opportunities that you know you don't have the ability to finance. If you don't have any money you don't have any resources you're not you don't have any a teaming partner or a company that you're working with that has the ability to to purchase this item I would not encourage you to bid it. Don't try to figure it out later after the fact because we've had this situation happen I had people that I know that called me up and said Eric we want a project but we don't have a way of paying for it. So how are you going to get it to the government? These are the things that you need to think of first before you actually take on the the challenge or actually start bidding jobs to get yourself some credit supplier credit. You don't have a network find a network of people who can vouch for you to learn how to get credit. Go back and watch my supplier credit video learn the things that you need to do put yourself in a position to be ready when the time is right. Number four know your numbers all right know I've seen that they've done these like reverse bid auctions. You need to know your numbers how much profit do you have in that job. Do you have 30% do you have 25% do you have 5% know your numbers how much does it take to ship an item from New York City to Malaysia. If you're shipping product from New York City to Malaysia you need to know what that cost. You need to know what happens if you ship it during the holidays will that product be delayed if you ship it during winter months. We again I'll tell you another story when we were buying certain type of materials for example in the metal building industry the metal building manufacturers closed down during certain months. The people go out of town if you're working with a particular company that's doing work up in the Northeast or where there's a potential for snow or bad weather you need to have an understanding of that. Now how does that affect your numbers so again depending upon if the government issues a contract and yes you're not impacted by those things but you could potentially be impacting the future you need to know this information and the only way that you would know what you you know what you can and can't do is based on knowing your number so have a good grasp of your numbers know what the things cost know what it costs to get it to where you have to get it to know what it costs to install it know what it costs to integrate it know what how many people you need know your numbers. Number five don't go out alone. This is something that is really critical a lot of people out there are one man companies I understand that a lot of my audience are people that have a career and they want to change from the career and they want to go after this contract so they figure we'll start small and get a feel for it but don't go out of the loan there's resources there's there's people out there there's mentorship out there there's there's PTAC and organizations that they don't want to help you find someone find an organization or an entity that you can partner up with and start learning how to do this. There's no reason to try to sit back at your home in the comfort of your home and try and be an island of yourself and and figure all these things out it's impossible it's impossible you have to have someone that's revealing your proposals you need to have someone that's you can I can second guess you you need to have some more you need to have some sort of resistance right I would not encourage you to do it alone not saying that you cannot do it alone okay I am saying you can't do it alone uh you shouldn't try it now what does that mean I'm not saying that you need someone there 24 hours a day or 99% of the time but have some place some resource somewhere that you can go to kind of like piggyback your thoughts your ideas when you're doing this stuff now obviously if it's something that's pretty that's within your your wheelhouse and some that you're very familiar with then you're probably not going to need a whole lot of direction but again if you have a question you need to have some place to turn to and someone that you can call upon preferably someone has some experience and that's knowledgeable in that particular arena to call upon for advice or if you have just like a concern or a question you need to feel secure so that that way you don't falter or make a mistake all right this is no get rich quick scheme I want to say this and I think this is really important because a lot of people because of the size of the numbers they think it's some sort of get rich quick scheme this is work and if you're not prepared to do work then you're not ready for this this is work is it rewarding absolutely 100% yes it's rewarding I have a new client we've been working together for two months we still haven't gotten a contract so but it's work now nobody in their office is dedicated to doing this stuff so you can expect right that the people are going to actually be full-time going at this 100% so again people are busy people are working other things people have job people have families we all have lives I understand all that kind of stuff but again it's work it's like anything else you get out of it what you put into it so if you put in very little you're going to get out very little simple as that make sure you cover the time element and we discussed a little bit this about this before but I've seen jobs I've seen products where the government said listen you know if you can provide us this item from the day that we execute the contract we need it delivered to this particular location in three weeks that's critical if your supplier can't meet that requirement then you don't need to pursue that project if they can't deliver that item to this particular destination and three then I would not go at their price even if their price is lower than a guy who can deliver in three weeks you don't want to be kicked off the job for failing to perform you don't want to be considered non-responsive for failing to meet that requirement that's a very easy way to disqualify yourself before you get started and bids are so time-consuming there's so much work that we put into this stuff that why would you want to even be disqualified coming out the gate so make sure you meet that time element