 All right. Hi, Mark. All right, says we're live. All right. How are we looking? Can you hear us? Can everyone hear us? It says we're live. Do you see live on your site, Judy? Let's see here. I see live. Yes, I do. Okay. So I see live, Judy. Live broadcast. I got a got an ad. So I have to wait. I'm going to mute for a second so I can skip. All right. Well, I'm clear. Okay. Thanks, Mark. By the way, as always, I like to remind you. Make sure you use this as your meet and greet. All right. Let us know your industry. Let us know where you're from. That way people can connect the dots. It's extremely helpful. It's extremely beneficial. I can tell you from personal experiences that people have met here. And they have went on to work on projects together. So nobody's engaged though. Let us, I'm sorry. Nobody's gotten engaged as far as you know. No, not yet. Not yet. That's, that's, we have, we have not February. It's the month where things happen. Well, yeah, we don't have any gubcon giants babies yet. So we're, we'll see. A teaming arrangements. Yes. I don't know. It's possible. They haven't told me maybe because I'm the boss. So I'm waiting. I have everything. I have everything. So you're back, Julie. Everything's good. Yep. I'm back. Okay. Great. All as well. Today. As you know, Julie is on and she's talking about how to prepare for your call and get invited back today. We're happy to have her here. She crushed it last time. So we're definitely happy to have Julie back on. And this is, I think. Two of maybe six more appearances. That's right. We're going to have her on. So again, show Julie some love. Make sure you put a thumbs up. Share this with your friends. Share this with people who are in the industry. Because again, this is going to be a good one. I have my notepad out ready to go. I hope you have your notepad out ready to go. And let us know where you're from, who we're talking to. And it does help because it is seem like a one-way dialogue. And Julie and I see each other, but we can't see all of you wonderful people out there. So it does help. That makes a big difference. The chat makes a huge difference. Right. So definitely helps by us learning, learning a little bit about you, who you are, what you do, your industry, your space, because maybe something that we talk about. There's some ideas that come up. That's related. Great. Lots of IT. Hey, Victoria. Good to see you. And if you've got questions, the topic that we're focused on today is what's it take to get in front of your federal buyer, the concept that I've come up with when I was talking and a shout out to one of your other guests. I was a guest in 2018 with Jennifer shows. And I ended up doing a two little 30 minute segments. I went, now this is a really meaty thing. We put it all together. And the concept is how to win your meeting, which kind of works on a couple of levels, but also how to win the meeting as in to secure the meeting. But once you actually get the meeting, how do it make it successful? So it is a win for you, which is the get invited back part. And so we had split the, the things I was talking about into sort of the first half, what's it take to just get an appointment at all? That's a huge win for start. And secondly, there's a lot of people who have had the experience of being in a meet and greet or a matchmaking session. Or this kind of breaks my heart a little bit. You hire a former federal employee or a lobbyist. You pay a lot of money and they get you the meeting and nothing happens. So what, and that happens way too often. And I think it's important to the heart of the idea that your federal buyer needs to trust you, needs to fall in love with you. And so all the contract door openers in the world can't do that. What you, when you say, just put me in front of them, I'll do the job. Yeah. Well, you haven't done the work to, to win, to earn the, the real trust as opposed to, all right, fine. Whatever, let's get this over with. I'm never going to see them again. And the one only one who wins when that happens is the, the person that you're paying to set up meetings who doesn't know that much about you and your journey and what it will take for that federal buyer to fall in love with you. So there, and not to be fair, there are folks who do a great job in doing the matchmaking and the setting up of meetings and appointments. And so there are all kinds of people in, think of it as an ecosystem. There's all kinds of things in your federal contracting ecosystem that support each other, things that work together, but not all parts of the ecosystem necessarily support you. So you've got to find out what, what elements in your ecosystem make it possible for you to thrive in which other ones not so good for you. It shouldn't be in those mushrooms or whatever it is. So important to, to keep in mind important to think about. So how to win your meeting in the first place, but the real win is to get invited back, which kind of takes us to the ideas all around how can you stay committed to and engaged in the effort it takes to win federal business when nothing seems to happen for the longest time. Eric, what's your experience like when you're, you're on the road to winning federal business. You've won millions of dollars in contracts for you. What are the, the small things that tell you your, the signs that tell you you're on track versus you're just, nothing's happening. You're just wasting your time. I can tell you that's a great question. And you know, you're right. Sometimes it's a long cycle. And when you're trying to convince everyone, your team, the people in the office that this is worth doing, it's worth investing in, and they're like, well, we haven't heard anything. You know, we don't know when we haven't spoke to anyone. No one's called us. And it's, it can be really disheartening for the folks around who've never experienced a witness success in the field arena. And I can see, I've seen people become discouraged really easily because they expect something to happen in the first few months. Like they want an immediate return, like, like instant gratification, right? Like when you check out at the grocery store and you buy the Snickers and you eat it, I mean, they want. Okay. I love, I love Sam Horn. He was a wonderful speaker who talks about what it takes to gain attention. She quotes Carrie Fisher saying instant gratification takes too long. If that resonates with you, the federal market is not your happy place. No, that's true. So, I can, what for you are the signs? It's a long haul from October 1st to September 30th. And the signs for me, stakeholders, owners, all, all want spouses, loved ones. When's it happening? When's it happening? Cause all basically, you can say, Oh, this happened and that happened, but it's show me the money for you as a business owner, as somebody who's been in the federal contracting arena. Eric, what for you are the signs of, of progress, those small signs that you tell you the things you tell to us, things you watch for to tell you on track or not on track. The first signs for me are like you said, the first signs are initially getting someone to pick up the phone. Yeah. I mean, if I can get someone to pick up the phone, that's a, okay, that's a data boy for us, right? That's a data boy. So, um, getting someone to pick up the phone is the first positive sign that like, okay, there's life. There's, there's a pulse behind all of this research. There's, uh, right? Because up, up until you engage with a human, there's just research and paperwork and data and stick back stacks of information. So for me, when I can get someone to pick up and I hear a pulse on the other end, I'm like, okay, I'm moving in the right direction. Yeah. I'm like, all right. Um, and then even if, um, I don't necessarily, uh, receive a pulse, if I call around and I say, does this person still work there? This person still exists. And someone says, yeah, they're still here. They're there. They worked. They were here last week. Okay. I, I still know like, signs of life. This is like signs of life. Yeah. I just haven't engaged them, but there's life back there somewhere. Right. So, so what, if you know they're out there somewhere, there's fish in the water. Right. Right. Yeah. That's a good sign for me because now it's just, okay, I'm not sure what's the trick, right? What's the bait ready to use in your experience? What, what does it take, um, from the experiences you've had? What's, what's the story of a time that something tripped over and got somebody's attention enough that they were willing to return your call. Tell me one of those stories. Oh, I have a good one. Um, So there's a two part story. The first, I remember this person very well. Um, and she wouldn't, she never took my calls and she never took my calls. She never returned my calls back. And I remember, um, calling her and, um, and people said, no, she's a great, I mean, people would tell me industry folks would say they're looking for small businesses. This is the person to talk to. I'm like, really? Cause I call her all the time. You know, and so, um, The first time she called me back was actually by accident because I had, I was in her voicemail so much she dialed back my number. And she said, oh, I'm sorry, I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. Score. We talked, right? So she's like, Hey, Oh, Eric, I was trying to call some miles. I apologize. But I did, I did receive your messages. I did see your email and I will be getting back to you. Um, but I've got some things in my desk right away that I have to address. Um, So that was the first time. And again, it was kind of haphazardly. But again, there's polls. And you remember how many combination of, uh, voicemails and emails. Do you think that it was before she hit the button by accident, like two, five, 10, 15, 25, give me an order of magnitude. This is a really important question. I'm thinking eight to 10. Good. This is really important because I, here's a question for you who are listening. I want to watch the numbers come up when, when you're trying to not going to be really specific here, you're trying to reach a federal buyer. How many voicemails do you leave before you walk away and give up, put the numbers in the chat. I want to see this because I want to see how, uh, I want to really see what the, uh, Gov con giants community is made of here. All right. Now be real. Now be real. I want you to be absolutely honest. What's the average number of voicemails you leave for somebody before you just go, ah, this isn't happening and give up, put the numbers in the chat. I want to see it. Okay. Let's just wait for this. It's really important. Okay. All right. Uh, because I want to share a number, a couple of numbers that are really, really important. Yeah. So let's drop the numbers in the chat. So in the meantime, all right. So you talked about first content. You had two stories. Tell the other one. All right. So that was the first time. Um, and then what we did was, um, Now I know the pulse. So I know my emails were not falling on deaf ears. Right. They were being read. She saw them because she acknowledged it. Right. So she acknowledged, she received the email. She acknowledged that she heard my voicemail. Okay. Now the, uh, so what I did was I'm like, okay, I'm not this, she's reading it. She's just not responding. So obviously I'm not, um, giving her enough to make her want to call me back enough juice, so to speak. So what I did was, um, we won some open market bids contracts and I emailed her and I let her know that we, because again, the first emails, Hey, we're new, we're new to federal arena. Right. We had never, this particular company I was working with had never done contracts. So that's not very appealing to her. Uh, that we had never done contracts. Yes, we've done a lot of business, right? Commercial company. We've done tens of millions of dollars in business outside of the federal arena, but this is the core of engineers and they really want you to have experience working with the core of engineers and some, you know, they're really tough. They're a tough place to start if you're going to do construction. There's a lot of easier agencies to work with that are non DOD that you could definitely, um, start and kind of get your track. Either way, so we won a couple of projects. That were open market. Um, that were decent, you know, a million change and a half a million dollars. So the next email I sent her back and I said, Hey, we just recently won this project with this agency. Right. Um, and it was a bid project. It was open bid small business set aside, but again, it was competitive. It wasn't a sole source or anything like that. We bid to win the job. She emailed me right back and said, I'll set up a meeting in two weeks. Right. So what do you think you did that got her attention? I share where a success that we had within the federal arena. Right. Cause you're, and so I'm not, thank you for everybody who's dropping notes in the, into the chat. Now I'm going to, I will share. Hold on, Judy, you're letting these guys off easy. I only saw like five people respond with their numbers. All right. Come on. Where's everyone? Where's all my people at Nicole? Call them out then. Come on. Where are you guys at Colin? Come on. No, no, no, no, no. Gilbert, all these wonderful people are 72 people watching this and you're telling me I see eight responses. Uh-oh. Okay. I see each of the fire. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. Mr. Chill. Come on. Tim. Till Foster. Johnny. Listen, Brian, Amster, Brian in particular, better respond. No, Brian has, he said, we usually get a pretty good response to us. Brian, what's your number? He says we usually get a pretty good response to calls. Cause we got a specific project. That's good. I learned from you guys. We need to ask them to find out more about what else they're working on. Yes. Research really helps Brandon five. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Okay. As a former federal contracting officer says Malama, it's good to be persistent, but careful not to be labeled a stalker. When you do call, be ready to perform. Yes. That's great advice. Mama. Yeah. Exactly. Right. Um, Victoria says 10. Nice. So I will tell you that in a, in a really distracted universe. If you have a question, it can take 15 to 30 instances. To get from contact to contract 15 to 30. So those of you who are in the single digits of calls. I want to encourage you to double your number. Wrap it up. And remember that Malama is right. Nobody wants to be stalked. Um, but if you're, oh, I'll call them once this week. That's probably not enough. Think about it. I have a quiz question for you. Okay. Eric. What can you know for sure is true? Every single time somebody, when they don't return your calls, why don't they return your calls? Everybody, and now there's a question for, for, for the, for the, for the. When they don't turn your calls. Yep. I want everybody put in the chat. What do you, what, why don't they return your calls? What's, I mean, I think they're busy. What's true when they don't return your calls? I think they're busy. They're busy. Okay. Why else? Why? I mean, I, I mean, I, people don't return your calls that don't know you. Don't know you. What can you know for sure? Nikki, you can do this. No worries. Um, so, um, what do you know for sure? What can you be absolutely certain of every time they don't return calls? This is true every time. What is the one thing you can know? Well, they don't return the calls. Um, they're busy. No, they didn't, she didn't speak to them. I mean, that's what I know. You're, you're, you're, they're busy. I want to see what's coming out of the, out of the chat. They're busy. They don't know you. You're new to them. I mean, I know for sure that if they don't return my calls that again, like, we didn't, we never spoke. So we never engage. Um, lack of specificity says combat. Why else? Why else? They already have a top two or three companies that they use. Brian, this is where our heads go. Right. Absence says Tony, you're closer. They don't need you says, uh, well, I'm a key. Right. Trish says it's easier for them to call suppliers. They already have a, see the stories our brains make up. So I want to tell you something about neurochemistry. Eric. See our brains are wired to get excited when there's an answer. Even if the answer is completely wrong. This is why the tabloids stay in business. Don't get me started. So, and so that means that if there's, or we're hungry, they're, we're calling these people. They're not answering. They're not answering. They're not answering. So our brain makes up stories like they already have people. There's, you're not, you don't have what they need. They don't like you. Um, they're busy. You have no past performance. The only thing you can know for sure. Is that they didn't call you back until you talk to them. You have no way of knowing if they got called up to the secretary's office. If they went on travel. If there's a pandemic, somebody has died. Maybe a pet needs surgery. Maybe a child is in crisis. Maybe a parent needs support. These are human beings. The only thing you can know when your federal buyer does not return your calls is that they didn't return your call. So if you take nothing else away from this session, I want you to really grasp the concept of what it means to think generously, think generously in very human terms about the person you're trying to reach. They're real human. So think about that. And so that means you have to try again. And if you go, well, I'm busy. I can't call all these people. If you're too busy to learn about your federal buyer. They sure don't have time to learn about you. Now what it tells somebody. When you've done research about how you can help them, then someone else said in the chat, you can leave a message for about something really specific. One of your, one of your peeps. I'm trying to see who that was there because he's really active in your chat. I think it was Brandon or no, Brian, that's it, Brian. Brian is really got his act together on this. And so he's talking about having a very specific ask, a very specific project in mind. And that's really valuable. Eric, I loved your story about how. When you were able to leave a message mentioning recent past performance, recent contract award. That's lowering the risk threshold because when you leave a message and no matter how beautiful your capability statement, no matter how bright the smile, no matter how firm the handshake, all they see perceived as a great big ball of risk. And they don't like risk. They have lots of federal acquisition regulations. They can point to say, I can't talk to you right now. Can't talk to you. Can't talk to you. Last week we talked about one of the magic fires and one of the magic federal acquisition regulations. I'm going to write this down and put it in the chat. Federal acquisition regulation 15.2 oh one, which you'll look it up. And this is your homework. Everybody here has homework. Look up far 15.2 oh one because it says that federal officials are encouraged. Encouraged to have exchanges with industry about requirements right up in the period that is pre solicitation. So you can, there's so much that they are if they feel comfortable with you. If they think you're not going to behave badly, if they think you're going to use the information while they're encouraged to talk to you and to tell you things and let you ask questions. Right up until the moment the solicitation drops. Now lots of folks put sometimes there's a draft RFP or there's a source of solder. There's a request for information. There's specific rules of engagement that you're buying office will give you what please write or please only email or please call these three people and only talk to those people. Please only contact us between the hours of 9am and 5pm Eastern time, whatever it is. These are small tests. Do you read? Do you follow the rules? How you do anything is how you do everything. I'm going to say it again. How you do anything is how you do everything. When you, you as a business owner want to win a multimillion dollar contract and you've never done business. You've never met that person before. You've never done business with them. You've never supported their agency. They don't know anything about where you've performed work. Like the kind of job that they need done. That doesn't help them. They don't know anything about where they're going to go. They don't know anything about where they're going to go. They don't feel comfortable, but even having a conversation with you is going to be worthwhile. All the folks who say, Hey, you know what? They're, they probably have other buyers that other other vendors that I could do business with. Yeah. Of course. And other vendors that they have experience with represent lower risk. So Eric. The magic beneath why it is you got your call returned. You're going to ask the threshold. Your average federal buyer. Wants to know that you've solved their problem. For someone who looks just like them yesterday afternoon. So the closer you can get to that, the closer you can share a story or a recent past performance or an experience or a customer reference. That's very similar to what your research shows. They are going to need or are looking for. You're increasing the odds that they'll. Give you a call back. Now. One of a really a career federal sales professional had once shared with me that sometimes she'll go through the forecast, pick out something that's kind of similar, even though the acquisition, the, even though. Or even something that's recently passed awarded. And she will put the solicitation number in the email subject and will be about Bumpty Bumpty Bump. At least it's about something specific and related. That's something that you've done detailed digging. Right. It's helpful. Right. Love it. I love it. By the way. Just because there's now 80 plus people on here watching. Welcome everyone. I just want to kind of just for everyone who's new who's come on. Make sure to give us a like because again, that's how YouTube does all their algorithms that helps myself helps Judy promotes what we're doing. Obviously again, we're giving out great information here. So hopefully that you enjoy it. You wouldn't stay around if you didn't. The second thing is Judy in the beginning was asking some questions about how many times, how many points of contacts, emails, phone calls, does it take to actually reach someone on the other side? And she wanted to put in there. How many times did you attempt or try to reach out to your buyer? How many times did you make? And Judy, what was that number that you gave was the number of time can take 15 to 30 instances of contact con combination of, and this is getting through actual conversations. Not just, oh, I sent them 15 of my email newsletters. No 15 to 30 instances of contact in as you build a relationship between first contact and contract award. It can take that long. And for sure way too many people give up calls after three hours of contact. And I'm going to call them once this week. I guess that's it. Now. A couple of things that you might want to keep in mind. As business owners, lots of us were open to calls at any hour of the day, or we take calls at eight o'clock at night because somebody might want us. It could be a buck. It's hard when, you know, your light livelihood is on the line. When you're on the other side of the desk and you've also got your, the things that you're concerned about for delivering your mission, do not do not have a direct correlation between if I don't get work, I don't get paid. In the same ways if I don't close, if I don't sell, I don't get paid. And so a lot of the time you'll have people who are managing their time differently. They will only return calls in a couple of different time windows in the year. So in the day, for example, so if you're always calling it for in the afternoon, there are a lot of government employees, a lot of, a lot of folks, especially who started out in the military or who are in the military, they come into the office at six in the morning. They're plugged in online six a.m. so that, and so by two or three in the afternoon, for example, and that was especially true when people are doing longer commutes. Sometimes you might be able to reach somebody at seven 30 in the morning that you couldn't reach it for in the afternoon. Right. Experiment, try calling it different times of day. And I'm going to really encourage you as well to leave a short, cheerful voicemail. I'm going to talk about voicemail because this may be the first. It's going to be the second instance of contact. My friends at Market Connections, Lisa D'Zuti, and I'll put their chat, their information in the chat because they are so smart and have such great content just like here, MarketConnectionsInc.com. They have great info about content marketing and how it is to market marketing to federal. And they have great studies and resources. One of the things that I had learned from, from reading some of their materials. Let me think here. Lost my train of thought for just a second. We were talking about getting calls returned and what gets sticky. Oh yeah. They were presenting. That's right. They're one of the presenters at a conference at the government marketing university as Lou Ann Brosman had put out. And on average, your average federal buyer checks you out 12 times online before they have the first contact with you. 12 times. So if you're sitting there going, yeah, my website, not real important. Yeah. Your website is really important. And a number of federal buyers have told me, hey, if I go and I look at the company and their website has different NAICS codes and information and offerings, then their capability statement, and it's different from their SAM profile. I don't even call them. How you do anything is how you do everything. Take a look. Is your online profiles well aligned? If not, that may be another reason why they don't return your calls. Here's another one. Is the name under which you are doing business identical to the name that you have in beta SAM in your SAM profile? If it's not, they can't find you if you're doing business under one company name, but a different name is on your capability statement. A different one is in your SAM profile. They don't have time to mess around and play detective. They need that. Can I say something on that? Yeah. And that actually, that goes back to the email thing. Because we have this so often that people, seriously, the Yahoo's. Yeah. Not only the Yahoo's and the G-Mails, the AOLs, the G-Mails, but even people that sign up that subscribe to my channel, right? They'll go in and sign up. And then they'll send Maria a message saying, Hey, I can't log in. She goes, Oh, because he's a different email address. They don't even remember the email addresses themselves that they have. They're giving us a ton of accounts. I get that. But let's, let's talk about, let's talk about how you get dressed for business. Now I was doing this thing for you. I dressed up, right? I dressed up for you. I dressed up for everybody who's here in the chat, all hundred and change people who are here and those who are watching the recording. Similarly, when you're showing up in the federal arena, electronically, your electronic wardrobe matters. And I know you have people at many different stages of experience in the federal market. If you are new, if you're making your way in the federal market, I beg of you, I beg you, get a URL that corresponds to as close as possible, your company name, and then, and then get yourself, set yourself up with an email address that uses the domain name in your email, the domain name of your website in your email. If you do not do that. What do you look like, Eric? I'm professional. It's the nice word I'm going to use. That's good. That's right. And I think that's a perfect. I mean, listen, I don't like there's no point in railing about a thing that you might not have known about everyone who is here, who wants to do business with the government. You want to be taken seriously, right? Of course you do. And so one of the easiest things you can do. And so we're having a small list of challenges here, one of our challenges that we're putting out. There's look up and read. Here's my other challenge to you. And I'm going to ask people at the top of our broadcast at the end of our broadcast, what one action are you going to take based on what you learned tonight? So one of my other challenges is if you do not have you not got a URL for your company and an email address that uses that domain name. I challenge you to get that done before we reconvene it before I see you again. That will significantly increase your credibility. All right. Anybody, any disagreements? Anybody, anybody disagree that that's not worth doing? I want to know. Remember the, the message is how to get invited back, right? How to prepare for the call. So again, you're wondering, um, why are you not being called back? Why are you not getting invited back? She's telling you were explained to you. Some of the reasons why. The common things that folks see out here that again, um, we want to help just prepare you for success. Dressed apart. Um, so that you can look the part. And again, this is a costume. We agree. Like Judy said, she got ready today. Uh, when she goes hiking, she puts on a different outfit. Right. And when I go scuba diving, I wear something different when I climb. Right. Right. So again, when we are talking to our federal buyers, we want to look at the occasion. Yeah, exactly. By the way, if you're new and you're here, make sure to put in your city and your industry. So we know who you are. Uh, if you have not already done so your city and industry, let us know who you are and which we're up to. And then. That way we could better help. Uh, Julie, uh, there was a couple of questions. You want to take some questions? Oh, absolutely. Um, let's see here. What do we see in for questions? Um, some, Willie was asking how many emails should you send? Um, Willie, before you send emails to strangers. Call them first. The phone is the single most underused tool. I can. You know, why is it people send emails? Because we're afraid of rejection. We write the email by go ahead. You send. Oh, good. Look at all the emails that went out. Yeah. You didn't put it out there. You didn't take the risk that somebody might reject fear. Let's talk about fear of rejection. Oh, I mean, it is. It's not just a thing that people write self-help books about. It is one of our most primal fears as human beings. When from the moment of birth, if we are not accepted by a loving caregiver or a parent, we will not be. That fear of rejection is wired into our DNA. So it's not that surprising that. Picking up the phone, making a call would be, would feel terrifying. You should ask that question. How many people here have fear of rejection in the chat? That's a good question. I would ask how many people have really are really make your phone calls. Well, I will almost say just would go a long way. Hate sales would go a long way to avoid sales. You'd love to make money, but you don't want to, you don't want to touch sales. Okay. All right. And then I get, and I get to why. Okay. I get thinking of some people on here. That hate sales. All right. So your question is. And, and it comes back to the question about why, why do we hate sales? It feels on what, what are all the negative things? And I have this conversation with my clients a lot. What are some of the negative things that we think of when we think about sales? I mean, now you. You are great at what you're doing. I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, now you, you are great at what you do. Eric, you are fearless. Now are you ever really? And so I want, if you're here, put it in the chat as well. What are some of the negative things, the reasons why you hesitate? You kind of go, Oh, do I have to make a sales call? What, what are those negative things that you think about sales? You think about people who sell. What are some of those negative things, Eric? People think that sales are sleazy. Okay. Yeah, they do. They do. What else? What are all, what are some of the negative things that people think about sales? They think that. I feel like I'm begging says Willie. Uh-huh. Okay. The worst I can do is say, no, Mr. Chills says, I need to improve my sales. Me, me, me, me. Let me write all day. This is Nikki. Uh-huh. The fear I run into is that I won't. Answer. That I won't answer. Give them. I'm not sure what that is. Okay. I'm going to try to answer. Okay, Johnny. Hey, Johnny. I hate, and I've failed with sales in the past. Yeah. It brings up those icky things. I have news for you. I fail at sales about four times a week. It just, it happened. If I'm not completely focused. If I get overly excited, if I am making a call and I'm having a, and it happens, it does. We're human. And I do a lot of it. Um, my, my, my, my, I feel like, I, I've got a goal. I've got a goal. I'm supposed to close. So many sales this month. I'm not doing it. It's almost the end of January. I'm sorry. Please say. Really? What's to talk to you? Um, the, um, being able to come approach a sales call from a place of. Of belief of abundance. I just haven't found them yet. They are there. They are finding me to be able to have the open attitude. I wonder what's going on with this person who I've just researched. So I think could really use what I do. What could be going on for them? How could I be of service to them? What happens when we treat marketing and sales as acts of service? If you're having a crummy time, when you're thinking about buying a product or a service and you're having a really lousy time on the date, they're not giving you good customer support, they're not returning your cost. Why do you why do we think it's going to get better when they get married? Pay attention to the experience that you're giving somebody when you are wooing them. Don't you want people to if you people say, Oh, my customers, I would love them. I would love them up. I'd say such great care of them. Could you just please pay me some money? Yeah, you need to show some love. Give somebody how can you give somebody the quality of experience when you're wooing them that they can really start to believe that you're going to continue to give them when they say yes. That's good. Yeah. No, listen, Ronnie says, Ronnie says, I've avoided and derailed my success by not calling and looking like a fool and desperate. Ronnie, breathe. We are all human. This stuff happens. It gets better. Research is your friend. Yeah, I like Lenya Garcia. You'll probably face a hundred no's before you get a yes. It's hard. Yeah, it can be one. They're going to say no, and they're going to say no, and they're going to say no, and they're going to say no, and they're going to say no. And then they're going to say now, if you keep calling. I mean, I have literally, I think I have about 200 people that I have talked to and made proposals to over the last 18 months. Lots of them, almost all of them were not now. I think I've had two that are go away. I'm closing my business in six months or I'm never, ever, ever going to do business week. That's almost never what happens. I have to go back through my not right now's as a task. I can get to today and go, well, what was this person's story? What did they say then? Oh, they said, maybe call me back in six months. Look, going back through the notes, take lots of notes, understand their story, what could be making a difference for them? What would need to be true in order to make that conversation happen? It's so important to be willing to, to try again, to ask them, hey, tell me what's going on for you. I was talking to someone else today and said, you know, I really actually like it when someone tells me no, because I am happy for them, because that means they have clarity on what they need. I'm not going to get strung along. Right. And for goodness sake, and if you, if people are calling on you, all of us both buy things and sell things when someone calls on you, take the two minutes or one minute to say, no, this isn't going to work for me. And even tell someone why they'll learn from that. That's helpful. It's not like, and it's not like you have to feel bad about rejecting them. But say, hey, here's why this doesn't work for me. Um, when someone, when you get telemarketed and somebody, it has knows nothing about your business, nothing about what you do. And they're trying to sell you a thing. How does that make you feel, Eric? Um, well, I'm a little different telemarketers, but, uh, I mean, I always feel somebody calls and they pitch you on a thing. I, if they don't know me or anything like that, I'm like, really? Why did you waste your time? Why'd you waste my time and your time? Right. Like, we're both human. Now, so are your federal buyers. So I'd go back to somebody saying, Hey, why don't we email them really? Again, if you haven't taken the time to get to know them, then why would they want to take the time to get to know you? If you're emailing somebody, you want to be able to email about a really specific requirement, a responsibility that they have and show them where you fit in what they're responsible for in their daily federal lives. Then they have a reason to, to call you back. I mean, I, um, I, uh, again, I put a question out to the coffee sphere here. Um, who, when you think about being successful in federal sales, who do you want to get in front of? Who do you, if you could get, who do you want to get in front of? Who's the person that who's, who's the, where do you want to sell? Who do you want to get in front of? People say, I want to get in front of Homeland security. I want to get in front of health and human services. Right. And so I'm curious about the aspirations. Who do you want to get in front of? Put it in the, put it in the chat. I love these engaging questions. Um, it's really good and helpful for folks because again, uh, what Judy's doing here is, uh, people are asking about, and this is what I find, um, so I'm reading the questions or asking about how you keep track of the context information, how many emails I send, but like she said, who are you, first of all, who is that you're trying to reach out to HR person, good willy HR person. Yeah. Signal, the, you, you, Signal University, Fort Gordon, HHS, Army Corps of Engineers, FEMA, DoD. Yeah. Army Corps of Engineers. Look at you. Look at you go. Yep. Uh-huh. USDA. Like to get in front. I'd like to get in front of the Air Force, Mr. Chill. He wants to get in front of the Air Force. That's a big ask that that's the NASA says Mia. All right, FEMA and the Army Corps of Engineers. All right. So reset. Okay. Um, I'd say there's no such thing as selling to government. There's no such thing as selling to the government. Robert's got it. Paul's got it. Tracy is only selling to humans. Individual federal humans. I want to introduce the person who can make the decision. And Tracy, there are, I'm going to say, I'm introduced the concept of the players and layers methodology. There are five layers. There are players at all five layers that you need to get to know, you need to know who they are. You need to know what to ask, what to do, what to say, what they care about. They, their languages are a little bit different. The things that get them excited, the things they respond to are just a little bit different. You have to learn what those are because who do you need to get in front of individual federal humans who need what you do as many of them and as often as possible that they're willing to talk to you. And, um, in order to do that, I want to ask, um, Heather, uh, Heather, who's from my team, if she's on the call, if she will drop a link in, in the flow here, a link in the chat for our, our, um, GovCon personas guide, because we have a guide for you. You can go and download. We've got an infographic and it links to a download and you can go and get really, I've got about a 20 page mini manual for you to really understand who are these people. What can I ask? How do I build relationships? Now, somebody else wanted to know, how do I keep track of people? So great question. Eric, do you have a customer relationship management system? What do you use? Excel, you use Excel. Awesome. I love Excel and I think it is the single most accessible, powerful, sensible, cost-effective tool that just about everybody on this call. If you are not already using some other monster thing that's eating up your time and your budget and your sanity, get a spreadsheet, use a Google sheet. Yep. This is not rocket science. First name, last name, phone number, address one, address two, city, state, zip. But don't forget the really important field notes. The value of your company is writing in the story. When did you talk to them? When did you talk to them last? What message did you leave in the voicemail? When did you leave the voicemail? When are you going to call them back? This is the story. I shock people sometimes when I will hear, I have some very, very, very, very, very long lead leads. I had a, this time last year I engaged with someone who we had the first conversation 10 years ago. She'd been telling me for 10 years your program costs too much. It takes too long. You haven't given me enough detailed description. Finally, they said yes. And I find, hey, you know, we first had this conversation in 2005 at the Bumpty Bump conference. How do you know that going? I take notes. I have a database that goes back, but Excel is your friend, especially if you're at an early stage and you're getting started. If you have, I want to say less than 3,000 contacts, Excel is your friend. The fancy schmancy databases are going to suck down your time. Don't do that. There's lots of ways to get organized. Your procurement technical assistant center or your small business development center probably has somebody who can specialize in laying something out for you or help you. Eric, you probably have some easy lessons in how to do basic contact management and be able to keep track of that. Yep. Nicole says spreadsheet convert to access. Yeah. The other thing is when you use a spreadsheet and get everything in one place, get them off the stickies out of the business cards that murmur at you in your dreams. They do that out of the sock drawer, out of the business, out of the suitcase, out of the luggage, out of the briefcase. If you have a recalcitrant teenager who's short on cash, use, ask them to go and enter the stuff and get it in a spreadsheet and have it in one place. Let me see if I can share. This is something that I did. I was looking for it, but. Yep. Google Forms is simple. And the deal with this is once you have your spreadsheet, I love this. Once you have your spreadsheet, notes, say notes, yeah, notes, notes, notes. Yep. Notes, notes, notes, notes, notes. Look at that. It's beautiful. That that's poetry. It's just poetry, Eric. This is the value of your company. You have to have those things. Excel is great. Says Mr. Chill. Yeah, exactly. And once you have, you bump over 2000, 3000 contacts, you can sort them easily. If you, you can put them into access or you don't have to. But if you're working in a spreadsheet, then eventually when you get, you decide that you need to graduate to one of these fancy Schmancy marketing automation systems or whatever it is, your, your fields will map into those systems. But a lot of the time people buy the fancy database systems and they don't invest in. And I invested in a team that actually built the marketing automation that I needed and it still took a better part of a year to clean up the garbage because I didn't know what I was doing, all the misorganized ways I was managing data. And I had to find, I hired a team at Transcendent Marketing out of Arizona and that's Leah Edwards and Heather Herbine and they are, they did an awesome job, but it was also literally thousands of dollars and months of time. You shouldn't have to go there. Don't make a mess. Just stay organized with the spreadsheet to start with and do not pay big money for one of these big automation things that has more bells and whistles you can keep track of and get things lost. Put your time into making phone calls and putting the notes down and developing the relationships. Get our GovCon personas guide. Heather's going to be back in a section and drop the link in the chat so that you can know who the players are at all the layers and start having conversations. By the way, one of the columns of your spread. Go ahead. Don't forget we're doing players and layers in a couple of weeks. Yes, we are. That's right. We're going to be talking more about that. I don't really mind because you can't get it often enough or early enough, but for sure, when you want to think about the roles that people have, not just their job titles, but think about sorting out what kinds of roles people have and you're right. We're doing a little preview of what we're going to be talking about later. Exactly right. Oh, somebody likes a teenager life hack. Yeah, get your Rolodex converted to Excel. Yeah, this is the time when this is a time when if you've got some resources, get your back office organized, that would be perfect. Yeah. Yeah. Telemarketing is tough. Yeah, I love that. Got told no so much that I asked my wife, can I take out the trash when I get home just to get to a yes. Yeah, I know the feeling. Oh my gosh, isn't it true? I had a really I've had some really rough years and when you talk about motivation or the sense you're getting somewhere, I was taking one of these automated online courses. And if you if I finished taking the module, I got to click like I could have done it all day long anyway, but you got to stay honest with yourself. When I finished the the module, I could click the box, click off the box and I would get five points in the system and I get a little catching noise. That was the only good thing that happened all week was I finished the video and got the catching noise. You can also create for yourself your own spreadsheet, make it like a game. You know, set yourself a goal and rack up the points every week. So you know that there's a certain number of calls, a certain number of emails, a certain number of phone calls experience tells you, you know, when I'm doing these things that correlates, it's it's causation, it's not just correlation. If I do these things, it leads to that result. You know, perfectly well, if you eat some kinds of food consistently, one thing will happen. If you exercise a certain amount and eat a different kind of food, something else will happen. So we learn those things that create certain outcomes or results. It's really important. So contracting officers do want to talk to you. They do want to talk to you, often just not when you want to talk to them. Can I say something about that, Julie? I agree with you. It's interesting. And and Julie asked me about the making the initial calls. So I remember on another story and, you know, calling them and calling and calling and calling. And finally, when they needed me, they called me more than I called them. How about that? But I mean, they would call me at night. They would call me on the weekends because it was the end of the fiscal year. They were trying to get a project pushed through and that happened because you made all those calls in the slow part of the year when it's a part of the year. There you go. So we're still kind of in a I love the idea of ecosystem. I take those of you who might follow some of my social, you may realize that I take Friday afternoons off. This is not because I lollygagging. So what if I did your social? Are you talking about it? Follow Judy everywhere. She's that. Okay. I'm there to usually just two platforms. I'm on with any regularity. One is linked in for sure. Alright, so you connect with me on LinkedIn, say GovCon giants or say tell me about yourself in the in the LinkedIn connection note. I'm going to not know where you came from. I answered the connection request. You've tell me who are you and tell me a little bit about yourself. Those are the connection requests that I accept first. If you say GovCon giants will accept you. I will. And so the thing I ended up because pandemic is kicking us all in the head. It just is. We can say when you call up some hey, I'm fine. No, nobody's fine. Let's take a second. How are you really? Well, I'm tired all the time. Well, I don't sleep all that much, even when I try to sleep all that much and I have a new relationship with gelato, though I know is not healthy. Whatever whatever that thing is, but I had realized sort of intellectually in April or May last year that it was really my kind of the lights were dimming on my machine. I was just kind getting chronically completely drawn down. But it wasn't until last October that I really when I had a Friday afternoon when I spent four hours on a four item to do list, not doing the four item to do list. I spent four hours trying to write down a four item to do list and was not capable of writing four things on the list. I said, fine, we're done. Friday, noon, I am finished. And I was walking with one of my bubble mates will go out for a hike someplace. And it just ends up rejuvenating me. It's just really, really valuable. And it's just important to know when when to stop to have that time to to refresh to get away to have some other perspective. And it may be that your federal buyer has to do that too. Maybe that's part of why you can't reach them. It's OK. So I want to encourage folks to take some good self care as well. It's just really, really important. But if you follow me anyway on LinkedIn, you'll see some of my I post a video on Sunday nights. It'll be it'll just be 30 seconds. No ads, no links, no nothing. It's 30 seconds of bliss of wherever it was that I was. And thank you for putting my LinkedIn in there. I think Heather may be back with the with the other thing. But for sure, remember that your federal buyers want wins as much as you do. But you have to figure out what does a win look like for them? And the win is not necessarily the big, huge honking thing on September 28. But we all need momentum. We all need those little signs of progress. And so challenge number one that we laid out there was looking up far 15.201. Challenge number two was get your email act together with your domain. And I'll lay out another thought piece, another challenge if you're here that trying to think about what a win would look like, a small sign for your federal buyer that they're making progress toward their goals. What might a goal look like? What might an encouraging sign that their year is going well look like for a federal buyer? Eric, think of one. What might that be? What might that be? A win for a federal buyer for them? Yeah, not not the big contract award, but what might a win look like? I tell people if they if if they can get capabilities briefing, that's a win. Yes, that that's a that's a milestone. I go, that's a I talk about a milestone. That's right. So we think that we're conditioned to think about wins as contract awards. No. And I want you to dial back your sense of wins. You think about it too. And we'll do more about this another time, but dial back your sense of wins to the signs of life, signs of life, that some sign that there might be some possibility that something could come of that relationship at some point. You have just the faintest sign. You have to be alert for those and notice where they are and where they're not and spend more time in the places where they are. But you have to have your sensors really finely tuned or here's I love this story. I was teaching a small group program a few years ago, and I got this panicked. Voice mail from Barbara. Barbara said, I can't believe that this is the most awful thing. I now I just don't know what to do my I did everything you told me and look at look at this email that I got from the contracting officers. We are not responding to industry questions from industry at this time. I was a source of thought. I was just calling the writing to write you to follow up and look now it's over. I've really screwed it up. I don't know what is Barbara Barbara, breathe, breathe. Barbara, congratulations. First of all, you have got something that people would love to have. Eric, what was it? What did she have? I don't know. I missed it. What do you mean? What she had? She thought she had just completely. Dashed her chances of ever being successful. But why would I congratulate Barbara? Well, didn't she respond? She got a response from the contracting officer. There's a sign of life. He wrote back to her. Oh, my goodness. How many would love to get any kind of response from a contracting officer? Awesome. This is great. It's a sign of life. He didn't say, go away. Don't darken my door. I'm going to report you to the authority. No. He said, we are not responding to to questions from industry. That's OK. Thank you so much. We're just trying to follow proper protocol. When might be a good time to get back in touch? It's the dance. You're in touch. It's a touch. It's a touch back. You are in touch. It's a rhythm. It's a dance. Dance the dance. I like that. I like that. It's a dance. It's a rhythm. It is. She made content. Yeah, exactly. So so all of you now understand a little bit more about what do those daily wins look like? Because if somebody doesn't know you has never done business with you. They're going to. And I think there's there is there's some disagreements out in the marketplace on what does a win look like? What should we aspire to? And your federal buyer has a ton on the line. If you're looking for a million dollar win, the million dollar wins very rarely. Now, tell me if this is true air. It's very it is rare for a million dollar win to get awarded sight unseen to somebody that a buyer only knows through paper and they've never heard from before. And it's just a first time award out of nowhere. Honestly, how often does that happen? A million dollar award? Boom. I don't know. He might have done it, but not often, does it? No, never, never, never, never. No, no, these big things are possible. But not only do they not happen right out of the gate, but think about it for a minute. All right. Here's another. I love another quiz. All right. I want everybody to put in the in the chat how big a federal contract award would be would you love to get would be perfect for you. I'm the Federal Contracts Fairy. I'm going to award you the contract of your dreams. What is that contract worth? Right now, put the number in the chat. What's the contract worth? Now, as as you put the numbers in the chat and I know we have a lag here, so I'm going to watch for these numbers. Everybody imagine where's my here we are. Here we are. I'm the Federal Contracts Fairy. You know, award you the contract of your dreams if if there's there's an if you ever know that fairy tales have. Um, you know, an if a catch. They don't think they do something. OK, so I'm going to award you the contract of your dreams. If you have the stuff, the staff, the space, the servers to do it right now. Not next week or oh, we'll win and I'll borrow money from my brother-in-law and we'll read a space and how how and how much faith do you think the contract does that look not risky to that look really safe to a contracting officer. Right. Not so much. So if I love these numbers, these are really important numbers, though. OK, so keep writing the numbers, but I'm going to want to go back and say that the size of contract that you're most likely to win in the shorter term. Remember your federal buyer wants to see that you've solved their problem for someone who looks just like them yesterday afternoon. Oh, and you've done it 25 times already in the last two years. So the size of the thing that you are most likely to win. I want you to imagine now you had a graph, a normal distribution curve where the value of all the contracts you delivered, there's that that big bulge in the curve. So the median value, that middle of the value, the value of most of the kinds of contracts you've got, that's the one that's your sweet spot. A project that looks like that is probably the one that's going to leave your federal buyer no bigger than that will leave them feeling really comfortable. OK, but you may have to start with the one out on the tail end, the little guy, which the good news about micro purchases. There's everything honorable about a micro purchase. And here's why you can then what do you have besides $9,500 in the bank air? What else do you get? You have past performance. Yes. And past performance begets more past performance there. That is what that's the magic of why you got your call return, right? So always, always be willing to start small and be persistent. When you start small, that also says to your buyer, I get you, I understand we are getting to know each other. But it's also true that when you think about what small problem could you solve and knock it out of the park. And sometimes the problems people have are not big, giant problems that the thorn in the lion's paw. The thing that really hurts is not a big, huge thing, but it's annoying and it's a problem that nobody's been able to fix. If you're able to fix that one thing, have you made a friend for life? Go back and think about the wind. What small thing could make your federal buyer, your federal human look like a hero? What small problem? Now, think about it. We've had we're coming into a full year pandemic. If you went back to October 1st of 2019, everybody had performance appraisals and goals and boy, those all got thrown out the window in March, didn't they? Almost everybody had different goals and extra pandemic responsibilities and that little list of goals they had 18 months ago. Now, imagine if you got to know somebody well enough and get a sense of what their regular non pandemic job was. Don't you think they look like a hero if they are able to cherry pick one or two things out of the normal life list and get that done too? In addition to all this other stuff, how could you help somebody? Stand out just a little more than the guy in the next cube. There's probably a small thing that when you get to know them. A small thing, it's a report or it's a sample or it's a pilot or it's an assessment or it's a training something small when it's small. They can award it to you without a big glumping expensive proposal. You can still say, I do business with the United States Marine Corps. Fine. Nobody says it was a five thousand dollar contract for socks. You do business with the Marine Corps. Right. How awesome is that? Right? Yeah. So I want to do the same thing and stop here. And if you've been listening to this and you have found at least one thing of value, give us three big thumbs up. If you've found at least one thing of value, let us know in the chat what's been helpful. And because we're coming up on the bottom, I want to know what one thing are you going to do? What action are you going to take because you spent this time with us? What's your big takeaway or your aha or your action item? Give us some thumbs up here and what are you going to do? I have a question because again, you asked them again, what size contract would they like to win, right? And then some people put really large numbers within your follow up to that was if you were what, capable of the stuff, the staff, the space, the servers you have, you are able to be responsive, which is answer the question and responsible. You can do the work. You can do it right now, not some fairy tale time. So so let's go back and all those people who put those large numbers, you put big number one now. Now I want you to reset. What's your median number? What's your I could do 10 of these contracts tomorrow and I have the financing and I want. Yeah, I want to know that those people put those big numbers. If you get that contract tomorrow, could you actually do it and start it tomorrow? Yeah, let's hear them. They this is not the goal setting ideology. This is more of the practical where we at. It's the starting point. It's the what's next. Right. It's your what's next number is the what's now number. OK, I think I think people they're confusing from last 10,000. Yes, Arthur. Awesome. Ten thousand dollars is a magical number because just under that they can if someone trusts you, they can award you the contract and pay you on a credit card tomorrow morning. But if you don't have staff, you might as well don't put anything because you can't do anything. So you put zero. I mean, if you don't have the reason if you are a one person company, then you're limited to what can you what specific service offer if it's a product maybe that you can do. Exactly. So just keep that in mind. 100,000 is calling. Yeah. OK, let's see. Let's see the right now number. Yeah. So what's your right now? I see 15 million, five million from Tony. Yeah, five thousand says blessed Tina. Yes. Nice. What can you do now if you were awarded a contract? Because again, and we have this even mebs in our group says so many people call two hundred and fifty thousand dollars right under the micro simplified acquisition number. Whatever. Thirty five thousand says Tony. Very nice. Yeah. Let's see those real numbers. So that's where to set your sites. And there is everything honorable about starting small and being persistent because that tells your buyer you understand their language. Mr. Chill, you're a one person company. So you're going to be you're at the point where if your professional services, you're looking at can I do a study? Can I do a report? Can I do an assessment? Can I do a training? And you're going to be calling people you already know you're going to be calling friends and saying I'm here's the thing to think about. I love this phrase. Write it down. OK, somebody said I don't like feeling like I'm begging. Write this down. All right. My business is growing and I'm looking for new projects. How exciting. Who wouldn't want to talk to you? You're not. I'm dying on my last legs and I've got to have some money. Our business is growing and we're looking for new projects. If you were me, who would you be talking to? Right. Yeah. My business is growing and I'm looking for new projects and I'm looking for new projects. And this is the kind of question you question you have the conversation you have with people who you've already done something with them. So your federal buyer does not wake up in the morning going, I've got to be awarding more contracts to Stephanie. Or I really, really need to be handing some money out to LF. No, they don't. Now, it's not they should, but you got to train them to do that. So you've got to call them up to people to somebody who's already done business with you is 12 times more likely to do business with you again than somebody who's never heard of you. So if you're not calling the people you already know, you're working 12 times harder than you need to be. Who's got time for that? I don't. I'm tired. How about you? I'm tired. So if you start with the people who've already paid you money for something, then you say, hey, our business is growing and we're looking for new projects. We've been researching these five or six people. If you or me, where would you start? And they say, oh, I'm so glad you asked. We love you. We want you to stay in business and we don't have any money right now for anything new for our. But hey, you should call Joe. Joe could really. Can I introduce you to Joe? I would love to introduce you to Joe. Our budget's tapped out for this year, but Joe would love you. That only happens when you call them. You get on the phone. Thank you. And I can do that email. Now, you're right. No, it's all right. And everything he's saying, I can tell you. And going back to to the last time we met, I remember speaking with someone who was trying to set up a call with me with one of the contract specialists. And she was like the I won't say gatekeeper, but she was handling his schedule. Yeah, she's a gatekeeper. You know, then she then got moved to another base where she then became the person in charge. Not only did she meet with me, she also said, by the way, she did reach back for you. I should reach back and got me a meeting with the other facility. Now, you know, fast forward 16 months later, what Judy just said was her facility at the time didn't have the funding to award me anything right away. But the one she reached back to did. And so the the reach back made it an award to us sooner than the initial person that I spoke to. That's just that's just echoing what Judy just said in a real life example. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. So we got a couple of options. We got about a little under a little over 10 minutes to the bottom of the hour. Does that sound right, Eric? Not right. Yep. Yeah. So we could you can pull some more stuff. Let's see. Business, benefit, intervention, benefit, no, Jordan, I do not have anything new about the potential changes in the Bi-American Act. I haven't read about them. And I just and so you're probably going to see stuff that's going to hit the federal register because you change a law, you've got to have implementing regulations. So keep tracking that. All right. We think here I can. I can go quickly through the concept of we got the meeting. Now what would you like me to do that? Just kind of whip through that real quick. Only if we get we have 93 people and 58 thumbs up. We've got it. We don't do. Sorry. We're going to hear we need to see the thumbs up and your action item, your thumb, at least one thumb up and your action item. If you have not hit a thumbs up, then and you're sitting here today and you have not hit a thumbs up. If we get another 25 thumbs up, then I will give you the last set of content bomb. All right. There you go. Should you rehearse your phone conversation? You know, you have notes. OK. Mr. Payne, have some notes. OK. Know what you're going to say. You don't necessarily have to remember I remember being in IBM sales school and we had to do a three minute sales presentation and 90% of the instructors gave me top marks and but I I got busted by three of them who said she memorized that. I could tell the truth. I had memorized the entire thing word for word because I desperately wanted to win the call. And so you've got to be human. You've got to show up. Just smash the like. Thank you. Thank you. Blessed Tina. Keep smashing. We're at sixty five. All right. We should get at least seventy five. There's someone I think so. We've got another have another 10 and I will deliver your last set of value bombs here. We need 10 more. Make sure everyone encourage your people out there. We're at sixty six. We're shooting for seventy five ninety three people on here. Come on. You got to get up to seventy five. I got real good stuff for you. I'm only going to do it. We got it. Hey, man. Hey guys. What else we got? Karen. Yes. I love it. I love it. All right. Got to love it. Let's get you to get those thumbs up in there and we'll do the last last thing for I'm going to set it up. All right. Hang on a second here. And I do a screen share. Yes, absolutely. OK. From present slide. There we go. Current slide. Sixty nine. Six more. Six more. Six more. We can do this. You can do this, folks. You can do this. Six more. All right. Who's not giving a thumbs up? Who's it? Who's the culprit? Who's the culprit? Seventy one. Four more. I can't see it now, but that's OK because you took over my screen. Oh, that's OK. All right. I think we're going to have faith. We're going to have faith. We'll trust. Yeah. Four left. All right. Those four people. All right. Shall I run this real quick? Let's run it. All right. So we got the meeting. Now what? Huh? How do you get invited back? Checklists, checklists, checklists. I've been a pilot since 1987 and I fly out of the Congressional Flying Club in Gaithersburg, Maryland when I'm not trying to stay more than six feet away from an instructor who's at my elbow. So I can't do that right now. But pilots use checklists. Surgeons use checklists. EMTs use checklists. And now you're going to use a checklist. Pilots have checklists for lots of things. We have pilots. We have checklists for pre-flight, for walking around the aircraft and seeing all the parts there is anything going to fall off. We have checklists for startup, for engine run-up. Making sure the engine is not going to conk out when you need it to. You just run it all the way up and bring it all the way down again. You check there. You have a checklist for takeoff. So by the time I get to the end of the runway, put the throttle to the wall, I'm not going, did I ever get to take the pedal cover off? No, it's done. You're 100% present because you know all the things are right. You're safe. You can move on. You can stay focused on exactly what's in front of you right now. There's a takeoff. There's a checklist for takeoff and cruise. There's another checklist for approach to landing. And there's a checklist with a big red stripe on the side for incase of an emergency. You really don't want that. But there's checklist, there's multiple checklists, not just one. So what checklist do you need to get in, have that meeting and get invited back? You want three checklists. Yours are unique. All right, so you're going to want a pre-fight checklist for before your meeting. A takeoff and cruise checklist for call day and a shutdown and land landing and a shutdown checklist for follow up. But build yours based on what experience has taught you and keep revising them as well, okay? Your pre-meeting checklist includes your goals. Why are we meeting? Who's going to be there? Hosts, guests, speakers, note takers, very important. Humans are not full to duplex creatures and telecom terms. We cannot talk and listen at the same time. Have people who are listening as well as people who are talking. Where or what platform, what location, what facility? How will we get there? What is the security, the clearance, rehearsals? What are we doing? You want to set your agenda cooperatively. What kind of handouts are we allowed to have? What's not going to crash into somebody's servers? What can we do? What kind of equipment? What kind of media? Backup plans, what do we do if the technology fails? What do we do if somebody doesn't arrive? What do we do if we can't get into the building? What do we do if our security clearance papers didn't get there? Travel in separate cars, all those things. Pre-meeting checklist. Meeting day, final checks, technology. Technology checks, point of contact and arrival. Transportation, how are we getting there? Separate cars, arrive on time, arrive a full hour ahead of time. You do not want to be late for these things. Log on ahead of time. Don't leave it to the last minute. Sign in sheet, really important. Know who's in the room. Can you brief? Here's my final challenge of the day. Can you brief in 600 seconds? Eric, how long is 600 seconds? 600 seconds, 60 seconds is a minute, so that's 10 minutes. Right, can you brief in 10 minutes? What happens in this ubiquitous half hour meeting and the fire alarm goes off and you're still on slide two? Ah! This happens. So can set up a briefing that you can do that, especially for that initial briefing, set up something you can deliver in 10 minutes because if you have a 30 minute briefing, you've talked for 29 minutes, what have you learned? Oh, nothing. Who's egg? Oof. Yeah, ow. I have a story for that one too, but we'll keep going. All right, we will do. Maria, you know the story. 60% of the time, you want to be able to have 60% of your time available for chat and Q&A, lots of discussion, engagement, intrigue, and relax. They're human. They're just human. Be grateful, show empathy. The phrase, how are you? Has never been more important. No, how are you really? Finally, yeah, follow-up checklists where the money is. Internal and external or agency debriefing. How do you think it went? How did they think it went? You had an internal host. Did you deliver everything that you said you were going to? Do and send what you said you would, when you said and how you said you would and follow up thoroughly with gratitude, with a summary, with next steps. So those are three basic checklists that can get you to get invited back. So, top tips to get invited back. Use your sign-in sheet. Know who's there. Make your story concise. Keep it about them. First, validate and educate. Bring quantifiable case studies from similar clients. Show them a quick win right in the room. Solve a small problem for them right there. Demonstrate how you know your stuff. Write your thank you notes. Do all your follow-up. There's four keys that unlock a federal win. Identify and define your specific buyers. Know what to do, what to say, what to ask. Have a methodical systematic way to get in front of your people. Use the plan. Stick to the plan. Do the stuff. So, I'll stop my share. And we're at the close to wrap-up time. I would love to know what action people are committed to taking. Yeah. All right. But actually, people commit to taking. Mm-hmm. What action? What are you going to do? What's going to be different for you the next time we get together? What will you have accomplished? And goals are really important. Harvard Business Review did a study. And they interviewed Harvard graduates. And only 3% of people had written goals. But the people who, 3% of people had goals. The people who wrote down, they had goals and wrote them down and achieved 10 times more than the people who didn't. So have the goal and write the goal down. And you're really increasing your odds of knocking it out of the park. Eric, we talked about this last time. You have goals. You achieve them. You write down new ones. It's addictive in a good way. Sorry, Mr. Chills is going to make the call. Marty's going to prepare a checklist. Trish is going to make more calls. Heather does 75 calls a day. Yeah, and so many of them are from my company. Thank you. Reading Firepoint 201. Yeah. Plan of attack and draft. Some notes before making the call. Very good. Kumbha's going to call consistently and offer specific value and service. Yes. Make your sentence not, how can I help you, but how I can help you. This is a tip from my good buddy, one of my top gun coaches, William Randolph, who's CEO of Think Acquisition. Catch William on William's whiteboard as well. And you're going to build an Excel spreadsheet. Make a follow-up checklist. New goals. How excellent. You have action takers, Eric. I love it, Judy. And in fact, they actually sound much more ready to go and intelligent from just the start of the call to the end of the call. So again, I can see that we've helped a lot of people. You particularly have given folks a lot of good wealth of information to do some really immediate first steps. And we've come back and forth about this, but I think what I have, have I actually heard you say, have I actually heard you say that there is value in knowing how to start small to build to the place you want to go? Did I actually hear you say that? Oh, for me, yes, 122%. It's so important. It's so important. You can have a big goal, but you've also got to recognize that it takes time to build trust. All of us can. It's a mixed bag to say, you can win the work you deserve. Nobody's entitled to a federal contract, but you can earn the trust. You can earn the opportunity to serve. And that is what we all want to do. So Eric, I'm thrilled that we were able to go through this. That was great. What did I what did I give you that you thought was that's a takeaway for you? Because you're coming at us with a lot of experience. What stands out for you? What did you learn? I like to dance. I like to dance. I could see it. I like to dance and allergy. And you know, I could that I could get into, right? And I think that would help a lot of folks because again, it's even though I may do it. And this is one of the things about me, Judy, I guess I'm learning to become a better teacher also and a better instructor. And to do that, I have to become a student as well. So I'm learning, even though I do some of these things, maybe I'm not conveying them properly to folks. So a lot of times like Maria and my team, they felt me to kind of like dumb me down because I think I over talk like higher level stuff. And I forget about those. Those basic starting the stepping stones. How do you get to these cool places? And so when you ask me those questions, it takes me back through that process. And it reminds me, like you said that, you know, I did. My first excitement was someone answering my call or someone returning my email. Like, I was like, oh my gosh, like I'm so excited. And we, and yeah, your heart's racing. Like, okay, there's someone there. Even if it was an accident, they still call me. So I remember that. But they wouldn't have hit the phone by accident if you hadn't had not one, not two, but 72 messages. That happened. Chance favors the prepared. Yeah. So for me, I think again, I, a lot of this stuff that you're sharing is great to go back and really just hammer down on my folks out here because we've got, we have super smart people. They have a lot of value. They're, they're, they're excellent entrepreneurs in their business, but they just, the federal arena is a new concept for a lot of people listening. And we want to try to help make this process without saying easy, but as easy as possible. And so someone asked a question, Julie, real quick. I just want to share there. And this is not my event. This is a GSA event that I posted for everyone. I just like to kind of share what all is out there. This is an event that GSA is putting together, guys, that I put in the chat and it's tomorrow. One, as it says from one to two. And again, it's being put on by GSA. It's not even bright, it's free. There's some updates to beta.sam and sam.gov and there's some new features. And again, it's completely free. I'll drop it back in the chat again. That's the beta.sam event. So again, it's not my events, not Judy's event. This is like you see it's GSA. Here it is. Okay. So this is the person that's hosting the event. Feel free if you are interested. I'll drop it back in the chat again. I always just try to give people information and value where I can. So that's what we do here, Judy. Again, whatever's going on this week, I like what people know. So this is great. I hope everyone was able to take some things that they're going to do, some action steps. Remember in two weeks, Judy's going to be back on again with us. I want to hear from you between now and then that you've done some of those activities and I want to hear your successes, which include filling a pulse, getting that pulse of a human on the other end. I want to hear that. I want to see that you're doing the dance, right? Whether you're responding or someone respond it back to you. Even they said now is not the time. This is not the venue. You're still, again, like Judy said, you're doing the dance. I think that's great. We all probably miss dancing before the whole pandemic thing, right? Or we could get out and socialize. So that was great, Judy. I loved it. Any final words for the folks before we sign off today? I would just say anybody that sort of at an early stage you're trying to find your way, sort of, where are my target agencies, what steps, even if you're working with your PTAC and with Eric's programs. We all need a good library of references. And if you and you might also add mine, governmentcontractsmadeeasier.com where you can just pick me up off of Amazon. I've got a book and I keep forgetting. I added a workbook, a companion to the guide. You can pick them both off of Amazon. And I also want to, if you're listening to this, do a shout-out to my friends, Michael Lejeune and Josh Frank, who are launching yet another book by a whole collection of experts in government contracting. And so if you're watching, watch Josh tomorrow, they're gonna be doing there, another one, another Amazon number one launch. And so if you find him on LinkedIn, I'll just put, I'm gonna put his. I'll just drop your LinkedIn, your book in there. Okay, thanks. Come on, Judy, I always have to plug you. Thanks. Well, I'm gonna plug somebody else. So I'm just gonna drop Josh Frank in the chat because he's got a great book that is gonna be 50% off list tomorrow. So it's a deal. Hang on a second here. And you can, so just follow him on LinkedIn. You're gonna see this post in the feed. And so there it is, there we go. So it's just, it's really valuable. So just a second and I'll make sure you've got this. There we are. Yeah, tomorrow's a big day. Yeah, there we go. You can never have enough resources. You can never have enough resources, exactly right. So I'm just gonna drop this in as well. Yeah, recent activity. You should be able to see the link and there's a link to 50% off the book. There we go. There we go, book launch notification. This is gonna get you a 50% discount off a really kick-ass book. So that, and I wanna say, hey, have you ever thought about promoting your competitors? I do it every Friday. Fearless Friday is what I call it. And so there's, I'm gonna be every Friday this year. I'm gonna be putting it out there saying something nice about somebody who's not me because I can't serve everybody anyway and there's so many smart people we need to know. Be brave, get your stuff done. Check out the resources we're sharing, take some action and pick up the blinking phone. The blinking phone, thank you guys. Love you, be safe.