When you think about contracting and government agencies, the Department of Defense or FEMA might pop first into your head, but the General Services Administration (GSA) is a huge agency that needs plenty of outside help. Those GSA contracts can be very profitable, so take a look at some of our tips to help you get started with the GSA.
1. Complete Your SAM Registration
This is actually the first step for anyone that wants to do business with any government agency. Whether you want to win DOD contracts, NASA contracts, GSA contracts or contracts with another agency, you can’t bid until you complete System for Award Management (SAM) registration.
Once you’ve completed your SAM registration correctly, and been approved, you can start to bid. It might interest you to know that the GSA is the agency that is responsible for the SAM database, but that isn’t all that they do.
For a basic definition, the GSA provides two main services. Under the Public Buildings Service, they maintain and acquire offices and buildings for other federal agencies. For instance, the GSA is in charge of managing the Pentagon, as well as hundreds of other government buildings. This service also maintains the federal government’s vehicle motor pool, which includes more than 200,000 vehicles.
Under the Federal Acquisition Service, the GSA is responsible for procurement of goods and services for other government agencies as well as for the buildings and vehicles they maintain. This is where those GSA contracts come into play and after you’ve completed SAM registration, you can start looking at what’s available.
2. Determine If You Qualify For GSA Contracts
In order to qualify for GSA contracts, you have to meet certain qualifications. For instance, your company must have been in business for at least two years and you must have earned revenue of at least $25,000 per year.
You also need to read job postings carefully to ensure that your company and its representatives possess the experience and skills necessary in order to bid on any given job. The good news is that there are jobs out there for just about any type of business. Obviously, there are construction-related jobs aplenty, but there are contractors needed to provide packing supplies, furniture, janitorial supplies, language services, computer repairs and much, much more.
3. Get SBA-Certified
Does your business qualify as a small business? If so, we highly recommend you take advantage of that fact and register with the Small Business Administration. The government sets aside a portion of its yearly contracting budget just for small businesses, and if your business qualifies this can make it easier to win bids.
In addition to simply being designated as a small business in general, there are other special “set-aside” codes for which you might qualify. For instance, if your business is 51% woman-owned or 51% veteran-owned, these are two special set-asides.
If your business is located in a HUBZone, this also might qualify you for the HUBZone set asides. A HUBZone is an area that is considered to be “historically underutilized,” and therefore the government wants to boost businesses in these areas. These are just three of several set-asides, and you can go to SBA.gov to learn more.
4. Learn About GSA Schedules
In basic terms, with the GSA you can earn a long-term government contract that allows you to sell to government agencies or provide services to government agencies. There are advantages to these contracts both for the contractor as well as government agencies.
If you have acquired one of these contracts, it’s a long-term contract and potentially a long-term source of income. For government agencies, using GSA contractors can be an easy way to acquire goods and services at fair and reasonable pricing.
You’ll hear a lot about GSA schedules, but what does this really mean? GSA Schedules are basically the categories where you can apply to earn these long-term GSA contracts. Currently, there are 24 GSA schedules or categories, but that is actually about to change.
In the past, if a company wanted a GSA contract, they might have to apply within multiple schedules because they might have qualified for multiple schedules. There are 24 schedules in all, and your company might have been able to offer services under the Human Capital schedule as well as Professional Services or Office Management schedules. So, you might want to apply in all three schedules to increase your chances of success and profit.
In the next few months, however, the GSA will be doing away with the 24 Schedules and merging it all into one schedule. This means that you only need to apply for one schedule instead of potentially multiple schedules. While there’s bound to be some issues when this change occurs, ultimately it seems like this will make contracting easier for commercial entities.
5. Stay Patient
When it comes to government contracting, earning those GSA contracts can be the one of the slowest processes you’ll encounter. With the government, everything takes more time than it does with a private company simply because there are many more rules and regulations that have to be followed.
If you think about it, this does kind of make sense. After all, when a government is offering a contract, they are going to pay the contractor using tax dollars collected from U.S. citizens. The government should be cautious and rule-abiding when spending taxpayer dollars, in theory, and this is definitely one reason why it takes time to win any government contract.
However, getting into a GSA schedule can take much longer than the average government contract. In order to get “on-schedule,” you can expect to wait about six months and perhaps even longer. Once you are on schedule, it can still take more than three months to earn an award or job.
While this seems very time consuming, once you get on that schedule, it can be worth the wait. GSA contracts are five years in length, so while it takes time, you’ll be able to earn awards for five years. Additionally, there are extension options that might be available for up to 20 years, so it truly can be worth your time and patience.
Of course, if you want to bid on GSA contracts, you have to get started with your SAM registration, and we can help. We are a third-party SAM registration service, and we can save you a ton of time and the hassle of SAM registration, which can take 10-15 hours to complete and it’s quite confusing.
We’ll get your registered with SAM quickly, and you will soon be on your way to bidding on government contracts and starting the process of bidding on those long-term GSA contracts. To get started, just click the New Registration tab on our homepage.