Every year, the government advertises thousands of contracting jobs, big and small, and these jobs can be an amazing source of revenue. You might think that contracting begins with a visit to www.sam.gov, but we’d like to recommend an easier option.
In order to start working as a government contractor, your first step is to register with the System for Award Management, which is found at www.sam.gov. This website includes every entity or business that has been approved to bid on government contracts. While it is free to register with SAM, the registration process is long and frustrating, consuming 15 to 20 hours of your time, or more.
Rather than deal with the complex government-speak at www.sam.gov, you can contact a third-party registration service, such as ourselves, and pay them to complete the process. We liken this to paying an accountant to complete your taxes. Sure, it’s free to fill out the tax forms, but unless you are filing the most basic tax form, the forms are complicated and take enormous amounts of time.
So, while we do charge for our services, we will save you tons of time and streamline the registration process. Many of our clients, in fact, come to us after they’ve spent several hours trying to complete SAM registration on their own. The government truly has its own language of complicated acronyms and phrases, and it can be extremely frustrating to make sense of it all.
Here’s just one small example. In order to complete your SAM registration, you’ll need your NAICS code. This stands for the North American Industry Classification System, and every type of business you can possibly imagine is listed in this system. There are 20 sectors in the NAICS, from construction to educational services to retail trades and much more.
Let’s say you provide construction services. Within the Construction Sector, there are more than 70 different codes that might match your business. Determining which codes apply to your business is crucial, as many government agencies will search for businesses with these codes. However, there are many options, and it can be tough to know which codes to select and which you should bypass. This is just one area where our many years of experience can help. We’ve been completing SAM registrations for many years, and have helped clients in a wide range of industries, and we understand all of the intricacies of the registration process.
Determining which NAICS codes to use is only one small part of the SAM registration process. Each section of the application at www.sam.gov contains its own batch of confusing elements, which can take hours to sort through. This is why we highly recommend that you contact us and let us handle this lengthy process.
In order to get started, we do need you to gather up some basic information. First, we will need your DUNS number, and if you don’t already have a DUNS number, just head to the Dun & Bradstreet website at https://www.dnb.com/duns-number/get-a-duns.html and it takes just a few minutes to apply. It does take a few days for Dun & Bradstreet to provide you with the number, but registration is free and easy.
In addition to your DUNS number, we also will need your bank account and bank routing numbers, as this is required to be input into your SAM registration. We also will need the formal name of your business and any DBAs, as well as physical and mailing address.
About a year ago, there was some suspicious activity on the SAM website, so the government added an extra step to the registration process. You will need to create and notarize a letter listing your entity administrator and send this in to the government. Instructions for this letter, as well as a handy template, can be found at www.sam.gov. At the top of this home page, there is an alert in red that contains a link to information about this letter.
You do not have to have this letter approved in order to complete SAM registration, but you are required to submit it. In the past, the government required the letter’s approval before SAM registration could be completed, but that is no longer the case.
After we submit your application via www.sam.gov, it takes a few weeks for the government to approve the application. During that time, you can start looking at possible contracting jobs and learn a bit about submitting a bid as well as the option of becoming a subcontractor, which can be a great option for those new to government contracting.