The first company that Government Contracting Academy founder, Randy Wimmer, launched was a Service-Disabled Veteran Owned Small Business. He was desperate for a competitive advantage to help his company win its first prime contract. Leveraging his brilliant mind, he landed upon a great (hopefully, you can sense the sarcasm!) strategy to target the Veterans Administration!  Randy was a veteran and the VA definitely preferred Veteran Owned companies!  How could lose?  He was the exact demographic that they were looking for!  (Again, the sarcasm is dripping from the text!)

Eventually, he found the perfect bid opportunity in the Veterans Administration that he was ideally qualified to perform. The opportunity was for six project management administrative support contractors. Randy was Project Management Professional (PMP) certified, and he knew that he could find administration support personnel. This was obviously a slam dunk win! 

As a Service-Disabled Veteran Owned Small Business, Randy’s company was correct that his company would be given preferential.  However, he was not alone, in his thinking. Over 30 Service-Disabled Veteran Owned Small Business bidders apparently believed the same thing that he did.

This losing bid effort taught Randy and invaluable lesson.  Don’t fish from the same pier as everybody else.Simply stated, there are too many lines in the water for too few fish. Instead, you want to be fishing from the opposite bank where you have to crawl under low hanging tree limbs just to get to the water.   You want to cast your line where it frequently gets caught in the trees or snagged on the rocks.

You also want to be fishing with different bait. Go for finicky fish that are only biting live bait vice rubber worms. Your line may not be in the water as much as if you just dropped it from the pier, but your chances of catching a fish are greatly improved.  Bottom line: you must differentiate your company from the multitude of fair-weather anglers!