EP121: Advice from a Government Contracting Officer—with Kevin Jans

Podcast
Written By Lisa Rehurek
 

What do you wish you knew about government contracting? What if you had access to a seasoned contracting officer, so you could understand the process from their point of view?

Kevin Jans is President of Skyway Acquisition, a team of former COs on a mission to bridge government and industry, helping clients target better and win more contracts. He also serves as host of the Contracting Officer Podcast.

With 16 years of experience as a contracting officer for the Department of Defense, Kevin bought and managed more than $3 billion in products and services.

On this episode of the RFP Success Show, Kevin joins me to discuss the three deciders in every purchase and describe how much control contracting officers have in the decision-making process.

Kevin walks us through the four acquisition time zones, explaining why you need to know about an RFP long before it drops and how to learn more about the budget for a given purchase.

Listen in to understand the #1 thing Kevin feared when selecting a new vendor and learn what a contracting officer looks for—beyond simply meeting the requirements of an RFP.

Key Takeaways 

  • Kevin’s background as a contracting officer for the Department of Defense

  • How Skyway Acquisition serves as a bridge between government and industry

  • The 3 deciders in every purchase—economic decider, customer and procurer

  • How much control contracting officers have in the decision-making process

  • What differentiates a technical sale from a business sale

  • Kevin’s 4 acquisition time zones

    1. Requirement

    2. Market research

    3. RFP

    4. Selection

  • Why you need to know about an RFP long before it drops

  • The best way to learn more about the budget for a particular purchase

  • 3 things you can do to go beyond just meeting the requirements of an RFP

  • The #1 thing contracting officers fear when selecting a new vendor

  • The limits of a contracting officer’s responsibility to engage with industry

 

RFP Success Show EP121 Transcription

You're listening to the RFP Success Show with eight-time author, speaker and CEO of the RFP Success Company, Lisa Rehurek. Tune in each episode to learn what today's capture in RFP teams are doing to increase their win percentages by up to 20, 30 and even 50%, and meet the industry trailblazers that are getting it right. Let's get started.

Lisa Rehurek (00:24):

Hello, everybody. And welcome to the RFP Success Show Podcast. I am Lisa Rehurek, founder and CEO of the RFP Success Company and your host for today. I'd like to introduce you to our guest for today's episode where we're going to be talking about the GovCon Acquisition Cube. And Kevin Jans, who is president of Skyway Acquisition, is our guest. Kevin, welcome to the show.

Kevin Jans (00:47):

Thank you. It is great to be here. Thanks for inviting me.

Lisa Rehurek (00:50):

Yeah. I'm so excited to have this conversation. He's got really extensive experience in acquisition. And we were just having a conversation for the last 10 minutes or so before we hit the record button. And he has got a lot of really great information for you all around acquisition. So let's just dive right in, Kevin. Well, before we dive right in, I actually want to ask you to just tell our listeners a little bit more about yourself, your background, where you come from and why are you talking about acquisition?

Kevin Jans (01:18):

So I was a contracting officer with Department of Defense and also a special operations command. And I hit a point in my career where I realized that there were a lot of things that I thought industry knew that they didn't know. And so long story short, I started my company with a four-year-old and a six-year-old and pulled the plug out be a comforting officer and with the concept of being a bridge between government and industry, which is what we're named after the Skyway Bridge down here in Tampa Bay. And the idea is if there are things that you wish you knew about government contracting from the content officer's point of view, that's why people talk to us.

(01:50):

We fill in that gap of how does the government buy. We know the government does buy things. We know the economic decider funds things. We know that the customers need things. But how do the purchases get done? What vehicles? Why evaluation criteria are used? All those things.

(02:03):

That's the nexus of what we are. And that's turned into a couple of books, turned into a podcast, a Contracting Officer Podcast and a whole lot of events like this. And so, there's a team of, what, 10 contracting officers on our team now that have a variety of experience to help people navigate this space and understand it from the contracting officer's point of view.

Lisa Rehurek (02:21):

So it's so important because, a lot of times, people just jump in. They dive in. They say, "We're going to bid on these things." They look at an RFP. They respond to questions but don't always fully understand the backend of what's happening and the mindset of contracting officers and the process and all of that.

(02:39):

And one of the things that we were talking about before we hit the record button was the three deciders. And I love this conversation because I think there's a lot of juice in here and there. This is going to spin off a whole bunch of questions. But why don't we start with talking about what are the three deciders? And what does that even mean?

Kevin Jans (02:59):

So the concept came about, I don't know, six years ago or something that it's in podcast 118, episode 118 of our podcast. And the basic idea is that there are three groups of people in every purchase. And so, there's the economic decider. There's the customer. And there's the contacting officer in government speak.

(03:15):

But to help you kind of grasp them, if you and I are buying a car, we're the economic decider because we're going to decide if we're buying a car. And then, we're the customer because we're deciding what car are we buying, buying an SUV. We're buying a Corvette, buying a convertible. What are we buying? And then, there's the procurer and the government speaks contracting officer. That's the person that actually knows how to buy it. Is it going to be a lease? Is it going to be a purchase? Who can sign the actual contract?

(03:41):

And so, those three deciders apply everywhere. If you sell in business to business, you recognize these. There's the person that manages the budget, economic decider. There's the customer who wants your stuff. And then, there's the procurement office. Here's the big difference. In the government by definition, the economic decider also referred to as the funding activity.

(04:00):

And then, the customer or the user activity, the requiring activity, there are two of the three sides. And the bottom is the contracting officer. The key difference, the contracting officer doesn't work for the other two. And so, imagine if you sell into a small business and the CEO says, "But this," the procurement folks who work for the CEO are going to say, "Okay." They may be a yield sign. They may slow the process down, but it's going to happen. It may be 5% process and 95% relationship as the CEO said buy it.

(04:30):

Compare that to my experience in Department of Defense, when someone talks to the funding authority, say... So an army colonel telling a story from my own experience. And the colonel says, "Go ahead, and buy this, Kevin." And because it was made in China and it wasn't a commercial item, I can't just buy it. There's a path that I have to go through. So I can't just say, "Yes, sir."

(04:51):

Now, I found a way for... We got it from a different vendor that was US based, and it's a whole different conversation. But I find a way to get there because I'm trying to support my customer. But the big issue is I can be a stop sign. If that vendor says, "I sold this to the government because the economic decider told me they were going to buy it and the customer wants it," that's not necessarily good enough. You need all three of them. Otherwise, you end up with something that the customer wants, that the economic decider wants to fund with no way to buy it.

(05:17):

And if you've sold to the government for a long time, you've probably walked into that trap. And what happens is the contacting officer is being difficult. I'm being this bricked wall, and it's not on purpose, not because I just want to be mean. It's because my job is to make sure this is done properly, legally, ethically, all that fun stuff. And if I can't do that, then you haven't got all three deciders. And so, that's where that concept comes from.

Lisa Rehurek (05:36):

Yeah. I love that so much because I think, a lot of times, we forget that there's multiple fingers in the pot. And we've had clients before that say we've got a really great relationship with the agency. So we do a lot of state government. So we've got a really great relationship with the agency. And then, they go through everything. And they get [inaudible 00:05:55] a lot lower or sometimes, the outcome isn't what they wanted it to be. And it's because procurement has a piece of the puzzle. How much control would you say procurement has or is that just a loaded question because it depends?

Kevin Jans (06:08):

That's a great question because it's loaded. But that's half the funds. Solving unique puzzles is what I do, right? So yeah, it depends. What it depends on is multiple variables. For example, how big is the contract? Is it a commercial item? Is it being bought through some fund acquisition procedures or if it's a bought on a government purchase card, if you're buying a... or okay, if I, as a government person, if I'm buying a $6,000 commercial item or a government purchase card, contracting officer's not involved with that at all. If I'm going through simplified acquisition procedures for $150,000 action. And again, if it's a commercial item and I can see that it's a reasonable price, I'm involved but only so much as the customer told me, "Yes, this is a good thing to buy."

(06:49):

If it's a modification or if it's a delivery order on IDIQ contract, I'm involved as much as needed to be able to move the item through the actual contract. Zoom out for a second and say, "Okay, this is a recompete of an existing contract. It's a new requirement." If it's something that's going through an actual bid process, hence, RFP Success show idea, it's something that's going to be an proposal. The contracting officer could have a lot of control. I say could have because it depends on what acquisition strategy they're using.

(07:21):

If this is something that we've done before, if this is a professional service that most of the expertise on whether or not it's done well is going to come from the customer or the economic decider. And the contracting officer's going to take their lead. But if something I'm looking at that there's no past performance, you've never done this before and the customer says, "Hey, these are the three companies that should be able to do it, set it aside for small business." And I look at it and go, "None of these companies had experience doing this." I'm going to have to word this twice because they're going to mess it up. Is that a fair assumption? Probably not. But it's the one that I've made a couple of times looking at your website and going, "I don't think you can do this."

(07:55):

And so in that scenario, I have a lot of control because, at the end of the day, this sounds really arrogant. But this gives you a sense of how contacting officers can be difficult. At the end of the day, my name's on the contract. If you Google my name... If you FOIA, I still have... This is going to sound dramatic. I have the people FOIA me. By the way, that's the... be able to get the access to public documents like eight years after I signed a contract, eight years. The program manager, the economic insider, all the folks, everybody else that was involved, their name wasn't on the contract.

(08:24):

So they're not the one that literally got the call from politico actually happened. So it gives you an idea of that's the sense I have, is my name's going to be on this thing. If it goes badly, I want to hear about it for a while. I'm a human. I want to avoid headache. So if I feel a headache coming, then, I'm going to exert some of that control and say, "Wait a minute. We can't use this evaluation criteria. Wait a minute. This doesn't sound like real past performance. Wait a minute. This isn't a fair reasonable price." All those things that I can lean into. But if those are explained well through the customer or, best case scenario, I can copy and paste some documentation from a third party that says, "Yes, this is a reasonable price," I'm going to keep going because then when I get that call from politico, which again happened, I'm able to defend myself and say, "Look, I looked it up." So you get the sense for how this can be a real rabbit trail of frustration.

Lisa Rehurek (09:12):

Yeah. It's really interesting. And you said something that I know I had mentioned too is a big hot button for me is that you need to remember that contracting officers are human beings. And I mean everybody that is buying on the buying side, they're human beings. And I think when we respond to RFPs a lot of times, we're not thinking about it that way. We're just kind of robotically answering the questions to the government, if you will, and not thinking about the fact that there's this real human on the other side.

(09:39):

And we're going to talk about that a little bit more, little bit later in the show. But something else that you talked about that I'd love for you to go into some detail around is the kind of technical sale versus the business sale and how that... Just every listener, just so you know, he's going to be referencing some episodes of his podcast. Those will all be linked in the show notes. So you'll be able to access those. If you're trying to take notes quickly and not catching at all, it'll all be there. So tell us a little bit about technical versus business sale.

Kevin Jans (10:12):

So the technical sale is the customer has said, "Yes, I want this." So you've built a relationship with the agency. You have a solution that they want. And they say, "Yes, I want to buy this from you." They're not trained on how to buy. And they probably don't have the authority to buy, again, unless it's a government purchase card and they can just swipe. But if it's something that it might need to be competed, there needs to be a sole source justification. If it's not, even if it's through an 8A contract without any competition, still, that decision has to be made by somebody, right?

(10:40):

Well that's somebody. It's contracting officer. So that's the business sale. So when you think in terms of when you're selling, you have to sell to both. We talked about this in episode 222 of our podcast as well as other ones. But that's the one that focuses specifically on this topic of getting the technical sale is half the relationship, is get getting that government customer say "Yes, I want this." Getting it through procurement, again, if you're selling to a private company, that might be easy because once you've gotten the person with the budget and the owner of the company to say, "Yes, I want this," because that's a lot of what I sell to is companies.

(11:14):

So a lot of the companies, once they say, "Holy Molly, you have 10 former contacting officers that we can call whenever we want," yes, I want that. We mark down a procurement. And we turn into some kind of a retainer. That process isn't the same with the government. It's like when we're selling to the government, it's a whole different conversation because now they're going to what makes you unique. We have to justify how it's unique. It's this whole different process.

(11:33):

The business sale in the government is different than the business sale in a company. And by the way, for those of you who sell to large companies like Fortune 100 companies that have their own processes for how they actually buy, you get what I mean, because the business sale... And I'm not going to drop names, but a Fortune 10 company. They've got their own process. So you get it. There's a whole business sale to sell $5 million to a Fortune 10 company. It's not the same as a government but having done it, it feels kind of close sometimes.

Lisa Rehurek (12:09):

Yeah. Some of those large corporations can have some pretty intense processes just like the government.

Kevin Jans (12:14):

Correct.

Lisa Rehurek (12:15):

Love how you know the episode numbers for these things. I don't know if you know all of them or if there's just a certain number of them. But I'm totally impressed by that because I don't remember episode numbers really at all. [inaudible 00:12:28].

Kevin Jans (12:27):

It's something we picked up over the years from... I like to have, we call them podcast feedback calls with our listeners because otherwise, this is all one way. I have no idea what they're doing with it. That was one of the things that they've told us is they like it because we have a... I think, episode 398 just came out. So there's almost 400 of them.

Lisa Rehurek (12:43):

Wow.

Kevin Jans (12:44):

Huge spider web of content, right? And so, to be able to say, "Oh, listen to this one." The one about the 99 is called the mid-size government contractor. That doesn't exist. There's such thing. It's either small or large. But the idea is when you're stuck in that middle, what does it feel like? Well, I remember these numbers because people have asked about them and because I've been just covering them for so long. I'm like rainman. It's popped out of my head now.

Lisa Rehurek (13:08):

You are like rainman. I love it. Okay. So what would you say is the biggest mistake that most vendors make when they're bidding on government contracts?

Kevin Jans (13:17):

So again, a loaded question. I like that. To me, the biggest mistake is not knowing your client as well. It seems obvious, right? Well, if you have a relationship, you know that... But when you're bidding on the contract, you need to know the simple things obviously, like, what is the requirement? You can meet that, right? But the language that they use, why do they pick those evaluation criteria? Are those evaluation criteria even... Are they negotiable?

(13:43):

One of the biggest mistakes I think people make is they just respond to an RRP versus knowing that it's coming and thinking about what's happening. And I'm going to give you another big podcast topic. We created the acquisition time zones, the concept of, I don't know, what, eight years ago. It's in episode three. That's how long ago we were talking about the... But acquisition time zones, there's four zones. And so, it's a metaphor for time zones. It's helped people understand it. But there's a requirement zone and a market research zone and the RFP zone.

(14:13):

Then, there's a selection zone. And what happens is that they help you understand just what they sound like, the requirement is where the government's coming up to requirement. Market research is where the government's doing some market research. And the contracting officer is effectively deciding how are we going to buy this? Small business set aside. Are we going to put it on an existing contract? Is it sole source? Is it a letter contract?

(14:32):

I joke about the fact that it's great to be a contracting officer because you have a million options. It's also maddening because you have a million options. There's so many different ways to buy from folks. So they'll be able to shrink it down to what are the key ones we're going to make. Once we decide that, then, the thick black line of the RRP release. When all of a sudden the government goes quiet and all the rules change, that's the beginning of the RFP zone.

(14:55):

I tell people this because first time that you hear about something is when the RFP drops, there's literally two zones, the requirement zone and the market research zone. That happened before it even showed up. So it's one thing to say, "Well, you're late or that's how late you are." We've been talking about this for a while. And so, at the end of the RFP zone, the next zone is the selection zone. And that's where the government actually decides who's going to win.

(15:22):

The way we phrased this is that's when the government reveals who's going to win because if you weren't in the other three zones, especially if you weren't in the RFP zone at all, then, you're definitely not going to win. But even then, that whole process all the way from the requirement to how are we going to buy this, who are we going to buy it from, how big is the contract going to be, it's going to be multiple award, all those questions are decided before the RFP drops.

(15:44):

And a lot of folks will say, "Well, yeah. But you can respond to the RFP and ask them to change it." You can. But remember, I'm a human. It's like, "Why would I want..." To get something set aside as, "Okay, how about this." To get something set aside is not small business, I have to do special forms. I have to get that approved by the small business director in my particular agency.

(16:03):

So when you come in after the RFP say, "Hey, I'm a small business. I could do this." And you're asking me to go backwards. It's like I have to go back and unravel all those decisions. Could I do that? Sure. I'm a human. I need to get this work done. My customer's yelling at me and going, "Hey, where's my stuff? Am I likely to do that?"

(16:18):

So being aware of those zones is a critical piece. So back to the original question, what are the mistakes that we see? That's a big one, is that it's one thing to feel like I should know about this RFP before it drops. It's another thing to know why that is, because all the decisions that came up to what that RFP looks like... We had an episode, which you got me now, I can't remember that name for it. It's 300 something. But it's called where do RFPs come from?

(16:42):

And the idea is that I write the RFP based on some requirement that I get from the customer. If it's a new technology or some new solution, that customer probably got it from somebody in industry which means that when you see the RFP, all of those conversations happen before you've even got it.

Lisa Rehurek (17:00):

With your [inaudible 00:17:04].

Kevin Jans (17:01):

Exactly. Yeah.

Lisa Rehurek (17:04):

I love that so much. I really love those acquisition zones because, to me, it almost painted this pictures. We preach this all the time. If you're bidding cold, meaning you have had no involvement and no knowledge and you just get this exciting RFP that comes across your plate and you're like, "Oh my god. We could win a $2 million contract. Let's go for it." You have less than a 5% chance of winning. I mean it's just brutal because you can't write.

(17:32):

All you can do is answer the requirement, which is just a baseline. And I don't think you can do anything to build trust to really showcase what you're about. And also, the buyer doesn't know you at all. So we preach it all the time. So I love those acquisition zones that painted kind of a picture in my mind. You've missed half the process. And now, you have zero say in anything because now it's the blackout period.

Kevin Jans (17:57):

Yeah. And we see such value in the acquisition time zones. They're actually a registered trademark of us not because we're trying to be selfish, but because people thought they were in the far . They thought they were like this government concept. I'm like, "This concept is such a big deal that I want you to share it." The idea is that help people understand these time zones matter because, like you said, if they show up... You can bid. You can even be compliant. But that's not the goal. The goal is to win the contract.

Lisa Rehurek (18:24):

Right. And it's a lot of wasted time and resources. We see it all the time. Companies will be like, "We're only winning 10% of the bids that we do." Okay, well, let's dig into your process for responding." And they're like, "Well, we get all these bids, and we just respond." And we're like, "Ugh."

Kevin Jans (18:41):

You're just throwing darts.

Lisa Rehurek (18:43):

Oh, you're just throwing darts. It's crazy. I want to have a conversation about budgets. Again, I know I'm going to say this for every question. It's a loaded question, I know. But when a vendor is wanting to bid and maybe, they are on the front end of the acquisition time zones, how do we learn more about what the budget might be for that particular purchase? Is there a way for them to learn more about what the budget might be?

Kevin Jans (19:08):

Couple of ways. Let's go back to the three deciders. All right. So you've got the economic decider. They set the budget. So ask them. They're usually not easy to find because they're not the ones that could be like the assistant program office director or the acquisition executive or they're usually going to be... I'm using military speak. That's most of my job as a contracting officer. They're usually going to be colonels and up. They may or may not be as available.

(19:29):

The customer, the user, these are the people that want the product to service the requirement, the software, whatever it is that you sell, ask them. They would know. The contracting officer, they're only going to know to the extent that the other two tell them because the contracting officer doesn't have any money. As the contracting officer, I don't have any money. I don't have a requirement.

(19:47):

I take the money from the economic decider and buy what the customer wants with it. So a lot of folks, people come to me say, "What's the budget for this?" And they ask me as a contracting officer. And it's like if I got it from the program manager, even if I know it, I'm not really sure if he wants me to tell anybody. So it's not my information to share.

(20:06):

So if they choose to do an independent government cost estimate, sometimes, they'll share the IGCE. That's the formal way of even of sharing that in a draft RFP or in an RFI to say here's what we think this is going to cost because we're looking to see based on historical data, we think it's going to be a million dollars. And then, industry's like, "We can't do that for a million dollars." We kind of have to know that, right? But that's the conversation to have with the customer.

(20:28):

So my recommendation to folks who are trying to figure out the budget, the best person to talk to is going to be the customer. And you find the customer tends to have name program manager or assistant program manager or network director or... They're the ones who are at the trade fair. Those are the ones who actually respond to you because they're collecting the market research that they then give.

(20:50):

And I'm seeking in general terms here that they give that market research to the contracting officer and say, "See, it's a commercial item," or, "See, it's a small business set aside or see, there's no way this is a small business set aside because of only these companies do it." I'm relying on the customer to give me that because if I'm the one that's to go out and find if this company can do software development to be able to fix the phased array network, true story, that's a terrifying thought that I'm doing that because I'm going to Google it. I don't even know what a phased... Until I started buying that kind of stuff, I didn't know what a phased array was.

(21:19):

So that idea of I want the customer is the one you would talk to. So they're going to be the best person for the budget because that they're the one who they want the benefit. That being said, contracting officers, and I've done this, we may not want them to share it because we are leery of, "Well, whatever price we tell them, that's what they're going to pick."

(21:39):

And I've had that exact happen to me like the bids come in like five bucks under with the estimate. So then, I wonder is this actually the price or this number that they pick? So being ahead of that, one of the best ways to get... Going back to the original question, how do you get some insight on what this number might be? Give the customer, government customer, some understanding of what we're seeing here. This could be a half a million dollars. Could be a million and a half dollars. Where do you think this settles? That's the number that they can go to the contacting officer and go, "Okay, our number was 900,000." At least we know we're in the realm here.

(22:13):

But if you ask me directly as a contacting officer, I'm going to climb up because I'm like, "I don't know if I can tell you this." If I tell you 900,000, now, your price is going to be 899. And it's not a real price. And I'm all distracted. Again, should I be? I don't know. But I've done it a couple of times though.

Lisa Rehurek (22:27):

Yeah. I mean it kind of goes back to you got to build relationships with these people. You can't just pick up the phone and call and say, "What is your budget for this," in my opinion. You need to start building those relationships and having some conversations in those two acquisition time zones long before the RFP hits or you're not going to know what that budget is.

Kevin Jans (22:49):

And one of the things to be aware of is that it as contracting officers, and again, I'd love to get some feedback from my fellow contracting officers now. But the team that we have, one of the problems that we, I want to say, often run into is we don't understand the difference between a competitive advantage and an unfair competitive advantage.

(23:07):

In other words, if you know what the price is because you're the incumbent, that's an advantage. To me, that feels like an unfair competitive advantage. One of my core things as a contacting officer is I need to be fair to everybody. So in order to be fair, if I have an estimate that somebody knows i.e. the incumbent or somebody else that the customers talked to, I may feel like I have to share it with everybody to be fair.

(23:30):

Now, the weird thing about this now that I've been out for a while and I'm really trying to educate the contacting officers on, there's a difference between the incumbent has an advantage because they've been doing this for a while. They have been documenting what it takes to do the work. That's an advantage. It's not an unfair one. An unfair one is when somebody that they're married to happens to work on the government side and is going to be an evaluator, that's an unfair event to be able to compare the difference. But a lot of times, I found myself talking through this with a customer and just like, "Yeah. These companies have an advantage."

(23:57):

They know what the IGCE might be. And here's why I'm telling you this, by sharing it publicly. Going to your point, if you call up the contracting officer and say, "Hey, can you post the IGCE? If I do that, everybody knows it." Well, what if the competitive advantage of the incumbent was they're the only one that had that information ahead of time?

(24:13):

So be aware of the contacting officer might not know. In fact, I would argue that they probably don't know, I didn't, the difference between an unfair advantage and just an advantage and things like price. And what the price could be and what the budget could be and awareness of what it could be is one of those advantages.

Lisa Rehurek (24:30):

Yeah. Absolutely. That's great. Great food for thought. Thank you there. Okay. We're going to take a quick commercial break. We're going to be right back. I have more really great questions for Kevin. So bear with us. We'll be back in just a couple minutes.

Speaker (24:44):

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Lisa Rehurek (25:11):

All right. Welcome back, everybody. You are listening to the RFP Success Show. And we are talking to Kevin Jans. He is president of Skyway Acquisitions, and he has given us all sorts of golden nuggets around acquisition process and just some really great insights on best practices.

(25:26):

So one of the things that we preach to our clients all the time is that meeting the requirements of the bid is not enough anymore because everybody that's bidding is going to meet the requirements. So talk to us a little bit about that and what acquisition managers expect when they're reading a proposal. Are they looking for just the requirements? Are we speaking out of turn, or are they looking for more?

Kevin Jans (25:53):

So it's a great question. There's so many different angles. I'll start with the low-hanging fruit. All things being equal, we're going to compare on price. So if you're just going to meet the standard and then go back to what I said a minute ago about if you're expecting the contracting officer to understand the technical solution, that's high risk. The part I understand is the numbers, the money. So all things being equal, I'm going to go on low price. So that's the first problem with just being average when you come in.

Lisa Rehurek (26:21):

Can I ask a question, a follow up question on that real quick? Is there ever a point where you're like, "Ooh, this price just feels too low?" I mean sometimes when I'm just shopping as a consumer and these three prices are $100 and then all of a sudden one pops in at $20, I'm totally skeptical that that's going to be the same quality or the same deliverability. Does that ever come into play when you're looking at price?

Kevin Jans (26:45):

Yes. And so, there's a concept of price of reasonableness versus price real realism. And so a reasonable price is one that's not too high. A price that's realistic is one that's too low. So to your point, if we expect item to be a hundred bucks and one comes in at $200, and we're looking at the going, "Is that reasonable to pay that much more" whereas one that comes in at five bucks, we're like, "Ooh, is it realistic? Can they do it for that?" Here's the scary part. I'm sure I've done this if you're looking enough of my contracts that I awarded probably an unrealistically low price because I didn't know the difference, right?

(27:17):

So on a janitorial services perceived to be a simple service. It's not because you add in things like how about this? We had one where it was... They were in a skiff. Now, how hard is it to get janitors to clean a skiff, a secure facility? It's a whole different conversation.

(27:33):

So there's all these processes that come into the conversation that you don't want to go on low price. Well, if I'm the contracting officer looking at this and I can't tell why that's a big deal or how hard those people are to get or how... We had one where the facility, it more they were maintained the network, the facility was way in the middle of nowhere up on the northern tier of the US. It was kind of one of those missile defense kind of things. Getting people to go there was its own problem. And so, that's why we don't want to shop on low price because if we shop on low price, we're going to get people who will show up once a week versus people that are willing to move there.

(28:06):

If I just look at price, I don't see all that. I need the customer to tell me, "I don't want people who are just going to drop in. I want people that are willing to move there and they're get paid handsomely to do so." So those are the kind of things that it can be very easy if I don't have context. We talk about this in the podcast constantly. The pricing especially needs some context.

(28:26):

But that's often what's missing on both sides of government and industry thinking that things take too long. We don't have context. Thinking that things are too expensive, too cheap, we don't have context. So to your point, that $5 item may have been a realistic price once we figured out, "Oh it's because it's, I don't know, made out of plastic." It's lighter. It's easier to manufacture. I mean there are things now we pay 1% or we used to pay for them. But it's not just because we're cheap. It's because the technology changed. We have context. So, yeah, that again, realism versus reasonable is. Then, we have a podcast on that though I don't know the number. Sorry.

Lisa Rehurek (29:00):

I got you twice now.

Kevin Jans (29:03):

That's right. The rainman skills are dropping.

Lisa Rehurek (29:05):

Okay. Thank you for that little rabbit hole I wanted to go down. So anything else on the kind of what acquisition managers expects?

Kevin Jans (29:13):

Yeah. So back to the idea of if we're just shopping on price because everything looks equal. So the two things I would focus on. One, again, make sure you know the agency. Use their language. The things that mean more to them than just price. Is it security? Is it longevity? Is it stability? What is the mission of that agency because if you're coming in on low price, granted you could win. But oftentimes, a customer, when they look at your proposal and say, "They're just lower price."

(29:41):

And we talk about this in... Actually, we just did an episode about Red Team reviews. And one of the things we look for in a Red Team review, when we do Red Team reviews for our clients as a bunch of contracting officers, we look at their proposal, is that all icing and no cake? And a lot of times, somebody, one of the examples of being icing without cake is you claim to be able to do this for a lot less.

(30:01):

But then, we look through what you actually are doing and, yeah, because you've got somebody with no experience. You don't know if you've actually can do this. There's all these things that sound really good, cheaper or sounds good until it doesn't work, or hey, we have lots of experience in this agency. That's not the same as experience doing the actual work. So you can get very distracted there.

(30:21):

So make sure that your language matches what they're looking for with what they expect to hear. And let me give you an example. The term proliferation, that was a word that just popped off the page while I was doing a Red Team review for one of our clients. And they use that word. And I'm like, "You can't use that word in this context," because what I hear as somebody who used the work on missile defense contracts for the Air Force, when I see the word proliferation, I'm thinking about nuclear war in North Korea, all these other distractions. And what they were talking about is it was in network proliferation in a good way.

(30:52):

I'm like, "That word doesn't mean a good thing." Let's find a different word in this context. Now, there are industries where proliferations are totally appropriate, where you have the network effect and all the happy stuff. But that's what I mean. That little word just popped off the page for me. I'm like, "Let's find a different word." Let's say expand. It's just easier in context here. So that's the first thing as far as making sure that you're giving them more than they expect.

(31:16):

Second thing is past performance. As a contracting officer, that's usually the area that I'm going to focus after price. But past performance, I need to be able to say, "Can you do this? Do I have to award this contract again," because you're not going to be able to do it. Well, the best way to be able to tell that is how well have you done it in the past? What experience do you have doing this? And again, being able to say, "We've done it for your agency in this way." Here's some examples of people we've done it for. That kind of specificity versus, oh yeah, we've done stuff like this. Wait. There's a, I think, it's episode number 97. It's called staffing. It's not just staffing.

Lisa Rehurek (31:58):

Whoa.

Kevin Jans (31:58):

And the idea is if you're just throwing... This is going to sound kind of, I don't know, maybe it's the wrong words. But if you're just throwing bodies at this and it feels like you're like, "I can hire anybody. Staffing is just staffing." Somebody actually said that to me during a debriefing. I'm like, "If you're seeing just you're throwing bodies at this, given what the DoD does and what this particular agency mission was, you're not really trying." You're mailing it in. And you're just giving me a body. I don't want a body. I want somebody that can really do this.

(32:23):

That's an example of what is your password for and show that you can really do this well. And you're not just going to be able to say, "Oh, well. We can recruit somebody for this versus the software developer that knows our system and can actually come in and believes in our mission," because for example, he's a veteran who used to work somewhere else in the DoD doing this kind of work. So those are the kind of things that can get you above the standard.

(32:47):

And then, the last thing I'll say is make sure you understand the evaluation criteria. One of the things, again, it's one of the values of bidding with government contracts is the evaluation criteria are known, unlike on the commercial side where the CEO can come in and say, "You don't like that company." And all of a sudden, you lost and you're like, "What happened?" Extreme, but you get the point.

(33:06):

Well, on the government side, the evaluation criteria are known. And so, you know what they're looking for. You know what you can be judged on and make sure you understand them. And if they're fuzzy, ask or full disclosure, call us and ask us. That's what we do as we help people understand what does this mean. And how do I ask a question to get this evaluation criteria clarified without giving away my strategy? Those are down to the, we call it, ground level details. We focus on being at the ground level with our clients.

(33:36):

And that's the kind of stuff comes up a lot is not clearly understanding what the evaluation criteria are. And then, when you lose, because you didn't build in that specific area, you can't be surprised. But really what it comes down to as a contracting officer, it's like, "I told you. This was the evaluation criteria." I [inaudible 00:33:52] word based on that.

Lisa Rehurek (33:53):

It's shocking how many of our people come to us and they don't really pay attention to the evaluation criteria at all. They're so focused on the scope of work and the specific questions that sometimes literally just completely forget to even look at the valid criteria.

(34:08):

And I'm like, "Ah, right." It seems so obvious. But it's also, there's a lot going on if you're not a seasoned proposal team that [inaudible 00:34:19] you're doing. There is a lot going on. So as a contracting officer, as a former contracting officer, what are some things that you and contracting officers that you know are most fearful of when selecting a new vendor?

Kevin Jans (34:31):

Doing it twice. That's one of the biggest ones. So Steve Lucianetti is one of our contract officers. And he's retired navy contracting officer. And the way he describes it is it's a one to many strategy during the acquisition time zones when we're trying to decide who we're going to award the contract to. Once we've awarded the contract, the joke he says is, "Now, we're kind of married. Now, we're working together to meet the mission."

(34:56):

In fact, the acquisition time zones are the first war zones. The execution time zones are after. That's one of the podcasts. That's episode 372. The execution time zones are about after you've gotten the contract. But to your point, that's why I'm afraid of doing this twice, is whoever I award this contract to, we're going to be living together solving this problem. And I talk a lot about not being a high maintenance contractor. And that's what I'm afraid of as a contracting officer.

(35:22):

And a high maintenance contractor is somebody who wants to mod their way to health. They want to... What do they call that? They green the contract, and they bring in newer and newer and newer people. And by year three, we got these junior folks who don't know what they're doing. And I can see that coming because you didn't escalate your rates or things like that, or you don't necessarily... You don't have a contracts manager. You don't know how. This may sound crazy. But the number of times we've had to help people submit their invoices is-

Lisa Rehurek (35:47):

[inaudible 00:35:50].

Kevin Jans (35:51):

And again, one of the benefits of working with the government, there's only a few payment systems. What is it? Is it IAF? And then, there's RAF. Those are the two big ones whereas if you're selling to... When we have, I don't know, probably 70 different clients, most of them use QuickBooks. But a lot, they have their own systems. Then, we have to learn. So from that perspective, it shocks us when people come in and say, "Well, I don't know how to use Wide Area Workflow." How'd you get paid before? Well, it could be because they were a subcontractor before. I mean there's a nuance to it.

(36:21):

But my expectation is you know that stuff or you know somebody to call, which again, we can help with that too. But the idea is knowing these things ahead of time, so you're not a high maintenance contract. That's what I'm afraid of. So one is, can you do the work? Do you have the actual ability to deliver for the customer, the government customer? Then, do you have the ability to manage the contract afterwards? Those are the things that I'm afraid of.

(36:41):

And I can see those in your proposal and in your past performance. They'll pop off the page if you've got... I'll give you an example. You'll often see for a solicitation, one of the evaluation criteria will be subcontract management. If it's a small business, set aside especially we're saying, "Okay. You've been..." The assumption is you've been a subcontractor for a long time. You're a small company. Now, this is a small business set aside with, I don't know, say it's got a hundred FTEs. It's a pretty big one. It's probably going to be one of your first ones.

(37:12):

You're probably going to have subs. In fact, I expect you're going to have subcontractors. Show me you can manage them because if you can't, raise in my hand, I awarded a contract without subcontract management being an evaluation criteria. And, well, that was a high maintenance contract because their sub who was a large business was calling us going, "Why am I not getting paid?" I'm like, "I don't know." I awarded the contract this company. I'm like, "I'm a GS9 swimming in my own stupidity or swimming of my own inexperience," we'll say it that way. But that idea of you once you learn that, you don't want to go through that experience again.

Lisa Rehurek (37:46):

It's interesting because you said something earlier, and I can't remember if this was on recording or off recording. But you said, and it kind of goes back to this whole idea of you being humans, is that you don't want to have money on your face. You do something and not only is a lot of work for you if it's a high maintenance client, but it also sometimes can make the contracting officer look bad, right, because of the-

Kevin Jans (38:08):

Yeah. I have stories of you, if you Google me deep enough, you'll find articles that people have pulled foyer requests about me. And my name's on the contract and not because Kevin's awesome because that's what the contracting officer does. Your name is on the contract. And so, if it's a larger contract, then, it's been protested fair or not, my assumption is I screw this up. And I'm the one whose name shows up on here. I want to avoid that because I'm a human. I don't like getting egg thrown it at me.

(38:32):

I don't like protests. I don't like being the one that gets called before the judge, all that kind of stuff. And is it my job? Yeah. Doesn't mean I like that part. So my point is I'm going to go out of my way to avoid the heavier lifting part of protests, et cetera, et cetera. And the reason we as industry and government both want that to happen, that's sideways activity. That doesn't help the mission. It doesn't help the customer. It doesn't help the government's overall mission of getting whatever the contract is there for.

(38:58):

So we want to avoid that as much as we can. Fear of walking into those kind of traps as a contracting officer because my name is on the contract. That's why I'm leery of just, well, let's just wing it. I don't want to wing it because I'm going to end up having to wear it for years.

Lisa Rehurek (39:14):

I love it. Well Kevin, this has been such an amazing conversation. So much great info. Is there any last piece of advice that you can give our listeners when it comes to them thinking, kind of putting themselves in the shoes of the contracting officers?

Kevin Jans (39:29):

So this is a big one that I've just developed over the last, I don't know, six months or so. And I'm not even sure if I can put it out yet. So you're getting fresh off the press.

Lisa Rehurek (39:37):

Love it.

Kevin Jans (39:38):

So this is concept of government and industry are supposed to be talking, right? And industry folks love the fact that government's supposed to be talking to them. And there's multiple places in the federal acquisition regulation that say that you're supposed to engage. They're supposed to be engaging industry early and often and all that kind of stuff.

(39:55):

Here's the problem. That sounds great until what happens is it feels like that's weaponized against the contacting officer, meaning that you're supposed to talk to me. The industry says, "Government, you're supposed to talk to me." And now, if I talk to you, then I get yelled at by everybody else because I didn't talk to them. You see what I'm saying? So here's how do we get around that. Don't expect they're going to talk to everybody. This goes both ways. FAR 15.2 says you have to interact with industry. It doesn't say you have to interact with all of industry.

Lisa Rehurek (40:26):

Oh, interesting. Okay.

Kevin Jans (40:27):

So keep that in mind. And it's a contracting officer. I never even saw that. One of the cool things about what I do now is I actually read the FAR and apply it more now than I did when I was a contracting officer because when you're contacting officer, you're just trying to keep up. It's like there's a reason like 30% of our listeners are contacting officers because they're like, "Oh, thank God. You looked up the Christian doctrine for me." Now, I'm smart on it. They're using us to supplement what they do because they don't have time to read this stuff. I didn't.

(40:52):

And so, the idea is that they don't have time to really noodle through what is FAR 15.2 really saying. And what it's saying is, while it says that that government should talk to industry, it also is implying that government doesn't have to talk to everybody.

Lisa Rehurek (41:03):

Interesting.

Kevin Jans (41:04):

And what happens is we'll get... I mean I've gotten protests. I've gotten yelled at right here in Tampa, Tampa Convention Center because I didn't talk to some small business. And I wish I had said if I hadn't... Back in my time machine FAR 15.2 says I don't have to talk to everybody. And this goes back to my point about advantage versus unfair advantage. As a contracting officer, I think, "Well, if I talk to you, I have to talk to everybody," because that's going to have to be fair.

(41:29):

But if I look at FAR 15.2 and think in terms of what it's saying is you just have to interact at scale and with everybody. You don't have to put every single interaction in a draft RFP. You can have an actual conversation. But when, not if, but when that company that you didn't talk to, who calls you or emails you or shows up in your cubicle, all three of those have happened to me. You can say their marketing was better. They got in front of me faster. What do you want me to say?

(41:55):

I don't have to talk to everybody. And that's the conversation, I think, needs to happen more. So that's an upcoming podcast. So that's probably the biggest thing, is don't be expecting the government to talk to you all the time because what happens is the more they think they have to talk to everybody, the more they want to talk to nobody because I can't talk to everybody. It's literally impossible. So my instinct is, "Well, I'm not going to talk to anybody then." And then, I shut down. And then, we as a country are worse off because now you've got information coming out from an eyedropper, which is not a very effective way to disseminate knowledge.

Lisa Rehurek (42:26):

Great point. I love it. I love it. Well, how can our listeners get in touch with you? If they want to learn more, they want to connect with you? What's the best way to get in touch with you?

Kevin Jans (42:35):

The best way honestly is LinkedIn. It's Kevin Jans, J-A-N-S. Our website is skywayacq.com. And again, it's named after the Sunshine Skyway Bridge down here in Tampa. And the podcast is the Contracting Officer Podcast. You can find all 398 episodes as of yesterday at govconpodcast.com.

Lisa Rehurek (42:56):

Perfect. And we will have all that information in the show notes. Kevin, this has been so great. Thank you for your time. Thank you for all of your great information. We appreciate you being here.

Kevin Jans (43:06):

No problem. Thank you for the invite. It was great to talk to you in person.

Lisa Rehurek (43:09):

Absolutely. Yes, definitely. All right, everybody. Make sure if you have not already done so, subscribe to the podcast so that you don't miss an episode. Make sure you tune into Kevin's podcast. A lot of amazing great information there if you want to really get in the minds of the contracting officers. On behalf of Kevin and myself, I want to thank you for listening to the RFP Success Show. Have a great day, everybody.

Kevin Jans (43:31):

See you.

Outro (43:31):

This has been another episode of the RFP Success Show with Lisa Rehurek, eight-time author, speaker, and CEO of the RFP Success Company. Thank you for joining us. If you have feedback on today's episode, email us at podcast@rfpsuccess.com. No matter your business size industry, if you have an in-house RFP team or need outside support, the RFP Success Company helps increase RFP win ratios by 10, 20 and even 50%. Learn more at the rfpsuccesscompany.com.

Lisa Rehurek
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