How to you obtain business?

Predominately our work comes through referrals and/or word of mouth from satisfied clients.

Can we see your Client list?

We do not publish a client list – partly because our clients typically prefer anonymity and partly because we find these lists to be somewhat misleading. By that we mean, for example, while listing large multi-national defense contractors as clients might look impressive – the reality is that most relationships between consultants and large clients are with specific offices and/or divisions and not with the corporation as a whole or the most senior corporate leadership. Thus we chose not to do so. However, you can see selected clients from our independent businesses on the ‘About Us’ page.

Can you provide us with References?

Yes – upon request we’ll send a targeted list of individuals with whom we’ve conducted business. They can describe the nature of our work for them in a manner with which they are comfortable.

How do you work with Clients?

After having some initial conversations and listening carefully to your objectives, we’ll present an approach and a phased plan for how we’d like to work with you over time – and we summarize this approach within our Standard Consulting Agreement. Most often we’ll recommend starting work on a time and materials basis where we provide you an estimate of our services – by task - and then we proceed only upon your written authorization. We find this to be a clean and simple approach to helping our clients keep control of their budget. Over time we’ll discuss a retainer based relationship if the subject is of interest to the client and if circumstances warrant. Importantly, we do not accept compensation for outcomes of procurement/contract opportunities on which we provided services.

How are you compensated?

Either on a time and materials or retainer basis – see ‘How do you work with Clients?’ above.

Do you accept Commissions on Sales?

Never. There are two primary reasons for this: (a) Accepting compensation based upon the outcome of government contracts moves us from a position of providing objective advice to a position of having a substantial stake in the award of a contract. This stake can create the impression that we are acting only in our own interests and not in the best interests of our client. (b) Since we cannot control the actions of our clients, we cannot accept the risk that a client will act in contravention to their own best interests and instead chose an approach which will cause them to lose a proposal or lose favor with a government program office (this has happened before … once burned, twice shy).  Note: the Federal Acquisition Regulations (FAR) have guidelines regarding commission based compensation.  Before engaging with a firm that desires such an arrangement, we recommend that you consult the FAR and determine if this approach truly meets your business objectives.

Will you represent our firm to the Government?

Occasionally we will help represent clients to the Government – but have found that government program managers much prefer to see actual company representatives than ‘hired guns’. We will help open doors and are happy to attend meetings with clients, but our focus is to help clients better conduct their own sales efforts through developing an understanding of a broad client-focused business approach.

Do you conduct lobbying activities?

No - we are not lobbyists.  If this type of activity is of interest to our clients, we'll happily refer them to lobbying firms which match their specific needs and provide assistance where and when needed.

Will you work for foreign firms seeking to conduct business with the US Government?

Yes – provided that they are planning on following US acquisition rules and regulations.

Will you work for US firms seeking to conduct business with foreign countries?

No – that’s out of our area of expertise.

Do you conduct work directly for the Federal Government?

No. Our business focuses solely on helping private industry work for the US Government.