How To Find Price Paid For Past Contracts | Learn About Pricing in Gov Con

hello govcon winners and welcome back to my channel i'm so excited to talk about this topic it came from a viewer who reached out via direct message on twitter and this person asked can you kind of break down how you know if possible that you can find the pricing of a previous contract this is super important so i'm just going to begin with number one anytime there is a source of thought notice a request for information a request for a quote a solicitation a combined solicitation you need to ask the following to the point of contact based on how they ask that you ask them so via email this is what you do you say you write is there currently an incumbent and if so what is their name what is the contract number and what is the contract value asset every single time you ask the only exception is if inside of one of the attachments it lists sometimes they'll do that sometimes the federal government will actually say this contract incumbent is jd smith consulting the contract value uh was 525 000 okay so then you you don't need to ask right because they already gave you the answer but if you have no idea you want to ask so if they respond back and they give you the answer then what you have to do is start working backwards you want to look at how many years was that contract for so if they give you a value of two million dollars which sounds like oh my gosh this is awesome two million dollars yeah but was that one year was it five years was it three years was it two years and six months you need to know that kind of information the other thing and this is super important this pertains to every single tip i'm about to give you so you got to come closer y'all regardless of the answer to is there a contract out there is there an incumbent what is the value regardless the evaluation criteria rule i'm going to say it again the evaluation criteria rule so if the evaluation criteria is lowest cost okay you found out the previous award was five hundred thousand dollars then you're going to need to come around that or lower if you want to win if the evaluation criteria is all around your technical capabilities your how maybe resumes uh maybe even certifications and prices at the bottom maybe it's the third item in as far as evaluation goes i mean at least you know okay the award was half a million dollars it gives you some idea but still to win is based on the evaluation criteria and i hope that's really registering because while it's great to know the price the evaluation criteria always rules so quick example we were bidding on a exercise an exercise physiologist position with the air force i found out the name of the incumbent and i found the actual uh pricing information on gov win i'm not really covering that today because it's a paid for subscription uh and if you want me to cover that weekend so i went on there and it listed the opportunity and i believe oh gosh i think the contract award was like a little less than six hundred thousand dollars or something of that sort maybe 550 and so i started to work backward i was like okay so this was awarded five years ago so they had to more than likely put some type of escalation you know into their pricing you know to cover the increase in cost is very common in the federal government that every year right prices increase got it so i thought okay so that makes sense i also figured well there's probably somebody in this position because the evaluation criteria was lowest cost technically acceptable and they did not ask for a resume so i'm like okay great then i looked up the company and i learned hey this is an alaskan native company their overhead is probably way higher than mine because alaska natives tend to be very um just well-established companies and because of the different rules and regulations they're able to spin off a lot of eight days and at this time this wasn't a competitive eight a opportunity so i knew that i could go low like a flowrider song or you know like i'm at the club that wasn't my thing though to go low at the club but i'm just saying for those of you in which it is or was maybe just you know so i went so low and i talked about this in another video that i actually received a letter from contracting and they said we think you made an error with your pricing i didn't because i wanted them to be kind of freaked out we ended up winning because i knew what we could charge the profit we could make while still winning and that's what you have to keep in mind every single time when you're starting to bid on an opportunity so now let's say you asked a question is there an incumbent what is their name what's the contract number what is the contract value and perhaps they don't give you the contract value sometimes they'll do this i once had an agency who was um army where they said they they cited something and they wouldn't give the information and i still remember that because if i would have known that contract value i would have never been on the opportunity i thought it was quarter of a million or higher and it ended up i think their award was maybe 35 000 it just and i i get it i totally get it so i'm going to show you some places you can go just give me a moment okay one of the places you can go is the federal procurement data system you can also go to sam.gov this is my preference i like this system i also love the fact that they kind of like knocked off google i just find it so fascinating so what you can do is you can type in a contract number or a name of an of a company you can you can put in a ton of information but let's say you just had the contract number that the agency when you asked them they just gave you the contract number so as you go through here more than likely this contract number may be attached to several task orders right and you could dig deeper if you really want to know but at least we have some idea that in august of 2019 they had an award of 605 thousand dollars and you can go in here and dig a little deeper and you'll have the contact information for that agency you'll have just a little other brief information here and it also just you can see here oh my goodness this is a this is right here just wow i got pause for a second y'all because this is good let me tell you why this is really good in this description box they've outlined all of this great information to help you with your bid as you scroll down they talk about here are the funds and then they break down i.t strategic capital planner 274 program admin specialist 139 project control specialist 192 and then it said that this contract will be increased by 605 from 1.3 to 1.9 more than likely this is maybe one position maybe one one position that could be one position i may be wrong it could be multiple usually would have an s if there were more than one but not always but it's still giving you an idea that chances are this is not a lowest cost technically acceptable kind of opportunity and wow these are some amazing rates that were charged uh back in 2019 to 2020. so this is great that this information is here is this kind of information always here no that is why services such as govwin and gov tribe and others exist they're paid platforms not sponsored by them yet but there are paid platforms that you can go to that they'll have more information about opportunities they'll have attachments they'll have the the information for the business but in the interim free place to go is the website i just showed you and you'll also have that information down below it's a great place to go you can also go to sam.gov and put in the contract number again i i'm just leery of sam.gov as far as looking up archival contract information but by all means do so i like to look at multiple places i'll go on um fpds i'll go on gov tribe and i'll go on gov win because each offers something a little different on gov tribe you may be able to get a free i don't know 10 12 30 day subscription who knows but it's just nice to have that insider information now let's say they they come back with well this is new work there is no incumbent so then you have to really dig deep into the requirement for example if the requirement is services and they provide the services attachment that lists the labor categories and the wages that gives you an idea that okay this probably is going to be lowest cost got to be mindful because you know everyone's trying to reach the same target so i may not be able to charge 300 an hour for a project manager it may be more like 54 an hour because it's services the other place to go and to check out if they don't have any archival information i'm going to show you this place in just one second i'm going to share my screen again and that is by.gsa.gov and what's great is on this website you can look up by labor category vendor name and contract numbers so let's try putting that contract number in here and see if it pulls anything up okay i mean it pulled up some stuff it isn't really what i want so are we gonna really look up contract numbers on here no no we're not gonna do that and i'd love for you all to see things in real time because it is a lot of trial and error government contracting is not a clean edited these are the linear steps you take and bam you're going to retire and live on the beach yeah it doesn't work like that so um i like looking up via labor categories and what's great is they give you some really popular ones so let's look up project manager two let's say you're bidding on an opportunity that involves a project manager too and you're like oh i want to make sure i'm competitive okay how do you do that you go here you type in the labor category bam average 143 standard deviation 183 plus 1 is 183 minus 1 is 103. so in other words when it comes to this category they're saying that 103 to 183 is kind of what we're seeing here um but at the same time as you dig into this page a little further you'll see what was the lowest rate 60 for an agency i mean excuse me for a company that's on one of the gsa schedules that's their rate but but it's somebody with a bachelor's degree so if your position requires a higher degree or additional um years of experience this one says six maybe yours is 10 that will help justify a higher rate but regardless remember what i said at the beginning evaluation criteria rule the rules of course you gotta factor in profit and all these other things but if you're not willing to play the game with the evaluation criteria then don't bid don't bid at all but this at least provides some intel as far as what people are charging for this now let's say you're in a situation where you're like okay i looked on here um you don't have the contract number maybe you know of uh the incumbent maybe you just know the incumbent's name and you're just not really sure you have no idea where even to begin with pricing but you have the incumbent's name okay or you know of someone or other companies who may be bidding on the opportunity okay so i'm going to show you something else that you can do let me share my screen again is you go to it's gsa elibrary we'll provide the link this is my number one tip for intel i always go to this site i want to know if the incumbent has a schedule or if my competitor has a schedule because in the schedule just wait to see what you're going to find out so you type in their name and you can see that um which schedule or schedules the company is on so you can see that they have a joint venture that's on stars three and they have two other companies on the mas schedule and then you click this little image here and it's going to display their actual gsa schedule so you can see what they're charging for instance this particular company is charging 63.52 for its specialists just some information that you have there let's see their um star schedule i like to look at all of these just to have an idea okay well i'll show you another example you can look up this firm click the little image and our schedule comes up their point of contacts on there and you can take a look at their pricing as well as the description for their labor categories which is additionally so helpful because it allows you to kind of compare your labor categories against theirs are there any differences with requirements also if you're like labor categories what this provides opportunity for you to take a look at them and to use this information to kind of craft your labor categories so definitely amazing information that's out there kind of the additional tip in this space if you want a ballpark idea of maybe what a contract award was perhaps there's no incumbent you you went to on the link to check out the labor categories but you're still maybe a little leery maybe you want more intel the other thing that i've done in the past is i'll go to um a site like govwin and i'll type in like catholic youth coordinator is a really good one i had no idea what the kind of average contract award was around a religious position so i went on there and then i learned that many of them would kind of range from 17 000 all the way up to maybe 40 50 000 depending on if it was a part-time opportunity the type of opportunity the duration of the contract but at least it gave me an idea of what type of contract values this space this whole new ocean of religious positions would yield which you may be listening thinking like oh that's all but even if it's a few thousand dollars if your profits really nice like 20 to 50 percent you're still making amazing revenues so that's another great tip all in all evaluation criteria rules use these websites be curious your curiosity is really going to help you out for those of you where perhaps it's a potential sole source opportunity or you have a relationship with that agency so you're talking to them quite intimately have an idea for you you just ask them you can ask them well what's your budget what are you looking to spend you can give them examples are you looking to spend you know the amount of a lebron james mansion or are you looking to spend you know the amount of a one-bedroom condo on the beach i don't know more than likely they're going to tell you that's happened time and time and time and time again where an agency has been open enough to share in um as far as the their budget they've been kind enough to do so so amazing gubcon winners hit that notification button subscribe comment below and don't forget everything is possible [Music] you

Channel: Kizzy Parks

Views: 15,747

Keywords: government contracts, government contracting, government contracting for beginners, steps to start government contracting, government contracting for small business, price of past government contracts, pricing of government contracts, past government contracts, pricing of past government contracts, how to find price of past government contracts, pricing in government contracting, how to price in government contracting, pricing strategies in government contracting, sam.gov 2022

Id: L0SM3XAM3IE

Length: 18min 52sec (1132 seconds)

Published: Sun Jun 05 2022