How to Get Government Contracts | How Our Small Business Got Approved

government spending represents over one-third of all spending in the united states and it's expected to continue to increase as the years go by but where exactly is this money actually going who is actually profiting from government spending government contractors according to gov exec federal contract spending was expected to exceed over 600 billion dollars in the year of 2020. that's a lot of money going into the hands of businesses that are set up to get government contracts hi my name is sherman a cpa with life accounting a full service accounting firm that helps small businesses grow and manage their finances in this episode i'm going to teach you how to make the government a customer of your business by getting government contracts if you want to learn how to actually get government contracts for your business then stick around because you're in the right place if you want to know if this stuff actually works then i'm here today to tell you it does i recently went through all these steps with our marketing business life marketing and was successfully approved as a government contractor now i decided to apply after we spoke at the inc 5000 conference where we did a panel discussion on good growth versus fast growth everyone on the panel was talking about how they grew their business very quickly and gave some advice for the people in the audience there was a lot of good information that was shared but there was one gentleman named bruce who basically said he grew his business by millions of dollars through government contract i figured he wasn't lying because obviously inc magazine trusted him as a speaker at their conference and secondly his company has ranked near the top of the list at number 191 out of the top 5 000 fastest growing companies in the world it was at this exact moment that i realized that people are actually getting rich off of government contracts i mean in the past i've heard people call me and try to sell me some six thousand dollar package to try to register my business and do my paperwork and i always thought it was some type of scam but once i realized government contracts were legit i decided to figure out how to do this for myself and i'll be honest it was a little confusing at first there isn't a lot of information on this online and many people aren't really talking about it probably because they don't want you to get in and start competing with them but today i'm going to give you all the information you need to get registered as a government contractor so put your seat belts on and let's get ready to ride alright let's start with the basics first of all what are government contracts government contracts are agreements that outline business transactions between companies and government entities federal government agencies are required to publicly list their contract opportunity now you're probably wondering where exactly can you find these contract opportunities most government contract opportunities are listed on sam which stands for systems for award management to find government contract opportunities go to beta.sam.gov and you can start searching for government contracts sam is an official website of the us government and the best part is you can use their website for free this is where you were registered to do business with the us government and find government contracts now in order to actually bid on a contract opportunity you have to be registered as a government contractor so with that said here are the steps that you need to take in order to register your business as a government contract step one determine if your business is fit for government contracts in order to bid and win government contracts you'll need to sell products or services that the government actually buys and offer it to them at a competitive price yes you may have heard that some government contracts are reserved for certain types of businesses for example there are government contracts that are exclusively set aside for women minority-owned and veteran-owned businesses there are also contracts that are specifically set aside for disadvantaged businesses or businesses that are located in under-utilized areas if any of these circumstances fit your business then you should definitely take advantage of government contracts and by the way if you don't fit these circumstances then don't worry because you can still take advantage of and win government contracts but regardless at the end of the day you need to sell something that the government needs if you don't it doesn't matter what kind of circumstances you are in you will have a hard time winning government contracts the good news is that there are a lot of things that the government spends their money on so search around on sam to find out what they are in need of all right step number two use the sba's contracting guide to aid you in registering once you have determined that you sell something that the government needs then you need to register as soon as possible in the video description below i have linked the exact url for the sba's guide to becoming a government contractor by the way if you're getting worried don't i'm not going to leave you on some cliff with a link in my bio i'm about to show you the steps that i took to register in just a second though if you ever get lost along the way then use this link as a guide this is the exact guide i follow to register as a government contractor you don't need to pay someone to do this for you alright step number three get your duns number in order to register as a government contractor you will need your duns number a duns number is a unique nine digit identification number for the physical location of your business you can register for your duns number on fedgov.dmb.com which i have also attached to my youtube description below you can also search to see if you already have a duns number for your business in the first place when i went through this process it turned out i already did but when registering or reviewing your duns account carefully review the information if anything is inconsistent from what's on your application to register to your done's information then you may be rejected i know this because my first application was rejected because my address was not correct well at least i thought it was but it turned out one letter or something very small was wrong either way you can save yourself the headache by carefully reviewing this information make sure your business information is consistent across everything you do to decrease your chances of being rejected step number four find your nax code the second thing you will need for your application is your nax code a next code is basically a code that classifies your business based on the particular product or service you supply this isn't something that you have to register for you just need to determine what industry your business is in and find the next code that best matches your business industry for example for our accounting firm all we had to do was search the next database for accounting then we could choose the code that best represents our firm now to get your nax code you'll need to go to census.gov i have linked the exact url you will need in my description below that will take you directly to the next database where i just performed a search query step number five get your employer identification number one of the last things you will need before applying is your ein or your employer identification number your ein is what you will use as your taxpayer identification number and your sam application if you have found business tax returns in the past you should already have one and can locate this number on your tax return if you don't have an ein you can easily apply for one on the irs website i've listed the link to do so in the description of this video by the way if any of this stuff i'm linking is helping you then please help me out by clicking that like button below all right step number six register with sam once you have your duns number nax code and ein you should have the information you need in order to register with sam you can register at sam.gov you will first need to create a user account and once your user account is created you can proceed with registering your entity then once you start registering your entity it will ask you a series of questions about your business information but it should be a pretty straightforward process for you since you've already done the hard part by getting all the information we discussed in events once you submit your registration in sam you will need to wait for them to review your registration and approve you for government contracts which leads me to step number seven find and win government contract opportunities once you are approved you will need to create your profile inside of the sam database be sure to carefully create your profile because government agencies often use this database to find companies that they want to work with but don't sit and wait on opportunities to come knocking on your door go to beta.sam.gov and start looking for opportunities for example if your business offers engineering services go to the search engine change the filter to contract opportunities and simply type in engineering then select contract opportunities that you might be interested in once you select an opportunity that you're interested in you will be able to verify if the opportunity is still active or not if so simply review the description attachments and contact information of the decision makers associated with this opportunity if you meet the criteria of what they are looking for then you can submit a proposal to bid on the government contract in your proposal be sure to specify your experience credentials capabilities and why you are the best candidate to win the contract opportunity if you do this successfully you can end up winning government contracts that propel your business to make thousands hundreds of thousands and even millions of dollars like in the example i provided at the beginning of this episode so by now you should have all the information you need to begin bidding on government contracts by the way our accounting firm offers bookkeeping accounting and tax services for small businesses we do not however assist you with getting government contracts so if you need help with this process be sure to review the information that i have provided in our youtube description below if you have any questions on this then be sure to drop it in the comments and we'll try our best to get back to you okay one last thing let's go ahead and recap the content of today's episode so you can get the word today we discussed on how to bid on government contracts and how we successfully did this for one of the businesses that we own as discussed the government spends close to 600 billion dollars per year in federal contracts and there are specific opportunities that are set aside for small businesses women-owned businesses minority-owned businesses and so much more the process to become a government contractor is not as complicated as it sounds all you need to do is sell something that the government needs and meet their registration requirement i went over this and explained the common things that trip people up when they apply which is getting their duns number tax code and taxpayer identification number once you have this information then you should have what you need to make registration easier for yourself but remember when you're obtaining this information you need to make sure that your business information is consistent if something is off like your name or your address is mispelled then it can delay the registration process for your business once you register and are approved then government contracts become fair game just use beta.sam.gov to find contract opportunities and do everything you can to win them alright that's it for today's video folks i hope you found it interesting and useful if you did go ahead and give this video a thumbs up to help me out here and by the way if you want more content on how to grow and manage your business finances then be sure to subscribe to our channel until next time take care

Channel: LYFE Accounting

Views: 172,466

Keywords: government contracts, small business government contracts, how to get government contracts, bidding on government contracts

Id: JHVzsc-rq0E

Length: 12min 18sec (738 seconds)

Published: Wed Dec 16 2020