On Demand Capability Briefs

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223 - On Demand Capability Briefs

Mike: What do you do when you're having trouble reaching a contracting officer? Well, the obvious answer is you just keep trying to reach 'em. You just keep calling and emailing and that sort of thing. You try to get an introduction from someone else at another organization or agency, or small business office or another office within the organization.

That's one route. But one of the things that I find that is helpful is when you can get creative. I wanted to share this idea with you this morning here. It's a really simple thing. I've used this in the past to connect with people and I'm like, why have I never shared this with government contractors?

So today, I'm going to share with you something that's a little new. But I've found, regardless of the position of the person, this is a way to reach just about anybody. It's very, very simple. It's the concept of using some videos that you can create in your office. You don't have to get super fancy. You don't have to hire somebody. If you want to, that's fine.

I would create an online on- demand version of your capability brief. It doesn't have to be super long or anything like, in fact, I would recommend you keep it to 10 minutes or less. If you keep it to 10 minutes or less and I click on it and I see it's only 10 minutes, the odds are I'm probably going to watch it.

If you want to get even more creative, you can make a teaser or something like that. Just make the video your capability brief. And look, if it goes six minutes, seven minutes, and you're done, you're done. I would keep it really, really simple. Instead of doing like your full out capabilities brief that you would normally have for a contracting officer, I would just focus on a few of the highlights.

I would focus on a really good corporate overview where you talk about some metrics, provide that social proof that you are as good as you say you are. I think that's really, really important, some metrics in your corporate overview. So let's say if you're a training company, you could say something like, “Our company has trained 12,000 executives over the last 10 years.” We've administered over 2 million hours of executive training or whatever it is, right? Some metrics that speak to the fact that you are as good as you say you are, and that you're not a newbie in the business. That's one area.

The next area is talking about your primary capabilities. Notice I said your primary, not 85 things that you can do. I don't want to hear about 85 things that you can do. I want to hear about the fact that you are cyber security experts and your niche in cyber security is fill in the blank, whatever it is. Don't tell me that you can also do custom computer program. You can also do SharePoint, you can also do landscaping. I don't need to hear about any of that. I want to hear about your primary capabilities in this particular little short briefing here that you're going to record. Next, I want to hear about your differentiators. Just tell me a little bit about what makes you different. It's not things like, well, our leadership style is, you know, second to none. Well, that's really, really vague and doesn't really communicate anything. Now, if there is something specific about your leadership style, like we have this model that we use here that's extremely rare. It's not used in most organizations.

That's something you can talk about. But to just say our leadership style, that doesn't make you any different. One of the things that I am always telling clients about is to come up with unique systems and branding for their stuff. If you are a tech company, then maybe there's a model that you use and that model that you use is something internally that you've created.

It's got some sort of acronym. It's easy to follow. It's three, four letters. Something along those lines. But it's your model and that model is what makes you different than your competitors. So describe it in those terms, not just, Hey, we've got great leadership styles and cutting edge software and technology, and that kind of stuff.

Really you need to describe what sets you apart. I would mention any of your certifications. So if you've got, you know, your 8(a) and your WSB and HUBZone and all those types of things, I would mention those, but I wouldn't fixate on them. So I'd probably leave that towards the end of, of your briefing. And then I would talk about the contracting vehicles yet that you have and that sort of thing.

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If you really want to spice this thing up, what I would do is I would create a foundational capability brief video. And that foundation would be something that you use over and over and over.

But when you send it out, I would create a custom, like 30 second, 45 second message for the contracting officer that you're sending it to. Maybe you're sending it to Cheryl, and so before you send it out there, you shoot a quick video, preferably in the same shirt that you shot the capabilities brief in.

Or, here's another idea. You can also shoot the video just behind your PowerPoint. I like to have somebody's face in it. So if you're going to do that, have it to be one of those where there's the video in the corner of the PowerPoint type thing. But let's go back to the, the custom part of the video now.

When you do that, and let's say it's for Cheryl, the contracting officer, simply say something like, Hey Cheryl, I'm really looking forward to working over at Fort Hood. I've noticed that you are one of the primary buyers there. Just two or three quick little things. I'd really appreciate it if you could take a couple of minutes to watch this video.

I've been trying to contact you, but I haven't been able to reach you. I'm sure you're super busy. Just something along those lines. And just let Cheryl know you're not going to give up, right? That's part of what that's about, but it's custom and it's a bit of a wow factor just for you to tack that onto the front of the video.

And then you can just say something like, Hey, now I'm going to dive into our capabilities brief. And then it just transitions right into the capabilities brief. So that's as hard as this has to be. You don't have to complicate this. You don't have to, you know, go out and hire a marketing firm to record it or anything like that.

You can either record it on your iPhone or a camera or whatever, slap this stuff together, and now you've got something that you can use to send to these contracting officers that you can't reach or that you have a hard time reaching. Now look, you could also use tools like Loom, that's one of the video tools that are out there. There's a bunch of different ones. I think you have to have a paid Loom account to go over five minutes. But anyway, it's worth it to have an account like that so that you can upload it to a system. And then when the contracting officer clicks on it, you'll actually get a notification that they clicked on it and watched the video.

That's a pretty cool thing. So then you can sit back and go, Well, or instead of sitting back and saying, hey, I don't know if Cheryl's watched the video. You can go and look at your analytics and go, I've got a notification that Cheryl watched the video. Now I'm going to reach back and say, Hey Cheryl, it looks like you had a chance to watch the video.

I'd love to connect with you and answer some questions. I have a handful of questions for you. It'll only take like 10 minutes. But it allows you to follow up and know when to follow up. Because look, maybe part of the problem is Cheryl's on vacation. Maybe part of the problem is Cheryl's, you know, just went out with a baby and she's not going to be back for three months.

You don't know why Cheryl's not watching your stuff, but you will know when she does. And that's when you can reengage Cheryl on this type of stuff. Keep it simple, keep it short, keep it informative, and just make sure, and as you're going through stuff, that you are thinking about that agency. So here's another quick little point that you may want to mention.

If there is specific past performance relative to that agency you're talking to, or an opportunity that you want to mention, drop those things in there. It's fine to do that kind of stuff. You just want to be careful because then you might have to rerecord some of your capabilities briefs. But that's okay. I highly recommend customization over just mass emails and that sort of thing. I don't recommend you just blast email this thing out. I recommend you, thoughtfully and carefully use it and make sure that you are reaching the people that you want to reach and not just, again, the shotgun blast thing. It is something that you may eventually want to post on LinkedIn or some other social media where now you've got an online on demand version of your capabilities brief. And it's something you can share with your community of, Hey, if you have a need for these types of services, here's a quick overview of how we do them and how we might be able to work together in that sort of thing. I think it's a really simple strategy and if you have questions about this or what goes in your capabilities brief or anything like that, I'd be happy to chat with you about that. And we will see you next time.

I really hope you enjoyed this episode of Game Changers. If you did, please go like and share this episode on your social media as well as rate and review the episode. That helps other government contractors find out about the podcast and benefit just like you. We'll see you next time.

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