Mastering GovCon Sales Calls

In this episode of "Game Changers for Government Contractors," host Michael LeJeune dives into the complexities of government contracting sales calls. He highlights common mistakes salespeople make when approaching contracting officers and explains why a research-driven strategy is essential for success. Michael also emphasizes the importance of having clear objectives—whether it's gathering information, booking a capability brief, or building relationships. Learn how to pivot during calls, keep the conversation productive, and avoid the common pitfalls that lead to dead ends. This episode is packed with actionable advice for GovCon sales professionals looking to improve their results.

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Read Transcript Here:

Michael LeJeune (00:00)

Welcome to another episode of Game Changers for Government Contractors. I'm your host, Michael LeJeune, and today I'm going to be talking about mastering government contracting sales calls. This is one of the things that a lot of salespeople struggle with. Part of the reason why is that most people think, "Well, sales is sales, right? Regardless of what you're selling or who you're selling to, sales is sales." And that's not exactly true, though there's a hint of truth to it.

The problem is, in the commercial market, sales is done by volume. What I mean by that is it's usually a volume of rejections. You call, say your little thing, get rejected, call again, get rejected, call again, get rejected. You do that over and over again and play the numbers game. At some point, somebody will either take pity on you or hear something in your quick sales pitch that makes them say, "Tell me more." They’ll bypass the fact that you cold-called them, and it’ll work. You shouldn’t do that in the commercial market. You shouldn’t, but people do. In the government market, if you do that, you will irritate people faster than you can imagine because it is the urge of most salespeople, when they finally get through to somebody, to just kind of vomit their entire sales pitch.

"Hi, my name is Mike, and I work for this company. We do all this stuff. It's really cool. You should buy our widgets. Do you want some widgets? We sell widgets. I've got a lot of widgets. Please buy some widgets." Then, when you finally take a breath, they say, "No thanks," or, "Send me your capability statement," or they just hang up or whatever it may be. The point here is, you’ve not done your homework and you’re approaching this a lot of times like commercial sales. That’s often why people are really struggling to reach contracting officers, program managers, teaming partners, or whoever it is. You’re struggling because you’re approaching it the wrong way.

The way you should be approaching this is very simply based on research. You should actually have a plan of attack when you make a call that is based on all the research that you do. You should know your target client inside and out. You should know about them from all the different data sources that are out there. I've covered that in a lot of other podcasts. I'm not going to get too much into that today, but just know there's sam.gov , there’s USASpending, there’s FPDS, there’s the GSA sales query tools, there are agency forecasts, there's Google, there’s LinkedIn. There are a lot of sources to give you a great image of everything that’s going on at your agency. You have no excuse. You should know contractors, you should know current contracts and programs that are going on. You should know all of that stuff before you pick up a phone because once you pick up the phone and start reaching out, you’ve got to act like you know them. You do, because if you act any other way, they’re going to smell it coming and you’re going to get the brush-off. You’re going to be told to just go pound sand, like go do something else. Sometimes it’ll sound really nice, like, "I’m really interested, send me that capability statement. I’m going to put that in my file, and one of these days when I have a need, I’m going to reach out to you." Then they hang up the phone, and the first thing they probably do is yell over the cubicle if they’re in the office and go, "Hey Janet, you’ll never guess. I just told somebody to send me their capability statement again, and they totally bought it. You know, I just got off the phone, right?" That’s probably going to happen in that situation because they have had the same call over and over and over again where somebody called with little or no information, begged for a contract, and they stopped them in their tracks and politely gave them some sort of brush-off. You don’t want that happening to you. So, build your plan around the research. That’s the number one thing.

The second thing is you need to understand what your primary objective is when you’re making the call. There are typically three. That’s it. There are typically three things. The first one is you’re trying to learn something very specific. It’s likely about an upcoming contract, or it could be about a current contract. It could be a program manager's name. It could be a contracting number or a contract number. It could be something simple, but typically, when you’re reaching out to a contracting officer, you’re looking for something very specific. That’s objective number one. Objective number two is you’re often looking to book a capability brief. This is where you go very in-depth about who you are, what you do, what you sell, and then you grill them a whole lot about the agency and their needs. There’s a podcast just on booking capability briefs and how to run those. You can go listen to that later. I’m not going to dive deep into that. The third thing, and it’s one of the most critical things, is you’re looking to build a relationship with that person. So, those are the three objectives. You’re looking for something specific, a piece of information, you’re looking to book a capability brief, or you are looking to build that relationship. Those are the three objectives. You’re not looking for that fourth one, the elusive sale. The odds are, if it’s a first call or a fifth call, you’re not going to get a sale from the call. That’s just the way it is. Depending on what you sell and what time of year it is, what their budget is, they may not have a budget for it. It may be too expensive for them to do a micro-purchase or simplified acquisition or even consider an 8(a) sole source. You have to remember, if this is your first through your fifth, maybe first through your seventh call, they don’t know you. So, it’s hard to pitch them something when they don’t know you. That’s why building a relationship is so important and foundational.

You can build a relationship by calling to learn something specific. "Hey, Ms. Contracting Officer, I’m looking for this bit of information. I have searched high and low. I promise you I’ve done my due diligence here, and I cannot find this. Could you help me with this really simple thing or forward me to someone who can? I’d really appreciate it." That’s a simple way to build a relationship because they’re not asking for the moon. They’re not giving me homework. You can start to build a relationship of trust with that person because, again, you’re not asking them to do a whole lot there. It’s very simple. During a capability brief, you can build a relationship. You can ask them a lot of questions. You can learn more about them. You can listen more than you talk. So, those are a couple of objectives. When you pick up the phone, you need to know which one of those objectives you’re focused on so that you can plan how you’re going to run through the call.

That’s the next thing: you need that plan. So, when those primary objectives don’t work, you also need a backup plan where you pivot from what your primary objective was to a secondary thing. We can use those three as a way to do that. Let’s say you call up a contracting officer and say, "Hey, I’m looking for this contract number. This should be really easy to find, but I have looked high and low. Is this something you think you could find for me real quick and send over to me?" Maybe they’ll say, "You know what? I don’t manage that. I don’t know what you’re talking about. Not sure I could be of any help." Okay. "I appreciate that. While I have you on the phone," this is pivoting, "while I have you on the phone, as I was going through my research, I noticed you buy what I sell. You have some upcoming contracts for this coming year. I’ve seen a couple of RFIs/sources sought. I’m really interested in giving a capability brief to you. I promise you I won’t be annoying and spend 30 minutes on the company. I’ll spend five or six minutes on the company and what we do, and then the rest of the time we have just about it, you know, me asking some questions about the agency. Would that be okay? Can we go ahead and book that capability brief today?" If they say no, not today, guess what you do? You pivot again. You pivot to the relationship side of it. "Hey, totally understand that. I respect that you are super busy right now. When would be a good time in the next couple of months to circle back with you about that capability brief?" They’re likely going to say, "Give me a call in a month, reach out," or whatever. What I would likely say is, "Instead of just calling you in a month to try and get on your calendar, could we go ahead and just book that today for a month out or six weeks out? Would that work?" And that, again, is another pivot. So, you have that pivot plan. When something you ask for doesn’t work, you can go to the next one. Now, look, here’s the deal: don’t pivot until you get a yes. Only pivot two or three times. Once you’ve gone two or three deep on that, you’re kind of on the edge of their nerves. So, you can go two or three deep on the pivots. Then you stop it. If nothing else, say, "Hey, could I schedule a follow-up call with you? I’d love to pick your brain about something. Would you mind passing my information on? Hey, are you participating in any events that are coming up? Maybe you’re going to the conference. Are you going to the VETS conference? Are you going to the HUBZone conference? Are you going to the 8(a) conference? You know you are. I’m going to be there too. I’d love to just put a face to a name while you’re there, so hopefully I’ll get to see you." Those are little bitty touch points that you can have. But number one, go in with an objective: "Hey, I’m trying to do one of those three things: learn something specific, book a capability brief, build a relationship." If you start with those three and understand this is a long game, that alone will change how they respond to you. Then, if you have a pivot plan, you can pivot to a couple of other things and not walk away from a call with nothing.

See, this is where a lot of clients go wrong. A lot of people will get told no and say, "Thank you. I appreciate your time," and then hang up. They don’t pivot ever. So, having that pivot plan will help you tremendously. Now, look, I mainly talked about contracting officers in this podcast. This also works with teaming partners. You need to do the same research, be educated the same way, be ready to go through what your primary objective is, and focus on that so that you know you’re trying to learn something, trying to book a capability brief, trying to build a relationship. You know when you go in what you’re focused on so that when you call that teaming partner—and yes, you can give capability briefs to teaming partners so they can know more about you—when you go in to book that call or make that call, you know how you’re going to pivot when you get told no.

People are almost never, almost never told yes to the first thing they ask. It’s extremely rare. That’s why the pivot plan is so important. If you have questions about this podcast, please reach out to me. I would love to help talk with you, maybe coach you through what’s going on. We’d love to have you in our group coaching program if you are struggling with government sales. Reach out to me anytime for more questions. See you next episode.

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