Introduction
If you’ve made the shift from reactive bidding to strategic business development, you already know that the key to consistent wins is knowing your buyer before the RFP drops.
Now it’s time to get tactical.
This post — Part Two of two — is the “how” (Part One, the “why”, is here). Taken together, you have a guide that compares the top free public contract award sources and two other resources, and seven steps to use what you learn in a competitive analysis. That essential work lets you efficiently uncover opportunities, prioritize agencies, find real people behind contract actions, and build a focused prospecting plan that gives your BD and capture strategy real teeth.
The steps in this blog post are based on the approach I take inside our Federal Business Intensive — and the same method my clients use to build pipelines that deliver sustainable Federal growth.
It also presumes that you’ve already got a dataset you want to work with. If you’re unfamiliar with SAM.gov Ad Hoc Reports, tap a set of six free video lessons, under 50 minutes total, here.
Let’s dive in.
Step 1: Start with Keywords, Not Just NAICS Codes
Many contractors begin by filtering past contract award using the North American Industrial Classification System (NAICS) codes that are part of each record.
Here’s the flaw in doing that: Contracting officers don’t always assign the NAICS code you expect. They may:
- Choose a code that fits part of what you do
- Pick one that reflects the end product rather than your labor
- Use a broader or narrower code than you anticipate
So if you’re just using NAICS codes to select the data for your competitive analysis, you’re almost certainly missing records, nuance, intelligence, leads…and ultimately opportunities.
🧠 That’s why I recommend starting with keywords that describe what you do in everyday terms.
Look in the Description of Requirements field in SAM.gov contract award records for purchases of products or services like yours. You’ll discover up to 250 characters that might include:
- Functional descriptions (e.g., “ground maintenance,” “IT training,” “HVAC repair”)
- Product names or models
- Software types or certifications
- Problem-focused phrases (e.g., “data migration,” “emergency repair”)
Once you get comfortable with the basics on pulling past contract data from SAM.gov AdHoc Reports, start exploring. Look at the terms that show up in the description of requirements for contracts awarded to your competitors. Expect to refine your searches based on what you learn.
🎯 Pro Tip: Run wide searches first. Then tighten. Find a set of terms you can combine in a single query that brings you search results with well over 80% relevant contracts.
Step 2: Discover What Codes Buyers Actually Use
Once you’ve searched by keyword, pay attention to the NAICS and Product Service Codes (PSC) attached to those contract records.
These tell you:
- How buyers are categorizing what you do
- What codes your competitors are showing up under
- What codes to add to your SAM.gov entity record to improve visibility
🛠 You’re aligning your profile to how buyers are already searching.
🎯 Bonus: Add underused PSC codes to your capability statement or online profiles to improve relevance.
Step 3: Identify Your Competitors — And What They Reveal
Your competitors’ wins are treasure maps.
In your SAM.gov reports, search by company name to find award records. Ask:
- What agencies buy from them?
- What’s the size and scope of those awards?
- What set-asides are used?
- What contract vehicles are they winning through?
- What offices and contracting officers appear repeatedly?
Build a table or spreadsheet that includes:
- Award date
- Agency
- Place of performance
- Vehicle used
- Set-aside status
- Amount awarded
- Named points of contact
This becomes your first wave of research. These are Federal humans in the contracting shop who make decisions about buying services or products like yours.
🧠 But it’s not a list to dump into your marketing automation system! Successful govcons realize that they need relationships with players at multiple layers in every office where they want to win business.
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- Who the players are at all five layers
- What each one cares about (and fears!) most
- How to approach them: when to call (and when not to)
Step 4: Uncover The Humans Behind The Data
Every Federal contract award record includes at least three fields that connect you to real people:
- Prepared By
- Approved By
- Last Modified By
These fields often include email handles or usernames that give away:
- First and last names
- Office codes (to identify location)
- Likely email formats
🔎 Example: Robert Johnson, whose actual email might be robert.johnson.2@us.af.mil , may appear in the data as robert.johnson.2.af567@us.af.mil. Let’s say you tried using that to reach him and the email bounces. But the contract award record shows the buying office is “AF567”. If you remove the office identifier “af567” from the email address, what remains might give you a working email.
Once you’ve got names, look them up on:
- Agency staff directories
- Public org charts
- Google or other social media, once you know the right Robert Johnson
- And of course any services you’re already paying for, if you have them
These are your entry points.
🎯 Bonus Tip: Paid subscription services, or LinkedIn Sales Navigator, can be especially productive sources to find coworkers, reporting structures, or mutual connections. Start building a map of the buying team.
I Can Be Your “Data Diving Buddy”!
Love exploring new things…but want company on the journey? I get you…and I’ve got you. Let’s navigate the depths of Federal contract records together in this complimentary on-demand webinar.
>> Register and watch the webinar now!
Step 5: Spot the Vehicles They’re Using — And How They Compete Work
Some offices do everything via their GSA Schedule. Others rarely use it. Some love IDIQs, BPAs, or simplified acquisition. Some post full-and-open RFPs regularly.
SAM.gov past contract award data tells you:
- What acquisition methods are being used
- Whether the award was set aside
- If simplified acquisition was used (typically <$250,000)
- How many offers were received
Why this matters:
- If you see only 1–2 offers, that’s a great prospect for relationship-first outreach.
- If everything is full-and-open, you’ll need a stronger differentiator.
- If your GSA Schedule isn’t being used in that office… maybe you don’t need it.
🔁 This helps you avoid wasted proposal efforts and target real buying patterns.
Step 6: Analyze Timing — and Prepare for the Recompete
SAM.gov award records include Estimated Completion Dates and Action Dates for each contract action.
Why this is powerful:
- If a contract is due to end in 12–18 months, the agency may be planning a follow-on now
- You can begin building relationships and marketing before the next RFP drops
- You avoid the last-minute scramble — and possibly influence the acquisition strategy
🎯 Pro Tip: Sort your spreadsheet by estimated completion date. Flag any ending within the next year as high priority for outreach.
Add a column: “Do we have a contact in this office yet?” If not, that’s your next step.
Step 7: Build a Prioritized Prospect List You Can Actually Use
Data without focus is just noise. Now that you’ve filtered for:
- The right agencies
- Real buyers
- Active competitors
- Recompeting contracts
- Matching codes and set-asides…
…it’s time to organize. Use a Google Sheet, Excel file, or CRM with fields like:
- Agency
- Buyer name(s)
- Contact info (if available)
- Contract name
- Estimated end date
- Set-aside type
- Vehicle used
- Competition level
- Relationship status (Cold / Warm / Engaged)
Sort based on priority. Schedule follow-up actions. Assign account leads if you have a team.
🎯 Pro Tip: Hold a monthly pipeline review using only this list. Ditch the clutter of every online alert and SAM.gov feed. Work what’s real.
Bonus: How to Spot Easier Starting Points
Let’s be honest — Federal contracting is hard. But some wins may be easier than others. Look for the people in your top priority agencies who have made…
- Simplified Acquisition awards ($10K–$250K)
- Contracts with ≤ 3 offers received
- Frequent low-value awards to the same vendor (indicates trust and speed)
- Awards marked as “Not Competed” (may indicate receptiveness to strong relationships)
Also consider building out contacts in offices that have:
- Expiring BPAs that may need a refresh
- Small procurement teams (they often appreciate vendor proactiveness)
- Especially high spend in Federal fiscal Q3 (April-June) and Q4 (July-Sept)
🎯 Pro Tip: Find a prime vendor who already works in the office where you want to win work. If you can’t break in as a prime yet, is it feasible to disrupt the incumbent? Or consider a teaming or subcontracting approach?
🎯Case Study: How Strategic Focus Helped JCTM Win a $60B VA IDIQ Award
Company: JCTM
Industry: Professional Services for the Intelligence Community
Certifications & Vehicles: SDVOSB, 8(a), GSA MAS SINs, ISO 9000
The Challenge
JCTM had done everything “right” by traditional standards. The company held multiple socio economic certifications, GSA contract vehicles, and had earned its ISO 9000 quality certification.
But despite those assets, JCTM wasn’t breaking through.
“We were not able to identify small business set-aside opportunities and win them,” said Audie Cooper, CEO of JCTM. “We were reacting to almost every opportunity that came our way.”
Audie admitted candidly that his team was chasing notices, not executing a focused capture strategy. Ironically, the company most needed for themselves what they provide for their clients: to turn data into actionable intelligence.
The Turning Point: Competitive Analysis
Everything changed when JCTM leveraged the intelligence they gained through Summit Insight’s Federal Business Intensive program, which includes the kind of custom analysis we’ve described in the steps above.
CEO Audie Cooper and his team:
- Gained clarity on how to focus their efforts in the increasingly complex federal market
- Understood the strategic shift toward category management and Best-in-Class (BIC) contract vehicles
- Learned to align their services with agencies and contract vehicles that actually buy what they offer
“You taught us to identify clients and associated contract vehicles that buy what JCTM is selling,” said Cooper. “That realization gave us clarity—on both clients and requirements.”
The company refocused its capture strategy on specific IDIQs and GWACs that aligned with its core capabilities.
From Focus to Win: SBA Mentor-Protégé Joint Venture
As a direct result of this focus, JCTM identified the SBA Mentor-Protégé Program (MPP) as a strategic growth lever. They proposed a joint venture with a long-standing large prime partner—and the partner said yes.
That new JV became the vehicle through which JCTM:
✅ Won a major Department of Veterans Affairs IDIQ award and
✅ Secured one of just 15 small business spots on a $60 billion, 10-year contract vehicle
The Bottom Line
“The focus and approaches we learned in your program to turn data into actionable intelligence paid off,” said Cooper. “We won an additional $7 million in less than 24 months. And that one IDIQ contract could define the next decade of growth for our company.”
Hear The CEO’s Inside Story
Audie Cooper shares five things he did to grow his company — and suggests you could do, too! — to grow from $4 million to $11 million between 2021 and 2024 million by winning professional services contracts to serve the Federal intelligence community. Watch the webinar now!
Your 30-Day Action Plan
You don’t need to overhaul your entire process to get started. Just carve out time weekly to develop your skills and create a cadence of consistent, focused, outreach to the right people.
Here’s a practical 4-week starter plan.
Week 1: Focus on Best Prospects
☐ Run a keyword search in SAM.gov Ad Hoc Reports
☐ Export the past two full years, pls year-to-date, of award data
☐ Use pivot tables to analyse spend and choose 2-3 agencies where you most want to win work
Week 2: Pull and Segment
☐ Filter by place of performance and buying office, and review to eliminate inconsistencies
☐ Identify the most active recurring buyers (Approved By / Prepared By)
☐ Consolidate competitor award records into a “snapshot story” for internal reference
Week 3: Build Your Prospecting Worksheet
☐ Create columns for all key contact and contract data, and one line for each person that your data shows active in the contracting shop
☐ Filter to identify contracts expiring within the next 12–18 months
☐ Leave at least one line open in each office to add the players at the other layers (end user, industry, and small business specialist)
Week 4: Concentrate Efforts to Make Contact in Just ONE Office
☐ Use sources like LinkedIn and employee directories as well as other tools you may have, to research the most active buyers in your chosen agencies.
☐ Craft five sets of talking points centered on your unique value, based on their roles in handling the problem you help them solve
☐ Be politely, relentlessly, persistent! Alternate cheery custom phone messages and email, 2-3 cycles a week, til you get through. Always include, “How I can help you…”
🔁 Track your calls as well as your results in your worksheet. Keep refining your collateral based on what’s working.
🛠 Feeling uncertain as you prepare to pick up the phone? Breathe easy.
- Listen in on a role play of a first conversation between a business development professional and a Federal Contracting Officers! Link here to a 30-minute conversation with loads of tips.
- Find out more from former Contracting Officer Kevin Jans about How To Talk To Federal Contracting Officers in today’s dynamic and fast-changing times.
🎯 Pro Tip: It takes an average of 15 to 32 touches to get from contact to contract! If you give up after two or three tries, you’re giving that business to your competitor. Business is won by the last person who calls.
Conclusion: Building Relationships Helps You Fill Your Pipeline With Winnable Opportunities
The Federal data is all there. But information isn’t transformation.
The gold is in knowing:
- Who your real buyers are
- How they’ve bought before
- What language and codes they use to describe what you do
- And how to show up early, prepared, and positioned as the easy yes
SAM.gov is deep — and messy — but that’s exactly why most of your competitors never dive in. They wait for the RFP, show up cold, and lose.
Your edge is your focus. Your advantage is relationship-first outreach, powered by data.
So get your gear on, grab your “data diving” buddy if you have one, and start exploring.
Because the future of your Federal growth isn’t in more bids.
It’s in better relationships.
Stay tuned for Q4 Federal Win Tactics, coming May 15th, and Data Diving Part Two — coming June 1st 2025!
Get Help Applying This To Your Pipeline
Check out our free illustrated guide: Three Easy Lessons in Free Federal Market Research. >>Get the guide now!
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