I’ve spent the past week at SOF Week in Tampa, FL. If you’ve never been or have never heard of it, it’s a roughly week-long conference that’s jointly hosted by SOCOM and Global SOF every year in May. There are hundreds of vendors and companies in attendance. Some companies have booths in the exhibition hall and some companies simply walk around and schedule meetings to network. There are a lot of government meetings with industry and there are even more industry meetings with industry. There are on-going events where you can hear influential government members speak, such as the Acquisition Executive of SOF AT&L or the Commander of SOCOM. There are also smaller keynote speakers and breakout sessions where you can hear specifics about certain PEOs and the Small Business Offices in the various services. No matter what originally draws people to SOF Week, they’re likely to get much more than they imagined out of the experience.
As I attended various keynote speaker events and walked through the booths of the exhibition hall, there were some positive and some negative things that stuck out to me that I would like to share. For the most part, everything at the conference is tailored for the SOF environment (hence–“SOF Week”), however a few of the things I noticed could apply to anyone in the GovCon space.
Representation Matters
Maybe the folks in some of the booths were tired or perhaps their feet hurt, but the way you hold yourself makes a difference. I saw a noticeable difference in crowd size at small vendor booths between those that had smiling and welcoming people and those that had people who looked uninterested in the passer by and their own product. I’m not in sales, but I can say personally, it didn’t make me want to stop at those booths.
Introductions are Important
Having a quick answer to “What does your company do?” can change the course of an entire conversation. Almost everyone that had a booth could answer that with no problem. But when meeting with people outside of their company booth, it was sometimes harder for people to give a 5-10 second summary of their company’s mission. This made me think of my own business and I asked myself “Do I give a good 10 second intro?” So, this point is mostly a reminder to step back from the high-speed proposal writing and the business development and think “Do I have a good 10 second intro?” and “When was the last time I updated that intro?” If you can give people a good verbal explanation right away, it really helps steer the conversation to mutual acquaintances or similar areas of work, opening the door to a potential connection.
Make it Easy to Know What you Do
Whether it’s on your website, on your one-pager, or on the first slide of your pitch deck, make it easy for a person to understand what you do without talking to you. Obviously, a conversation would be the ideal way to explain your business, but that isn’t usually how people first learn about your business. I looked at several company brochures and didn’t understand the business offering. I would then follow up by looking at their website and would remain confused. This type of company description correlates well to the first few slides of a proposal or pitch deck for small businesses. When you are introducing your product to the government, whether you’re hoping for a customer memorandum sponsor or simply to garner interest in your product, make sure that a general overview of what your company does is clear without you being in the room. This helps people feel more prepared to speak with you and starts to get their ideas flowing on how they could best interact with you and how you may be able to work together.
Last, and arguably the most important thing…
Following Instructions Matters
The small business advisors and teams said no less than 5 times that the most important thing you can do when responding to a solicitation is to FOLLOW THE INSTRUCTIONS. This sounds like a simple concept. Many people roll their eyes at the simplicity and almost insulting nature of that statement. Yet, time and again, companies don’t get selected because they didn’t follow the instructions. This was not SOF-specific advice. It’s good advice for anyone that wants to do business with the government. So let me say again: Follow the instructions.
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My takeaway was if I was talking about these things, likely other people were too. So perhaps you’ll read these observations and take a minute to reflect. Maybe you feel good about everything I wrote or maybe you take a quick look at your website or 10 second introduction and make some adjustments. Either way, there’s always a place for reflection and growth, so hopefully these observations help you in some way, just as they helped me.
Are there things that you notice at conferences and trade shows that may be useful to others? Drop a comment and tell us about it!
Keep Moving Forward,
