Fedmarket has stressed in past newsletters that indefinite delivery/indefinite quantity (IDIQ) multi-award contracts are the wave of the future in the federal market. In most instances and as previously mentioned, IDIQs are open for bids for a specified amount of time. If you snooze, you lose. GSA Schedules are the exception to that rule because they are open to vendors at all times.  In other words, there a no deadlines to meet with respect to the filing of GSA Schedule offers. 

Suppose that your targeted federal agency is the US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and you missed the opportunity to bid on one of DHS’s multi-billion dollar IDIQs. Now what?

1. Find the list of contract awardees for the IDIQ in which you have an interest and start selling the awarded IDIQ contract holders. This is not any easy task but a necessary one. Believe it or not, some still mistakenly believe that federal agencies will come to you to place orders without any effort on your part.
   
2. Sell DHS end users and have them tell the IDIQ holders to give you a subcontract. Admittedly, this is not easy either but watch the doors of the IDIQ contract holders fly open if they smell dollars.
   
3. Get a GSA Schedule contract. This an expensive and time consuming endeavor but a Schedule contract is a necessary weapon in the arsenal of a federal sales person.
   
4. Call on contracting offices and ask which IDIQs they favor and who is buying what within the agencies. Again, you may not get a warm welcome but rejection is part of the life of any successful sales person. And rejection isn't lessening as the hordes of commercial companies descend on DC in search of revenue. Don't ask and you will definitely not receive.

We don't see the trend towards IDIQs abating for at least five years or more. Publicly-posted opportunities may gradually go down, but they will never dry up. Federal agencies need public bids to show that the market is free and open.

Fedmarket's offers the following IDIQ seminars:
Winning Federal IDIQ Contracts
Webinar: Understanding IDIQ, BPA, BOA, GWAC and GSA Contracts
2-Day Executive Session on Winning Federal Contracts

Call Fedmarket's sales staff at 301 652 9504, Ext. 2 if you have questions concerning these or any other products or services Fedmarket offers.

Regards,
Richard White
President
Fedmarket
rjwhite@fedmarket.com
888-661-4094, Ext. 118 (office)
301-908-0546 (cell)