A 13-part installment series.
Richard White explains how federal sales are really transacted. 

Installment 11 - GSA Schedules are Expensive to Get and Not for Everyone

GSA doesn't easily give them out to everyone who submits a proposal (offer), even when the proposal meets GSA's requirements.

Why? They already have more than enough companies with awards for the most popular products and services.

Making a GSA schedule offer is expensive, time consuming, and often madding.

To repeat, you must have an aggressive sales program in place to effectively use a GSA schedule (the orders will not roll in on their own).

The more relationships you have the cheaper an individual GSA sales becomes and the companies with federal contracts have the deepest relationships. (They get to sell while they perform services which can reduce sales cost to almost none in some cases.)

About Richard White
Richard White has 45 years of experience in federal contracting and has published three books on federal contracting:

• ROLLING THE DICE IN DC How the Federal Sales Game is Really Played (2006)
• GSA SCHEDULES The Shortest Path to Federal Sales Dollars (2008)
• CRACKING THE $500 BILLION FEDERAL MARKET The Small Business Guide to Federal Sales (2010)
  

The three books are available for purchase through Amazon.com or complementary copies can be downloaded by clicking on the titles above.

The books attempted to inform readers about how the federal sales game is played in the trenches. They present "how-to" information, the information is still relevant, not much has changed in government contracting over the years.

Like the earlier books, this installment series is focused on selling services and complex hard goods, and software (selling commodities is a low priced crap-shoot).

Series Installments:

1. The Government Has All of the Cards
2. It's Not as Bad as it Appears
3. Trying to Become an Insider by Cold Calling is Expensive
4. Insiders Use Their Contracts to Sell to More Customers
5. Becoming an Insider Costs Time and Money
6. Public Bids
7. Incumbent Contractors Win Repeating Contracts
8. Multiple Award Contracts, the Tidal Wave of the Future
9. How Big and Important are MACs?
10. GSA Schedules: The Biggest and Most Sought After MAC
11. GSA Schedules are Expensive to Get and Not for Everyone
12. The Subcontracting Channel
13. Conclusion 
    

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