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The Post CIO-SP3 Relationship Drive
by Thomas P. Caruso, PhD, MBA, PMP
By the time you read this many of you probably have been involved in proposals for both of the Chief Information Officer-Solution Provider 3 (CIO-SP3) solicitations. You may, like me, have agreed to two or more contingency offers for a role on these proposals, e.g. program manager, project manager, or SME, if an award is received. You’ve learned about government-wide acquisition contracts (GWACs), like Indefinite Delivery/Indefinite Quantity (ID/IQ) contracts and how the government is trying to find ways to increase the amount of small business participation in IT contracts. You’ve learned that most companies want to participate in government health IT opportunities through CIO-SP3.
Now you may be wondering how you’re going to make the best of this opportunity for your clients if they win an award. You could be asking what to do while waiting for the awards which will not happen until at least the summer. How can you be prepared for an award? What happens if you are not on a winning team? Will you or your clients be excluded from health IT contract opportunities?
The government consulting business is about relationships. We can’t stop building those relationships. Relationships will lead to opportunities you can capture now or in the long-term. Your clients will always look to you for subject matter expertise, but if you have the relationships when the awards are made, you’ll be ready to create new opportunities. If you are on a team that receives the CIO-SP3 award you’ll have a mechanism to capture those opportunities with a strong possibility for building the cash flow from that award, when you have strong relationships. Or if your teams don’t win the award, then you’re still in a position to build funding from new opportunities because you have those relationships. So focus on building relationships.
Start this effort by getting clarity about what you can offer to a client. What is your core skill set and what areas have you applied this expertise? To help you with this, come up with a list of potential clients. Start with your contact list and pull out of that list the names of potential clients. Also consider whether you have called on your past clients recently. Have you attended conferences and sought out potential clients that you know you could help, to initiate discussions with them about solutions that you can provide to increase their revenues, or decrease their costs while improving product quality?
Then consider what you are doing to build your reputation as a thought leader using various tools on the Internet. Have you participated regularly in groups on Facebook and, especially, LinkedIn in which you can have your expertise recognized by other participants, leading to new relationships? Have you created a page for your business on Facebook and LinkedIn?
What about starting a blog? Create a blog entry that focuses on the solutions that you can provide, remembering the biggest challenges of your customers right now. Maybe you can write about experiences you have had bringing clients up to speed on meaningful use or health information exchange. Make sure you are providing value for your potential clients, giving them something useful in each of your blogs and then try to blog frequently, at least one a month and preferably one a week. Realize that if you post too often, you may lose your readers interest.
Another way to build your thought leadership is by offering webinars that attract potential customers. These can be used to accent your particular methodology; again you need to provide value in the webinar. Outlines of books you have written or read recently, or descriptions of software you have found useful such as Wordpress or Sharepoint, even training on popular website tools such as Facebook or LinkedIn, can help you develop your visibility to potential clients.
Finally, have you become a regular Twitter user? Tweeting the latest news or making and driving followers to your blog, your webinars and even your comments on Facebook and LinkedIn will help create a network base. Use tweets to connect with your past, present and future customers. Be human and be helpful, giving a view into your life while providing information that is useful. Retweet those postings by your past, present and future clients to help them become more visible as well. Respond to people who request assistance by referring them to places to get more information. Don’t forget that whenever you offer new content, whether on your blog, a new webinar, or in groups on Facebook or LinkedIn, make sure you are tweeting this information to your followers.
Good luck on your CIO-SP3 proposals, and in building your contact list, while strengthening those ties to be as helpful to your clients and potential clients as possible.
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Thomas Caruso has more than twenty years experience consulting in areas such as biomedical IT, government contracting and project management. If you would like to contribute a Consultant’s Corner article for next quarter’s newsletter, please contact Amanda Woodhead at amandawoodhead5@gmail.comor 615-932-3863.
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