The conventional approach to government business development starts with a pipeline of contracts that are due to expire. The more advanced conventionalists may even supplement that expiring contract list with tidbits from an agency’s procurement forecast. Doing so used to work when the pace of change in government was glacial. If you’re still doing so, you are mostly relying old habits to realize something new. Chasing contracts is left to the people who don’t know how to solve problems. Table scraps, if you will.
To get ahead of the competition and establish a sustainable platform for delivering value, look for the challenges. Regardless of individual agency, our government needs new solutions to changing problems.
In order to solve a problem, you have to be either lucky or good. To be good, you need to understand context, history, tangents and possibilities. Being good requires work. It isn’t hard work but nor is it glamorous.
Put your head down, understand your customer and solve their challenges.
Allart van Everdingen (Dutch, Alkmaar 1621–1675 Amsterdam) Following Renard’s False Story, His Father Is Chased by Hunting Dogs from Hendrick van Alcmar’s Renard The Fox, Dutch, Engraving; second state of three; The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, The Elisha Whittelsey Collection, The Elisha Whittelsey Fund, 1962 (62.650.8(51))