Behind the Win | The Importance of Chasing the Right Opportunities (Ep. 240)

Added: 2026-05-13

[00:00:00]Welcome to Lift Up, a short-form spin-off of the Behind the Wind podcast.

[00:00:04]Lift Up was created for quick, meaningful conversations, short episodes that explore timely ideas, practical lessons, and thought-provoking topics across leadership, growth, business, and life. Each episode is designed to offer something you can learn today and apply tomorrow. Think of it as a spark, concise insights, real perspective, and actionable takeaways delivered in just a few minutes.

[00:00:26]Are you chasing the right opportunities?

[00:00:28]Do you know what you're chasing and why?

[00:00:31]I'm Josh Johnson with LSI and in these few moments that we have, I'd like to share with you how we think about what opportunities we should go after, how we track it, and why.

[00:00:43]First of all, when we're going after opportunities, we're always looking at and I'll use in this case, I'm going to focus in on the federal government, but it could be state government, etc. We always look at what is the vehicle, meaning what is the government using in order to buy my services.

[00:01:01]Can they buy it without me doing anything or do I need to do certain things for the government to then purchase? That's the first step is understanding if you're interested in selling to a state, local government, federal government, whatever it might be, understanding how they sell their services. And in many cases, it's a very simple step. You go online, you you sign up, you let them know you're there, and you provide some information that at another time we'll talk about what you include on that. But first, you just need to know how they buy the services. And there are many cases in which you have something spectacular, but you can't sell it to the federal government because you're not on what they call the federal government the contract vehicle. And it can be something in which you had to apply with other companies a while back and they haven't opened it to allow new companies. It could be something in which uh a one-off in which the government says, "If you're just registered with us, you're able to go after this." Always think though, what is the vehicle and also where you think you can win if you're on the vehicle cuz there's many opportunities that come through that.

[00:02:11]Of course, the title. Title is sometimes deceptive. It's going to say very succinctly what the entity is believing gives you enough information to dig deeper.

[00:02:24]But, you want to get into the details.

[00:02:26]And this is where an AI tool really helps well is to take uh a request for information or a request for proposal that an entity puts out saying, "We want this.

[00:02:38]Do you have this?

[00:02:40]And if you do, this is how you submit."

[00:02:44]And with an AI tool, you can get really deep into that proposal very quickly to see if it fits your needs. And if it does, then you take a longer look at it.

[00:02:54]But again, the title is important just to include and then you move on very quickly after that if you have multiple opportunities coming up so that you don't lose sight or dig too deep in the first one. So, this is just your initial, "I'm looking for opportunities and I've made a list." And then you come back and then you use the tools to get into that. The other important thing is the agency or the you know, the state entity or the federal entity, who they are and can you actually win stuff with them?

[00:03:23]For example, a lot of the Department of Defense or Department of War opportunities require a certain accounting system. So, you may not want to do that for a variety of reasons including cost. But, there's other agencies who don't. So, you need to understand the agency. If you want work there, you stick with it. You grow your presence there. It's very hard to get into the selling to the government regardless of what where local, state, or federal. Once you're in with an entity, then they know you. You have a relationship. You have performance. If you just keep jumping around, it's very hard to keep winning.

[00:04:02]Uh and a lot of people I see do that.

[00:04:03]They say, "Oh, here's 10 opportunities.

[00:04:05]There are 10 10 agencies. And now I have to learn every single agency, their their points of how they sell, etc." So, I'd encourage always to focus in on an agency that where you think your needs are going to be met or you see that they're they're interested in what you do.

[00:04:22]Also, you want to know when something was released and when is the response.

[00:04:26]Let's say that I saw a great opportunity and it's been out there for 6 months.

[00:04:32]There's an issue there. What does that mean?

[00:04:34]If they released it 6 months ago and it's open, did they forget to take it off?

[00:04:41]Did they not have enough people uh encouraged to do it? What is the reason why? And in many cases, if they have a response date, then you know that, "Oh, just they might be giving more time."

[00:04:53]But the response due date to me is what we focus in on a lot because we're always looking every day what's happened or released that time. So, we're getting very up-to-date moments. But the response date tells a story. Let's say that something was released today and it's due on Friday.

[00:05:12]Let's say 3 days from now.

[00:05:14]That's pretty quick. To me, that probably says they already know somebody who offers these services. That's not to say you can't still go after it. But if it's the response date's in a couple weeks or a couple months or several months, they're giving time to look at this. And it's really a great opportunity if it's a request for information, which we've talked about on earlier episodes, a request a source of sought, where they're letting the industry come in and say, "Hey, we do this." And you don't have to wait for those. You can pitch to the government at any point. This is what I do and how I do it. So, just know when it's released in responses, there's a lot of strategy on how to do that.

[00:05:54]Now, in addition to this, you want to know where where is the service going to be done? Let's say that I offer a great service, construction service in Wisconsin.

[00:06:06]And then I see six other states offering a similar type of thing I'm doing there.

[00:06:12]Do I have the capacity to do that? Do I have partners in other states? Am I big enough to tackle that? If I don't, because you can win it, doesn't mean it's great. So, you always want to focus in depending on your service, is it something that can be readily done without having uh an an office per se there or a facility there? And if it's out of your lane or out of an area, really think hard on that because moving equipment, people, training people, ensuring people are going to the office, doing the work they need can become a headache.

[00:06:48]You also need to understand government does this and across the spectrum. And they call it a set-aside, which basically means who can compete for this?

[00:06:59]They'll say, I want women-owned companies, I want service-disabled veteran companies, or I want just small business, or anybody.

[00:07:09]When it's set aside for specific audience, that's telling you a lot in the story as well that there could be people that companies that meet these needs, two or three already, and so the person who is offering, you know, asking for people to bid on it, might already know that, I know two or three small business women-owned companies.

[00:07:31]So, I'm just going to say in order to to do this, you got to be a women-owned business. Focus in on that and make sure you understand it early so that you're not wasting time on going through an opportunity when you can't compete for it because you don't meet those needs.

[00:07:45]Some will even say, "We have economically distressed areas in our state and we want you to set up your company in these and we're going to give you a preference that you can win this if you can tell us specifically that you'll employ people from there and you'll have your place of performance there." And those are called, you know, economically distressed communities.

[00:08:10]It could be a variety of things, but there's these preferences or set-asides that a company or has and then again, commercial companies have these as well as state and federal government. So, always make sure you let uh you understand who you are. If you're a small business and which is you don't have anything else, you're not a service-disabled small business, etc., there's plenty of opportunities that are set aside for small business.

[00:08:37]Now, or as preferences. There are also preferences that There are also opportunities where there's no preferences.

[00:08:45]That's a little scarier for a small business because when they don't have a preference, you might uh an entity that has a lot of past performance, has been doing it for years, has a lot of money and can jump in on the game and squash the small business. When you see it's non-preference, those are a little more difficult if you don't have a lot of means because it is opening it up to the folks that might have 50 folks working for them, several hundred, might have a national preference, national uh presence. So, just be cautious as you're looking at these and you can read a lot into what the government's looking for by just how they're claiming how they state who should go after this and the preference they're giving to different entities.

[00:09:31]And also how it comes out, interestingly, is they might say they have a preference in scoring, meaning that there's 100 points and if you are a woman-owned business, we're going to give you four points right off the bat.

[00:09:45]And so, now I have to look at if I'm not a woman-owned business and I have a competitor who is just a who who is a woman-owned business, it's going to be hard for me to potentially beat them because they have four points already under their belt that I lose because I'm not a woman-owned small business. So, when they give these preferences in their even though it's not saying you have to be this, but it is saying you got certain points to score if you are in there, it does enable these types of companies who are referenced as specific point winners in a section uh in many cases a leap ahead of others.

[00:10:26]Once you understand you're meeting all those things I just mentioned, then you get into the details and and this is where AI tool, simple things such as uh hey, [snorts] we are a small woman-owned business. We provide construction services that entail street paving, sidewalks. We are interested in growing our construction practice in this area.

[00:10:52]Uh tell me whether and and and you want to give some more information in your AI tag of asking the question. And then ask, now I want you to provide the requirements for this, recognizing who I am and what I do. Very quickly you'll get uh responses back that will tell you high-level that oh, you missed this. You have to have insurance or oh, you missed this. You have to show six different types of past performance in different areas. And then if you do meet that uh the the specific details of what they're looking for, then you write it.

[00:11:28]And that's uh pretty straightforward. We do this internally with our own work that we go after and then we work with multiple entities where we're doing everything I've discussed and then we're also writing the proposal.

[00:11:42]It's It may seem scary at first, but honestly, once you get into it, it becomes uh everyday opportunities you're looking at, you're putting into a longer term evaluation of opportunities that hopefully you can win.

[00:12:00]And again, it's not scary. I encourage you to look deeply into this and we're free to chat and give advice and provide uh additional thoughts that you may have as you develop what we call this opportunity pipeline or opportunities that you can pursue as a company.

[00:12:20]Thanks for charity Thanks for taking the time to share these thoughts and uh giving the time to share these thoughts with you.