Government Bids

BradleyT · #1 10-01-2007, 09:05 PM

I got a fax tonight that was a request for quote from a city government out in Washington. This particular city has all past requests that are now closed posted on their website with all bid amounts received. It looks like I can be competitive on many items that they want however some items I don't have access to.

I noticed that on some of the previous quotes companies would only bid on 1 or 2 items of say a 5 item quote while other companies had bids on all 5 items. Is bidding on only some of the items common and/or acceptable?

Does anyone have any experience with government bids that they would like to share? It seems like it could be decently lucrative as some of the items they want in high quantities (500+) and the items that I sell (safety/protective equipment) are used by every single city in the US.

Jimbo · #2 10-01-2007, 10:47 PM

Contact the local procurement officer, buy them dinner, suggest they alter the specs of the desired equipment where it meets the exact specifications of your product. All done, rinse, wash, repeat.

Jimbo

krishan · #3 10-02-2007, 08:38 AM

I've done a lot of research on government bid notification products. They are pretty cool. Have you ever looked at them/used them?

onvia.com
governmentbids.com

Krishan

BradleyT · #4 10-02-2007, 01:04 PM

The fax was unsolicited by me, so all this is totally new. All the research I've done so far was last night.

It seems like there is a lot more red tape to go through trying to sell to the federal government than there is trying to sell to municipal governments. I found this website which I've been reading - http://www.fedmarket.com/articles/se...vernment.shtml

I'm trying to figure out how the heck to get listed at www.gsaadvantage.gov as that seems like it would be hitting the jackpot - the website says over 30,000 orders a week are placed and millions of searches a week are done.

I've found some pretty good websites for my city and state purchasing departments and have signed up as a vendor with the state but it takes up to a week for them to approve you to browse the system.

Thanks for the links, I'll check those out.