I've done a few government jobs and sold a few parts to government agencies over the years. For some of the bigger ones they asked me to get on the government contractor list. Except for the jobs I was asked to get on the list so I could bid I never got anything from being on the government bid list. What I did get was SPAMMED. On the email address I used on my government information form I still received about 20 solicitations a day from companies wanting to sell me their services to help be a government contractor. At one time I used to get close to 100 a day. I also used to get 5-10 calls a day from these same types of companies, although that is finally down to 1 or 2 a month. I have not had an active listing in years.
I have to be honest I am not sure why the list exists.
Getting on the approved GSA vendors list does not mean work just your another resource and since so many are on it trying to compete for work you need a full time person just to pursue it. rewards can be great if your willing to stick it out and put time into it but it takes considerable effort. your better off doing small community work like i do once or twice a year for small money then you do not need to do competitive bidding etc . I have done very well this way with little jobs because they know iam available to handle small stuff.
Absolutely correct. There are some companies who have the resources to finance the time it takes to be GSA approved. It's sort of a chicken and egg thing. If you are of a mind to work in the mire of paper work necessary to be approved, a company can make the up front effort to get into the system. Once you're in the system and being utilized, the rewards are usually pretty good, which allows you to invest more money into doing the paper works ..... and so on.
I've got one customer in particular who started out in the HVAC business and was having trouble even paying his alarm monitoring bill for a few years. He somehow got involved with removal of contaminents at construction sites. He's since become GSA approved and now has a multimillion dollar company that has crews that travel across the country doing decontamination of buildings for federal, city and state governments. He did a few smaller local jobs at first but one big contract was enough to finance the setup of an office suite with lots of employees to do the paper work to bid for more of the bigger contracts. Sounds good and I'm sure it is good for him. Not something I'd be willing to get involved with. Now he sits at a desk and takes trips to negotiate or spec jobs.
I like what I do because that's what I started my business wanting to do.Prior to that I wanted to be the executive type but after having to deal with the people who I had to deal with, I dicovered that I'm not a team player. I don't kow tow to people just because they have a better paying job than I do. I didn't learn it for awhile but I've since discovered that's one of the characteristics of a entrepreneur. I've been a suit and it's not anything that I ever want to do again.
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