Obtain state and federal contracts

Doing business with government is different from doing business in the traditional business sector. There's a lot more paperwork and red tape, and identifying decision makers is often difficult.

I encourage you to visit www.sba.gov/businessop/index.html to get a sense of how the federal government procures its goods and services. This link will also take you to other resources such as www.fedbizopps.gov, which is the single point of entry for federal government procurement opportunities over $25,000. Through this site, commercial vendors like you can search, monitor and retrieve opportunities solicited by the entire federal contract community.

You should also visit each Office of Small and Disadvantaged Business Utilization (OSDBU) web page on each federal government agency web site. Numerous small businesses obtained their first federal government contracts by working closely with these offices. Your state government may have similar offices or a structure in place to help small businesses.

The SBA has also started a very successful Business Matchmaking program, which brings together small business owners with government agencies and large corporations in regional settings. Visit www.businessmatchmaking.com to learn more.

Lastly, federal government agencies regularly conduct their own conferences and work days for small businesses that wish to contract with the federal government. There are also numerous workshops held in the nation's capital every month focusing on how to do business with the federal government. And be sure to check with someone in your state government to see if anything like this is being done locally.