Sources Sought (SS)

Why you should care about the SS

SS are open market research by the government so:
1) They give you some opportunities to influence (like an RFI)
2) Most important they are your opportunity to have a contract set-aside in your favor

What is the RFI

  • Tests the market: In the planning phase the government developed a hypothesis for:
    • Who out there is likely to bid
    • Whether they can restrict competition by setting the contract aside
  • Before the government can set a contact aside they have to get at least two responses from vendors with that set-aside

What this means for you

  • Respond: If you want a contract set-aside, you need to respond
  • Start building your team: If you haven’t already now is the time to start identifying partners to team with on the RFP

How Fedscout can help you find Sources Sought

FedScout’s contract search aggregates SS

Rants and Reflections

My unscripted thoughts after coaching hundreds of small government contractors over the last 10 years


Other resources

SAM.gov (Individual contract checks)

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List of further reading

Video Transcript(s):

Odds are that your first contract will be as a sub to another small business, so you need to find small businesses you could work with, and start building relationships with them.

And, FedScout makes this easy. Click on the partner button below and FedScout will show you all the small businesses in your industry that have won work at one of your selected sub-agencies.

And if you’ve uploaded your linkedin connections we'll do our best to identify people you know at each small business.

And like with customers, select the companies and the people that you want to target and we’ll add them to your relationship manager.