Position, Plan, and Price to Win Government Contract with Jon Barker

Jon Barker has been involved in managing government contracts from the supplier side his entire career. He started a company called PTW Solutions, where PTW means Price To Win, and they help companies win government contracts. Jon is an avid coach and he's coached both lacrosse and soccer. When coaching, Jon fosters a team environment, while learning the strengths and weaknesses of each individual to build up skills and confidence.

In this episode, Jon talks about government contracting as he puts emphasis on why the government's focus is set on cost-plus.

Why you have to check out today's podcast:

• Learn how pricing runs in government contracting
• Discover what a "probability of win" means and why you should focus on deals with higher "probability of win"
• Find out resources you can visit as you look for data of your competitors' prices

"Create your own internal models of the data that you use a lot to make those decisions, and have the ability to make the levers change easily. I think as a government contracting pricer, it would be extremely beneficial."

– Jon Barker

Topics Covered:

01:36 – The start of Jon's pricing journey for government contractors

04:39 – Small businesses having more volatility with government contracting if compared to large companies

08:10 – What's a P-win + what Jon loves about the field he's in

09:23 – Best value tradeoffs; putting energy into writing proposals for deals of higher p wins

14:23 – Position, Plan, and Price to Win; Government contracting as an interesting field

17:37 – Go-to's of a data guy: GSA price list, GSA Calc, STARS III, SAM, USA Spending

22:25 – Jon's passion for government contracting

24:44 – Jon's piece of pricing advice for today's listeners

Key Takeaways:

"Here's the beauty of it. When you're talking with larger companies, those rates are set. When you're talking to smaller companies, they have a lot more flexibility. They're not on the radars of these agencies… The smaller you are, the more of an art it is to be able to be clever with the numbers and figure out where you can ship those costs." – Jon Barker

"As you add layers and layers of contracts that you win, you have more capabilities. The biggest thing about winning contracts is being able to successfully execute them." – Jon Barker

"Section M (evaluation criteria) is probably your most important section in terms of how to create a winning bid and how to tailor your technical and your pricing strategies in order to maximize that probability of win." – Jon Barker

"The government customers' so huge, and there's so many different facets to it. There's plenty of other work to be had there. Don't get focused on, again, losing efforts to where the evaluators are not going to find the value in your offering, because you're not set up to be successful for that." – Jon Barker

"Pricing is just a fascinating topic; it's very psychological, as you know. But in government procurement, it's very much cost-plus based, because the government expects to understand how companies came up with the rates that they bid." – Jon Barker

People / Resources Mentioned:

• PTW Solutions Inc.: https://price-to-win.com/
• CPARS: https://www.cpars.gov/
• GSA Calc: https://calc.gsa.gov/
• STARS III: https://www.gsa.gov/technology/technology-purchasing-programs/governmentwide-acquisition-contracts/8a-stars-iii
• SAM: https://sam.gov/
• USA Spending: https://www.usaspending.gov/
• Federal Acquisition Regulation: https://www.gsa.gov/policy-regulations/regulations/federal-acquisition-regulation-far

Connect with Jon Barker:

• Email: jon@pricetowinsolutions.com
• LinkedIn:https://www.linkedin.com/in/jon-barker-4648b84/
• Telephone: 571-216-9890
• Website: https://price-to-win.com/

Connect with Mark Stiving:

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/stiving/
• Email: mark@impactpricing.com