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Module 4 Finding Your Buyer

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hey welcome back

module four

finding your buyer so my name is Cheryl

Brown uh by now you've already been

through three modules so you probably

know this information by heart but I am

the director of the north San Diego SBG

part of the San Diego and Imperial

Valley spdc Network where we have nine

service center in over 120 various

advisors to help support you the small

business be successful as you grow and

manage and run your business

my favorite oh my gosh oh my gosh oh my

God oh my gosh

you may want to re-watch this module as

many times as you want because this is

where we really start doing some fun

show and tells if you will so it's my

favorite module remember step one

finding your buyer well this module is

all about how you

you can find your buyer

so if we revisit

remember your role here

is to become the mediator

between all of the different people

within the agency

but mainly focusing in on the buyer now

one of my favorite things about

Government Contracting

is that it's all public record

you just need to know where to look for

it so it's not like if you want to find

the buyer say for Amazon

you would have to dig and dig and dig

and then even then you wouldn't be able

to you probably wouldn't be able to get

their phone number or their email

address unless you knew someone or or or

something like that or you pay for like

a service to get that information but

with Government Contracting

it's all public record you just need to

know where to find it so remember we are

focusing in on the buyer and no other

entities or no other people at this point

not all all not all small business

programs or departments or advocacy

programs have influence on the buyer

that's the cold part true

really the only you know that I find

that the most effective small business

programs are the ones in which a

responsibility of the individuals is to

try and Foster relationships within

their own agency and unfortunately

that's not typically part of their job description

description

so not all small business departments

have influence also

because they're employed by the agency

the small business departments and the

individuals involved are somewhat

restricted as far as what they can and

cannot tell you because if they told you

well if they knew and they told you some

of the dirt that we taught we address

here in these modules

that could be considered giving you an

unfair Advantage with that particular

agency and by the way

that's illegal

regardless of what the end user wants

it's the buyer who ultimately decides

what the end users get

and as I mentioned in uh module three

what to expect

oftentimes the end user has champagne

tape but they're on a fair budget and so

it's important for us as a small

business to understand the role that the

buyer has and learn how we can

you know become the mediator if you will

between the buyer and the end user

regardless of how much

the end user or small business wants to

work with you

and as we learned in the last module

where you may not have believed me but

we did some demonstrating and I showed

you in real life real time ninety

percent of the contracts that get

awarded they actually don't go out for a

pull and open competitive bid and those

are going to be the opportunities that

are going to be

the best for small business days

and so that's the reality

now the question I always get is okay

great you've said that a million times

by now

how do I do this how do I find the buyer well

well

let's play

we're gonna do some live interaction

using my best friend Google I know some

of you may not like Google because

they're they're spying on you and

watching you and all that good stuff

frankly I love Google

I don't care if it spies on me in fact I

feel like if I get lost Google will find me

um but in reality in this environment

Google is going to be your friend so

we're going to do a couple of

demonstrations and feel free to pause

try it on your own rewind re-watch I

mean it's this is really going to be the

first step in being successful in this

program so without further Ado we're

going to go into our internet our world

and we're gonna go Google so one of the

agencies that I recommend that you

definitely want to engage with or at

least do some research and finding your

buyer would be the state of California

the reason why is the state of

California is one of those agencies that

literally buys everything

so if the state of California isn't

procuring your goods or your services

chances are nobody else needs

now when we talked about what does the

government buy I did mention that they

buy everything from Beans to Bullet with

the exception of luxury items or SEO services

services

so we're going to go into the state of

California portal and then I'm going to

show you a couple of Tricks so the state

of California portal

is called Cal e per cure

now you could very easily if you're not

quite sure if we don't remember this

portal you could also very easily

Google search

how to do business with the oops with

the state of California and add the word purchasing

and that's also going to take you right

to the portal that you want to be in

mind you this little trick works for

every agency so if you're wanting to

find out how did you do this with the

city of La Mesa or you want to find out

how to do the business with the city of

national Tennessee you can simply put in

this phrase how to do business with

enter the agency name and add the word purchasing

purchasing

and that is going to take you directly

to their procurement page where you can

learn a little bit more about who the

buyer is

but for now let's start out with the

state of California

when we get to the state of California

there is a ton of information the state

of California portal is has a ton of

information it's a great portal to do

research in and learn they've got some

really great resources and trainings for

this purpose because right now we're

focused on one task at hand

and that is

finding the buyer

so what you want to do is you want to go

and you can search for all of these

different portals here now the first one

here bid opportunities

these are the opportunities that have

been posted

to the public for bids

we don't care about that right now

right now we're focused in on the buyer

so we want to go into

past purchases

this is called for short Skippers States

Contracting and procurement registration system

system

government loves their acronyms and when

we get to the certification module oh my

gosh it is like an ABC XYZ nightmare

so for now what we're going to do is

we're going to click on this link

and that's going to bring up the Skippers

Skippers

what I can do here is I can do advanced search

and I'm going to click on this

magnifying glass right here

and we're going to do a description so

the state of California utilizes what

they call the unsp

unsp

classification system

you may we've mentioned the Nix codes in

one of the previous module this is

another Code system

don't bog yourself down with this yet

what we can do is we can search this

just using a very generic description so

the description I'm going to use here

for this is I'm going to use the word computer

computer

so in the past I've used what did I use

I used marketing I used reading

mediation services so this time I'm

and I'm going to take a look and I'm

just going to pick one of these

one of these let's go here computer

equipment and accessories

and now I'm going to search

now what this is going to do you'll know

that it's working I'm going to pull my little

little

face down here because see here in the

upper right hand corner you see The

Circle of Death

that means the system is thinking

this system what we're asking to do is

we want to identify or find out all the

actual purchases made

by the state of California that have

been classified under

this code

which includes computer equipment and accessories

accessories

so it's going to think

at this point when you do is you can go

grab a snack or class of you know wine

or coffee or whatnot for me I'm just

going to take a little sip of my smoothie

the crazy part about

doing this type of stuff

you literally can spend half your day

watching The Circle of Death

so let's do this while we're waiting for

the State of California to comb through

all of that data because it's coming

through seven years worth of purchasing

let's go in and see if we can do some

additional searching um

let's do how to do business

with the

city whoops of Carlsbad

and add the word purchasing

again that's going to bring us right to

their procurement portal or their

procurement website or web page

depending on the size of the agency

we'll determine how robust their page is

there are some really great portals

there are some not so great portals

that's the nature of the beast but here

we are with the city of Carlsbad right

at their purchasing web page and right

at the top we see the city of Carlsbad

Carlsbad uses Planet bids as their bid

management system

so a little lesson on planet bids uh or

I should say any third-party bid

management system

so when an agency when a public agency

has a requirement to publicly announce opportunities

opportunities

they will do so utilizing an internal

system if they have one like the state

of California has their own internal system

system or

because creating those internal systems

is very expensive or the agency will contract

contract

to a third-party bid management system

there are thousands of these

Planet bids has become one of the more

preferred third-party bid Management

systems and there's a couple of nuances

every single third-party bid management

system has two points of Entry

one point of entry is directly through

their portal planetbids.com

when you do that

you register

and then plan a bids through their

direct portal wants you to pay them a subscription

subscription

to be registered in all the other portals

portals

do not pay

pay

you do not need this you want to go

directly to the portal or the web page

for that particular agency

in doing so you will get access to that

agency's information

at no cost

now one thing that's a little unique

with Planet bids

is that when you register

or go to the city of Carlsbad plan of bids

the URL

has this number in it up here two seven

nine seven zero

that link that URL is exclusive to the

city of Carlsbad

so when you register with the city of

Carlsbad Planet bids you are not

registered with any of the other

agencies that uses plan of bid as a

third party bid management system so in

essence you have to register with each

and every one

but you're not going to do that yet

right because we learned in the last

module before you register before you

get certified

make sure

that the buyer

is viable

so here we are city of Carlsbad Vendor Portal

Portal

I am not logging in I have not created

an account you have the same exact

access as I have without having to jump

through any Hoops in registering what

I'm going to do here is I'm going to go

to the bid opportunity

and I'm going to click on that link

honestly I don't care about any of this

none of it

what I care about is identifying and

finding my buyer so what I'm going to do

here with this portal and I don't care

what's open is I'm going to go into the categories

and let's do this let's do landscaping

so I'm going to click on Landscaping

I'm going to save it and I'm going to search

so what I'm asking this portal for the

city of Carlsbad is I want to know all

of the opportunities that have been announced

announced

that have been classified under

again I don't care about any of these

what I'm going to do is I'm going to

click on this

and this is the information that I want

you to gather

I think like like tech people would call

this data mining so you're actually

going to data mine this information

here's what I want you to focus on

this is a purchase for landscaping services

number two

Shea is your buyer

Shay with the city of Carlsbad is

purchasing at a little positive because

my dogs were barking

landscaping services now

okay what do we do with this

well first of all Shea

would love

to buy landscaping services for you from

you she would

but she can't

and the only reason why she can't right now

now

is because she doesn't know you exist well

well

now she won't buy from you

because she doesn't trust that you can perform

perform

so in our marketing module we're going

to learn how do we get today to know

that we exist and how do we prove to Shay

Shay

that we're going to be responsive and

we're going to perform so

hold these thoughts because right now

all we're trying to do is identify

buyers so if you provide landscaping

services and you're watching this module

I want you to jot down Shay's

information and you just found yourself

a buyer

easy right

another thing I want to show you and not

all bid portals do this

but another thing I want to show you is

right here where it says prospective bidders

bidders

when I click on this this is going to

give me a list of what we call what they

what they deem as prospective bidders

right and that's not entirely true this

list is really a list of entities that

have downloaded the bid documents it

doesn't necessarily mean that they're

perspective bitters for example

sometimes you'll see Cheryl Brown on

this list

that's because I downloaded the bid

documents for one of my clients I'm not

a bidder I'm not a prime

but because I downloaded the bid

documents my name is going to be listed

there remember Government Contracting

public record

but for those that are

in the industry so for example right

here four leaf ink

they are a prime contractor they are a bidder

bidder

and you'll see you have a name here Rachel

Rachel

you have a phone number

and you have an email

now suppose when you're really small or

maybe you only provide a certain aspect

of landscaping services so you're

looking for a prime contractor well

well

why not call Rachel

and so I'm going to do the same thing as

I as I mentioned with Shea

Rachel would love to subcontract with you

you

but she can't

because she doesn't know your exists

and she won't

she doesn't trust that you can perform

so this is another way that you can find

actual points of contact for potential

so let's go back to the state of

California portal let's see if it's

figured out or stopped thinking

yay it has so if you recall we did a

little bit of an example in one of the

previous modules about the acquisition

methods and what they all mean so now

with this module what we're doing is

we're finding a buyer

the information we have here that is

important is

let me do some drawing here if I can foreign

foreign

here we have

and

I can't scroll that way

most importantly here I scroll all the way

you have the buyer name

and the buyer email

so if you supply com what did I do a

search for I can't even remember

if you supply computer equipment and accessories

accessories

you know from this information here that

the California Health exchange or health

benefit exchange Department procures

procures

computer equipment and accessories

just like with Shea and with Rachel

we have found a buyer

so if you are in the computer supply

industry and you're watching these

modules here is a list

of 200 potential buyers now there are

some duplicates but it's still quite a

few buyers

what you can even do with this list I

don't recommend please don't do it

downloading it do not download it it'll

it'll Clash your Excel but what you can do

[Music]

copy it [Music]

[Music]

anyway this isn't working for me but I

apologize you can copy this list paste

it into an Excel spreadsheet and now you

have a listing and you can then remove

duplicates you can do all that good

stuff or you can just keep this open and

start reaching out

now what if because we don't have a

phone number here

what if you wanted to find out the phone number

number

well here's where it gets a little bit

creepy if you take their email address

let's go back into Google again Google's

your friend

and we take her email address and put it

in parentheses

then we can scroll down a little bit and

and

now this doesn't work all the time

so these are a couple of different ways

you can find your buyers now what about

the federal Market

well the federal Market's a little bit

tricky because their program their

system called Sam

is terrible I can't believe a system has

gone from bad to worse but it has so I'm

just being upfront so if I've got us the

the Sam uh was it the Sam technical

writer person web designer

um and you're mad that I'm calling it terrible

terrible

give me a call we can walk we can talk

through these things because it's not

very user friendly but that's a whole

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YouTube Transcript:
Module 4 Finding Your Buyer