What to Do After Your Business Becomes Certified

Getting certified as a DBE, MBE, WBE, or SBE is an exciting moment for a small business owner. It feels like the doors to opportunity have flung open. You may expect that the deals will start rolling in. After all, that’s the reason you filled out all the forms and provided all the personal information in the first place—to get business.

However, getting business right away is not the experience of most certified contractors. It’s usually not that easy.

The norm is that becoming certified is only the first phase of building a profitable contracting business. There are three more phases to complete before earning contracting revenue:

1. the relationship-building phase,
2. the pitching phase, and
3. the negotiating phase.

Therefore, after you become certified, building relationships, pitching your services, and negotiating fair terms should be the next items on your to-do-list.  

Relationship-Building

You hear it all the time:  you have to “network.” Networking means going out and meeting people. It’s an absolute necessity. But you have to meet the right people: decision-makers, people who control budgets.

Federal and state governments occasionally provide networking opportunities. Not all DBE owners attend these events. Many who do attend have no strategy for what they intend to accomplish before, during, and after the event. Both failing to attend and attending without an agenda are mistakes.

It is another mistake if you don’t expand your networking beyond government-sponsored events. Government-sponsored events are open to all DBEs. To reduce your competition, you need a plan to regularly interact with the people you want to hire your company.

A bigger waste of opportunity is to stop at just meeting the right people. After you meet them, you have to make meaningful connections and build mutually-beneficial relationships with them. That’s what relationship-building means, and relationship-building is a skill. As with any skill, it usually doesn’t develop by accident. The fact is, most people who are good at relationship-building read up on it, and they practice.

Pitching Your Company

Another common mistake DBEs make is waiting for your new prospects to call you and offer you a contract or tell you to apply for one. While that does happen occasionally, you are leaving money on the table if you do not have an outbound strategy for identifying contracting opportunities and pursuing them.

You should not feel uncomfortable reaching out to your contacts every so often to ask if they have anything coming down the pike. They know why you were networking. So, they expect you to keep in touch.

Also, even if they have no opportunities posted, if you know you can be helpful, it is appropriate to go a step further and send a written proposal. Sometimes a prospect is not aware of all of your capabilities. Your proposal can make them aware.

Proposal content is important. What you should say in an unsolicited proposal is different than what you should say in an RFP. For unsolicited proposals it is best to be direct and concise. The Clientis business development course provides an example of an effective unsolicited proposal.

Negotiating Your Pay

The third biggest mistake DBE contractors make is a costly one. Most DBE contractors allow the client or the prime contractor to dictate the DBE’s fee. However, you are the one who knows your cost of doing business. So, you should be setting your fee.

Still, it can be scary asking for more money. You may be afraid of losing the opportunity altogether. Or, maybe you worry that they’ll think you’re difficult and won’t work with you again in the future. That could be the result if you can’t justify your fee or if you are rude or harsh when you present your fee.

But it is more than a matter of presentation or pointing to the benefits or advantages that you offer. Your fee should align with the buyer’s problem. You don’t want to solve the problem too cheaply. You also don’t want to demand too much for the value you’re delivering. Getting the price right and then enforcing it is what negotiating is all about.

Negotiation is a highly important skill. Mastering this skill can make the difference between just getting by and earning enough money to provide for your old age and for the future of your family—their education, home ownership, and ability to choose what they want to do rather than having to take whatever job is available.

So, learn how to negotiate, and practice, practice, practice. Our business development course provides negotiation drills and opportunities to practice.

Summary

If your business is certified but not getting as much work as you hoped for or expected, you may need a more comprehensive approach to business development. Understand that certification was only the first step. Now, you must build relationships with decision-makers and be outgoing about pursuing opportunities. Once you get an opportunity, you must negotiate to get paid what you are worth.