Government Spending Report - FY2025 YTD (NAICS, PSC, UEI) - September
- Dave Lowe
- Sep 3
- 5 min read
The September Spending Frenzy is Here!
This time of year is different than any other time during the fiscal year. Unprecedented activity happens between September 1st and September 30th because the government has to spend every single cent that's budgeted. This is called use it or lose it funding and means that there is an open door for both new and experienced federal contractors.
Why? Because you have limited resources, and so do your competitors and you might just be the only one that submits a quote. This means even if your response isn't perfect, you can still win.
Your Goal: Find the opportunities (on SAMradar) in your core (see below) and bid as much as possible.
SAMradar Opportunities
Most of the year we concentrate on building relationships, but in September we are watching Sam radar opportunities that are fed from sam.gov. Why this is important is you may have less than a day to respond, so you need to watch your Sam radar feed so you can see opportunities as soon as they hit sam.gov.
Sam radar will deliver these to your inbox with the direct link to sam.gov. This will give you the ability to quickly review everything that hits your search criteria. Let's take a look at how you can define your search criteria effectively...
What is Your core? Think Coke, Pepsi and Dr. Pepper (I’m a Pepper)
This is a great exercise that I use with my clients. What are the top three things that you provide. Specifically what are the top three things you make the most money on. Specifically and label them one, two, and three.
This is what you want to be looking for in your search criteria on sam.gov. Do not get distracted by anything else because flashy things will take you off course. Stay focused on your core. As a side note these top three should be your bullets on your capability statement and you should be using these and all your federal marketing.
Maximizing your search criteria...
There are three ways to search for opportunities on sam.gov and SAMradar. NAICS, PSC and Keyword. Each of these have their place, but if you've done this before, you know that NAICS codes are broad and often have a lot of noise. PSCs are moew defined, but still broad and have a lot of noise. Keywords go across NAICS and PSCs but need to be specific. You can't search for things like website because virtually every solicitation has website in its posting.
Eliminating the Noise…
In order to get through all of the noise you need to have some fundamental criteria that you can follow to determine if a solicitation is good for you.
1) What are the past performance requirements?
2) What is the method for grading your solicitation?
3) Can you meet the due date?
Then: Dive into the SOW (Scope of Work)
Just like all of the other proposals you've submitted, this is where you want to match as closely as possible your response to the requirements. Make sure you are using the guidance of the grading process that the government gives you and match your past performance to every single deliverable. Do this well and you will win more proposals!
Remember, in September there is more wiggle room for you because you might be the only one that responds.
Good luck and please share your year-end success with other SAMradar members on the Monday Roundtables!
What you can do to win federal contracts...
Watch for activity in your space - REAL-TIME. You need to do this real-time or you will miss important increases in activity. This includes NAICS, PSC, Keywords, and Competitor UEIs.
Engage buyers. You have to make the move because they will not call you.
Build relationships. Buyers who know, like, and trust you will find a way to buy from you. Look at this report and you can see that relationships matter A LOT.
Leverage Change
The Trump Administration is looking at efficiency - give them what they are looking for by framing your offering the way they want to see it. Learn more here:
IMPORTANT:
If you are not engaging buyers - you can’t win. Incumbents are strong and unless you do something about it NOW, they will win, and you will lose. Experienced contractors know how long it takes. Current vendors know how to leverage established relationships so they can win. You can do this too.
You NEED:
A tool that can help monitor activity and federal spending (SAMradar)
Direction on how to engage buyers. (SAMradar)
To build relationships (You)
Here’s the best part…
Everything proactive you do NOW using SAMradar will have a positive impact on your federal future. Why? this year you will get the chance to be ahead.
Get moving NOW!
and start competing for the 98% that never hits SAM.gov.
SAMradar is not a SAM.gov rework. SAMradar monitors ALL federal contracting activity with the objective of informing businesses of hidden contracts that are never posted on SAM.gov.
The federal government spending, budget, and contracting process is enormous and complex. In certain years, like FY 2024, budget delays and the use of continuing resolutions (CR) can present significant challenges to federal contractors and companies who want to become federal contractors.
In an effort to simplify the research process, and better service SAMradar members, we have been providing market reports that provide a high-level overview of spending (Summary, NAICS. PSC, Vendor Wins Tabs) as well as a Vendors (detailed) tab to show the exact combinations of NAICS and PSCs vendors are winning contracts.
About This Government Spending Report:
Report Sources
FPDS.gov is the repository of data. SAM.gov is where contracting officers post opportunities, it is also where the public can run reports on FPDS data using Ad Hoc reports. SAMradar has proprietary intelligence algorithms that provide additional information including deep intelligence on buyer and prime activity that is not available on fpds.gov or SAM.gov.
Why Date Signed vs Date Modified?
There is good reason to care about both, and exactly why SAMradar operates on modifications because contract modifications show spending and prime activity that is also hidden like IDIQ, GWAC, and BPA sales that never show up on SAM.gov. Now, most of the new contract activity (by date signed) is significant because most never post on SAM.gov, therefore most contractors never know of federal sales happening in their NAICS/PSC or niche market.
Report Anatomy and Use Cases
Each Tab includes the ability to sort by the number of Contracts (activity) and Dollars. This provides your insight into activity as well as overall spending. The key for SAMradar members is to utilize this report to find and categorize competitor activity. and add the competitor to your SAMradar vendor monitor.
Find competitors in your space, and add them to your SAMradar monitoring.
See competitor activity in real-time.
Choose your response strategy (see SAMradar templates)
Inject your company into the conversation – especially future procurements.
Reconciling Inaccuracies
Federal contract data contains hundreds of data points per contract and data entry is performed by contracting officers and specialists. As a result, the data is not perfect. When assembling federal contract data, there are regular corrections, deletions, and other nuances (including agencies using fields differently) that can create anomalies in the outcome of summarized reports. SAMradar data analyzers are consistently reviewing the data for these anomalies – but we do not correct them because it would challenge the integrity of the reports.
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