NEW: Trump Admin Government Spending Report - Since January 20, 2025 (September Report)

Step 1: Download the New FREE Spending Report:

Download by Date Signed

Step 2: Join us for a FREE Federal Market Review (via Zoom) (Review sessions held Weekdays at 2 PM EASTERN TIME. You can join as many times as you like)

Step 3: SIGN UP for your FREE SAMradar Trial and start competing for the 98% that never hits SAM.gov.

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!

FREE WEBINAR EVERY 2ND TUESDAY

THE GOVERNMENT SPENDING SHIFT SINCE 1/20

The unprecedented pace of the Trump Administration in canceling and reviewing contracts has many looking for answers regarding the future of federal contracts. Prior to 1/20/2025, federal contracts saw a dramatic swing to minimal competition in federal contracting with 81% of contracts having ZERO competition (single offer received) and 91% of the time contracts were awarded to 1 of 5 companies competing. To put this in perspective, in 2019 the "Not Reported" and "ONE Offer" totaled 36%. This historic pattern started in 2021 (read more here NEW: Unprecedented Federal Spending Pattern)

While this was TOTALLY LEGAL because contracting officers have clauses in the Federal Acquisition Regulations (FAR 6.3) where they can minimize the exposure of "Other than Full and Open Competition, the resulted in contract opportunities to a small number of preferred resources, most of which were known by contracting officers as qualified vendors.

Since 1/20/2025, the number of not reported or single response awards has dropped to 76% with 86% having 5 offers received or fewer. Even with these new numbers, this can be used to your advantage - but only if you understand the market, review government spending, and you are proactive in your relationship development.

Why Real-Time Activity Monitoring is CRITICAL for FY2025.

Solicitations and Combines Synopsis Solicitations on SAM.gov have increased 100% to around 4% of total awards. If you are not monitoring real-time, you missed it.

The changes keep coming with more and more Executive Orders and change ALWAYS means opportunity. Now is the time to watch the market in real-time so you can engage decision makers.

Use this time and new activity to build relationships. Get your company known, liked and trusted BEFORE the RFPs are developed - then YOU will become 1 of the 5 in the trusted, capable list of vendors that the contracting officer engages - just like the report above.

Listen:

THIS IS GOING TO HAPPEN WHETHER YOU JOIN THE PROCESS OR NOT

If you want to be on the inside, you need to be building relationships NOW. They have a new urgency. You need to take advantage of the urgency and the contracting cycle while you can. If you don't, you will simply be allowing your competition to be the ones that maintain the status quo and keep winning.

DON'T BE ON THE OUTSIDE LOOKING IN - BE THE WINNER.

You have 3 months to get positioned for the rest of the spending in FY2025. With the SAMradar free trial, you can set up your search criteria in SAM.gov and SAMradar.com so you do not miss federal hidden contract spending.

These proactive strategies are game-changers, enabling you to win business now and build meaningful connections that go beyond what SAM.gov can ever offer. Discover the hidden opportunities that fly under the radar!

Remember, SAMradar does the dirty work for you, freeing you up to focus on your #1 job - Build relationships!

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?

Because of the complexities of federal contracting, and the potential to get lost in the weeds of research, SAMradar selected to provide this report by date signed.

• Date Signed: By utilizing the Date Signed field, we can see only new contracts signed within the range (usually current month or fiscal year to date).

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 and because most never posts 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.

1. Find competitors in your space, and add them to your SAMradar monitoring.

2. See competitor activity in real-time.

3. Choose your response strategy (see SAMradar templates)

4. 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 date 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. We do not correct them because it would challenge the integrity of the reports.