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Key Takeaways Growing your sales through cooperative price agreements opens doors to government entities that can buy directly from you without having to do a traditional RFP process.
This will shorten your sales cycle to government and education from years down to a few months, making it worth your time to look into becoming a cooperative price agreement partner.
I am fortunate because my business primarily serves corporate, education and government markets. Many of you may run businesses that primarily serve private-sector businesses or the consumer market. However, I believe many companies are missing potential sales opportunities in the local and state government markets by not pursuing cooperative purchasing-style agreements.
Entrepreneurs and business owners sometimes avoid the state and local government markets because they believe the bid process is too cumbersome. In previous years, and in my opinion, that was indeed a correct assumption.
However, organizations such as NASPOs ValuePoint and RFxPremier use cooperative price agreements to bring suppliers and government entities together. The process is simple, so allow me to explain.
A brief history of public procurement
While some federal agencies purchase through cooperative price agreements, the process is different and more complex. That’s why, for this article, we will focus on state and local government purchasing.
State and local governments devote thousands of man-hours and billions of dollars to purchasing goods and services. For decades, the public procurement process centered around a competitive bidding process that involved a multi-step process:
Identify the goods or services needed
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