On January 13th in Boca Raton, Florida, GovSpend hosted “From Signal to Signature: Data-Driven Selling,” an in-person event for customers and partners focused on using data and AI to improve win rates and build smarter pipelines.
The event featured keynote insights from CEO Nate Haskins, product updates from Kathryn Sanders and Bradley Scott, and a candid client panel with GovSpend Director Paige Mockler, Damon Schoen, and Carrie Sirois. Highlights of the day are below.
Nate kicked off the event by naming the reality every public sector seller knows: government is full of opportunity—but it’s rarely simple. With decentralized buying structures, competing stakeholders, and shifting funding dynamics, the teams that win consistently are using data to understand markets and AI to build focus.
Nate outlined five core challenges of selling into government, giving attendees context for the AI-powered solutions Bradley and Kathryn would showcase later in the event.
- Knowing your addressable market: Each agency is unique, making local discovery and foundational analysis essential.
- Knowing the decision makers and influencers: Build contextual intelligence around stakeholder outcomes, risk evaluation, vendor history, and the impact of public scrutiny.
- Understanding procurement rules and norms: Gain an edge by studying historical buying and recognizing common pathways like cooperative contracts.
- Understanding funding sources and timelines: Align outreach and offers with budget cycles, restrictions, and spending deadlines.
Building trust and containing risk: through references, pilots, phased rollouts, and mission-aligned proof points, as agencies favor proven vendors and peer validation.
Nate closed with a reminder: you can’t chase everything. The best teams cut through the noise, document what works, store the right artifacts, and use AI and data to scale their most successful approaches.
Client Panel: Lessons From the Front Lines
“AI makes good people great.”
One of the most energizing parts of the event was a candid conversation about what it really takes to succeed in government markets, and how data and AI are changing the game.
During the session, Paige Mockler, Director of Relationship Management at GovSpend, spoke with Damon Schoen, Senior Business Development Manager at Shoes for Crews, and Carrie Sirois, Principal at Sirois, Coogan & Associates.
A recurring and inspiring theme throughout the discussion was the fact that AI and data aren’t replacing sellers—they’re helping great sellers become even better.
Using AI to Walk Away Faster (and Smarter)
AI isn’t just for finding opportunities—it’s also powerful for identifying when a deal isn’t worth the effort. Panelists discussed how AI can help expose when an RFP is essentially a formality, and the agency has no intention of switching vendors. That ability to disqualify earlier protects time and improves focus.
One analogy from Carrie landed particularly well: If opportunities are an ocean, your real addressable market is a reef—and your job is to get your best opportunities into a Dixie cup.
Improving Bid-to-Win Ratio
When the conversation turned to improving win rates, the panel shared specific benchmarks and methods.
Carrie noted that 35–65% bid-to-win is a healthy range when tracked over time, and that consistency requires measurement over at least two years.
- If you’re above that range, you may be too risk-averse.
- If you’re below that range, you likely have a pipeline quality problem.
Damon described how GovSpend’s AI notebook has upgraded his approach to building a pipeline and maintaining a healthy bid-to-win ratio—adding bids to a workspace, ranking them against a set of criteria, and using the results to prioritize what’s most likely to close. His reaction: “Incredible.”
“Look before you leap, but don’t be afraid.”
During the customer panel, one theme came through clearly: reliable data turns go-to-market planning from guessing into a transparent process. With better visibility into buying behavior, teams can validate true market size, understand real competitive penetration (which isn’t always what it seems), and spot disruptors displacing incumbents before they show up in the pipeline.
Carrie shared an example of a client prepared to invest $10M in a new public-sector venture—only to find the data didn’t support the underlying hypothesis, prompting them to pivot early and avoid a costly misstep.
Throughout the session, both Damon and Carrie underscored their points with examples of how GovSpend’s data and AI solutions were instrumental in optimizing their strategy and operations.
Damon summed it up best: “GovSpend is the swiss army knife of public sector selling.”
Product Session: What’s New—and What’s Next
GovSpend’s product update and feedback session was led by Kathryn Sanders (Director, Product Platforms) and Bradley Scott (Chief Product Officer), highlighting the roadmap focus: increasing value delivered while reducing time invested from users.
GovSpend’s product goals are centered on a simple idea:
As the haystack gets bigger, it becomes harder to find the needles—so we’re building tools to surface signals faster and help users act on what matters.
Highlights of the product enhancements shared included:
- AI prompts and AI chat for quickly extracting important information from meeting transcripts, bid documents, and contract details
- AI Notebook for interrogating a curated search
- AI search for querying our unique data alongside the open web
- Agency search module for building an addressable market
- CRM enhancements and HubSpot integration for meeting users where they work
- Opportunity Dashboard for starting your day with a tailored list of leads, no searching or prompting required
Final Takeaway: Move Faster With Better Signals
The Boca Raton event reinforced something we hear from customers every day: public sector sales is full of potential—but the teams that win consistently are the ones who operate with clarity.
With better signals, sellers move faster. And with AI doing the work, sellers spend less time searching—and more time closing.
If you’d like to learn more about how GovSpend helps teams turn government data into pipeline and revenue, get started here.
Interested in attending one of our future in-person events? Register for our March event in Washington, DC, here, and bookmark our events page for more location announcements throughout the year.
About the Author: GovSpend
