Procurement Technical Centers (PTAC) provide local, in-person counseling and training services for small business owners. They are specifically designed to provide technical assistance to businesses that want to sell products/services to federal, state, and/or local governments.
One of GovSpend’s users works as a consultant to small businesses at a PTAC located in Kentucky. His job involves helping businesses get any necessary certifications, search for request-for-proposals, create proposal packages, and much more.
“We use GovSpend to help our clients understand the market. The government buys everything from toilet paper to aircraft carriers and everything in between.” Darrall is able to use the GovSpend database to do this thanks to the extensive amount of historical purchase orders from agencies on every level of government.
Think Like an Agency
During his consultations, Darrall will demonstrate this point with the data in GovSpend. If he is working with a client who sells hubcaps, he will run a search to find a school updating its fleet of busses or a division of the army updating its vehicles. Using this data, the small business can market their product to those agencies.
One thing that small businesses are not aware of when they first start selling to the government is that agencies don’t always use common terms on purchase orders. For example, some agencies don’t use “cardboard boxes” they use “corrugated boxes”. This is why GovSpend was designed in such a way that allows users to enter multiple keywords in a single search.
Knowing how an agency operates can make it easier to target a sales pitch, adjust the model of a product, or add a product to put a business in the position to sell more. This is the kind of knowledge and experience PTACs like Darrall’s can bring to small businesses.
Different Ways to Search
Darrall has been using GovSpend for over a year and has been very pleased with the app and the data. “I find it easy to use. As a data guy, I’m good at coming up with ‘if/and’ statements.” While GovSpend’s application supports different philosophies of searching, Darrall prefers to start broad and add elimination filters, but some of his colleagues prefer to start more targeted to narrow their search right away.
At this point, Darrall and his team are comfortable jumping into GovSpend and searching. Although, they appreciate that they can get any questions answered either through a chat or call with the support team.
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About the Kentucky PTAC
The mission of the Kentucky Procurement Technical Assistance Center is to promote Kentucky’s economic development by assisting companies in the process of providing products and or services to federal, state, and local government. To do this, KYPTAC provides free coaching, training, and equipping services to its clients.
Coaching comes in the form of free advice and counseling to clients and partners. KYPTAC acts as a gateway to live and virtual training throughout the state and equips its clients by provided access to market research using tools such as GovSpend.
