MaintenanceSuppliesMag.com |

When selling Green cleaning products, many distributors fail to take advantage of one of the largest and most potentially lucrative markets in North America—selling to local, state, and federal governments.

Many have never even approached government entities for selling opportunities, even though these groups are some of the biggest buyers of Green cleaning products.

The most likely reasons for this are fear, confusion, and lack of knowledge about how the government marketplace works, which admittedly can be vastly different than working with private industry.

Overcoming Fear

The first step distributors can take in overcoming these anxieties is to realize they are not alone. Many major organizations are unsure of themselves when dealing with the government; as a result, they can lose fortunes in sales.

For instance, a request for proposal (RFP) was released by a government entity for a complex of communication services that amounted to several hundred million dollars in sales. A division of Sprint bid on it and seemed assured of winning the contract.

However, at one of the last meetings between the two parties, Sprint withdrew its bid on the advice of their attorneys, citing concerns about a clause in the agreement. The contract was awarded to another company. When Sprint later reviewed the proceedings, they realized their lawyers simply did not understand the clause, which really had little impact on the overall agreement, costing the company a small fortune in profits.

Understanding How the Government Buys

Because each city, county, and state may have different purchasing procedures, we will narrow our discussion to just some of the ways the Federal government purchases goods and services. However, because many government entities have developed their purchasing programs based on the Federal procedures, these steps should provide some insight into the way any system works.