- Special districts: 37,203
- Municipalities: 19,522
- Townships: 16,364
- Independent school districts: 12,884
- Counties: 3,031
- Federal: 1,300
- Highly competitive: bids and RFPs are “announced” to the entire world for any company to respond; hence, they are typically very competitive with a significant number of companies submitting proposals.
- Lower margins: the highly competitive nature of the bid/RFP process typically reduces the margins/profitability of any deals won through this process.
- Limited success: companies will (obviously) only win a percentage of the proposals they submit (which take a significant time to prepare), and even for the efforts they win, they are only “happy” if the amount proposed to win the bid/RFP is not significantly lower than the other proposals. If you win a deal but leave too much money on-the-table (by under-bidding the competition by too much), you aren’t even happy when you win the deal.
- Reactive: the bid/RFP process causes companies to be reactive and “wait” for agencies to release their requirements. This naturally creates limitations in growing your government business.