How to Become a Government Contractor

When the economy is grimacing, credit becomes tight, unemployment rates skyrocket, and consumer and business spending slows dramatically. But even in such economic situation, one sector of the economy remains unruffled: the government.

With all the budget cuts, downsizing and expenditure reductions going on in private establishments due to the instability of the economy, the government has become a major target of a lot of suppliers and business owners. Rather than slow down its activities in line with the state of an ailing economy, the government usually rises to the situation by spending more money to stimulate the economy鈥攄irectly or indirectly through the states as well as small businesses.

Selling goods and services to the government is very lucrative and secure because apart from the financial benefits, it also raises your business profile. There are contracting opportunities to be found in state, local and federal government agencies. Some of the jobs that the government awards include construction, purchasing and supply, service rendering, training services, project supervision, management consultancy, information and communication technology amongst others.

If you are a small business owner, you don鈥檛 need to fret about registering as a government contractor because most governments have rules and policies in place designed to favor small business owners.

In countries like the United States, the law requires that government purchases worth from $3,000 to $100,000 be directed to small business. In addition, the United States government has set a goal that 23 percent of all contracts go to small businesses. This is to ensure that small businesses, which form the majority of businesses in the country, are used as instruments for reviving the economy whenever it's going comatose. The story is about the same in many other countries.

Virtually all the funds spent by the government are used for purchases. This makes the government a very big customer. And since most governments favor small businesses, many small business owners aim to become government contractors, providing their products or services to federal, state, or local agencies.

While the norm in the business world is for businesses to try to attract customers, the opposite is the case when the government is the customer: the "special