Government Contracts September 10, 2026 · By Jason Ehlinger

Most small business owners assume government contracting is for other people — companies with a capture team, a compliance department, and somebody on retainer in Washington. It isn't. The money is enormous, and a legally mandated share of it is reserved for businesses your size. What actually keeps owners out is much more boring than politics: nobody ever explained the first four steps.

Here they are, in the order they actually happen — including the step most guides skip, which is deciding not to bid.

First, the part that makes this worth your time

The federal government operates under a statutory goal of awarding 23% of eligible prime contracting dollars to small businesses. It has been beating that goal. In FY2024 the SBA reported more than $183 billion in prime contracts going to small businesses — roughly 28.8% of eligible dollars.

And that figure only counts federal prime contracts. It doesn't include subcontracting under larger primes, and it doesn't touch state agencies, counties, cities, school districts, transit authorities, or public universities — all of which buy continuously, often in smaller and far less competitive lots than the federal opportunities everyone fixates on.

The relevant point for an owner-operator isn't the size of the number. It's the structure behind it: this is demand that is required by law to go to businesses like yours, awarded on a published schedule, to whoever submits the best compliant response.

Step 1: Register before you need to

To be awarded a federal contract you need a Unique Entity Identifier (UEI) and an active registration in SAM.gov. Both are free. The registration itself is tedious rather than difficult — entity information, banking details for payment, NAICS codes, representations and certifications.

The mistake almost everyone makes is doing this reactively. An owner finds a solicitation worth chasing, discovers the registration requirement, starts it that week, and misses the deadline — because activation takes days to weeks, and longer if entity validation kicks back asking for documentation. Solicitation deadlines do not move for your paperwork.

Register now, while nothing is on the line. Then it's done, and it renews annually.

Step 2: Find out which set-asides you already qualify for

A large share of the best opportunities are restricted — only businesses holding a particular status can bid at all. SDVOSB (service-disabled veteran-owned), VOSB (veteran-owned), WOSB (women-owned), 8(a), and HUBZone are the common ones.

This matters more than almost anything else you can do early, because a set-aside doesn't just add an advantage — it removes competitors entirely. A solicitation open to everyone might draw forty responses. The same work set aside for SDVOSB might draw four.

A surprising number of owners qualify for one of these and have never applied, usually because nobody told them the category existed. It's worth an hour to find out. We're a veteran-owned business ourselves, which is how we learned how much that single line item changes the math.

Step 3: Find the right opportunities, not all of them

Start with NAICS codes — the classification system that describes what you sell. Get these right, because they determine which solicitations you'll see and which small business size standard applies to you.

Then monitor the places the work is actually posted. SAM.gov is the federal system. Every state runs its own procurement portal, and they're all different. Counties, cities, school districts, and universities frequently post independently. Cooperative purchasing vehicles like NASPO ValuePoint let one award serve many states at once, which is why they're worth disproportionate attention for a small team.

This is genuinely the part where automation earns its keep — watching a dozen portals for keyword matches is exactly the kind of repetitive scanning that shouldn't be eating an owner's week.

Step 4: Make a real bid/no-bid decision

This is the step that separates businesses that win from businesses that merely submit.

Writing a serious proposal costs real hours. Spending them on an opportunity you were never positioned to win is how owners conclude that "government contracting doesn't work" after four losses. Before you commit, answer honestly:

Do you meet every stated requirement, including the ones about bonding, insurance, certifications, and prior contract size? Can you show past performance an evaluator will accept as relevant? Is there an incumbent — and if so, is there a specific reason this agency would change vendors? Is the contract big enough to justify the cost of responding? And could you actually deliver it if you won, which is a question more owners should ask before submitting rather than after.

A disciplined no on three opportunities, so you can do a serious job on the fourth, beats four rushed submissions every time.

Step 5: Write to the evaluation criteria, not about your company

Government evaluators are not reading your proposal to be impressed. They are scoring it against a checklist derived from the solicitation's own instructions, often section by section, in order.

That has two consequences. First, compliance isn't a formality — a missed page limit, a skipped attachment, or an answer filed under the wrong heading can get a proposal marked non-responsive before anyone evaluates the substance. Second, structure beats prose. Answer the questions in the order asked, using the language the solicitation uses, so the evaluator finds each required element exactly where they expect it.

Reused boilerplate is the other common killer. Every solicitation has its own evaluation criteria, and a response visibly written for a different opportunity loses points it never had to lose. We went deeper on this in what a government RFP writing service actually does.

If you'd rather not do this yourself

Everything above is learnable, and plenty of owners do learn it. It also tends to take a year or two of losses to learn it well, which is a real cost.

The alternative is handing the pursuit to people who do it full time. That's what our proposal writing service does — opportunity research, bid/no-bid analysis, the technical and management response, past performance narratives, pricing strategy, compliance review, and submission. We work on contingency: 10% of awarded contract value, no up-front fee on most projects, nothing owed if the bid doesn't win.

Taika Translations went from roughly $1M to $30M in contract awards over three years working this way, and now holds a NASPO ValuePoint Master Agreement with 10 state participating addenda. The full breakdown is on our case studies page.

This is probably not a fit if…

You need revenue in the next 60 days. Government procurement cycles run months, sometimes longer, from solicitation to award to first invoice. This is a pipeline you build, not a gap you plug.

You couldn't absorb the delivery. Winning a contract you can't staff is worse than not bidding — past performance follows you, and a bad one closes doors that were open.

Your business has no public-sector analogue. Not everything is bought by government. We'll tell you that on the first call rather than take the engagement.

If none of those apply and you've got a solicitation in front of you — or you just want an honest read on whether your shop is a fit — book a free 30-minute eligibility call. If you'd rather start by seeing what we'd automate around the bidding itself, the free check-up is the other door in.