Q&A: making Uncle Sam your customer.

• Position: Interview with management consultant Paul E. Golding - Interview

Financial Executive recently interviewed Paul E. Goulding, a Washington, D.C.-based consultant and expert in the arcane art of government procurement.

Q: Your firm has helped clients obtain more than $30 billion in government contracts during the last 10 years, companies like AT&T and Hewlett Packard. Do large companies have a big advantage when it comes to selling to Uncle Sam?

PEG: While you might assume they would, my experience indicates that isn't the case. For instance, some big companies get involved in bidding on major contracts and find they are lost because their marketing people, who want to make the sale, are saying one thing while their government relations people have an entirely different view of what should be submitted in the bid.

A dilemma for top management?

PEG: Exactly. Some small niche companies, on the other hand, know exactly what their market is and how best to sell to it. Each case is different and there is no cookie-cutter formula. I keep an open mind and try to evaluate each situation as I see it.

Although small and medium-sized firms frequently need more help steering through the process, they are often more successful than larger companies because they tend to be more flexible and less bureaucratic when faced with complex challenges.

Why should firms of any size bother to do business with the U.S. government given all the red tape involved?

PEG: When I hear that question, I tell the story of the businessman who buys a hardware store after moving to a small town. He asks his new employees who the biggest hardware customer in town is. He is surprised to learn that the customer isn't doing business with his store. When the owner asks why not, his employees say the customer is difficult to do business with and requires that a lot of forms be filled out. I point out that same customer is probably very wealthy, doesn't bounce his checks and usually does repeat business when satisfied. That's the type of customer the federal government can be.

Just how big a customer is the U.S. government?

PEG: The U.S. government buys goods and services valued at over $200 billion. That makes Uncle Sam the biggest customer in the world. And it's not just the dollar figure that's large, but the number of individual acquisitions. According to the GSA Procurement Data Center, over 20 million individual contract actions are processed every year.

Now that we're in a global economy and even small businesses are entering the overseas...