How to Maximize Federal End of Year Funds
Tune into this webinar to learn more about the fiscal end of year and how you can leverage the federal calendar to close contracts and secure funds.
J.R.:
So, hey guys, I’m J.R. Mullis, I’m acquisitions here at Dcode. Do a lot of work with companies, finding product market fit, doing some BD stuff. But prior to coming here, I retired after 20 years from the Air Force as a contracting officer. So worked with all the cool organizations, AFWERX, RAPIDx, Platform One. And then part of what I did specifically was developed policy to attract emerging tech into the government. So happy to have this conversation.
Riya:
Thanks, JR. And I’m Riya Patel. I’m the Managing Director of Government at Dcode. So I oversee all of our government operations and a huge component of my role is also to manage the sales function within the government side at Dcode. So end of year is something that we are intimately familiar with because it is a core component of our sales motion and sales cycle that we are doing for ourselves. And prior to Dcode my experiences come from Office of Secretary of Defense specifically and acquisitions at the Defense Innovation Board. And so the lens that I’m also looking at is from a procurement one and like JR. I love all things acquisitions and contracting. So you’re in good company if you also nerd out on this topic.
Emily:
I love it. Thank you both. Glad to have both of your brains on this and around this topic. Maybe to start and get us started today, if we can just start with what is the significance of end of fiscal year and sort of where are we in the cycle right now and what’s the importance for both our gov audience and our tech audience because we know we’ve got both with us today?
Riya:
Great starter question Burd. JR, I actually get it over to you because I think it’ll be really interesting to hear the government perspective and then I can talk a little bit more about when you’re in a company responding to end of year and kind of the government timeline there.
J.R.:
Yeah, of course. So the first question is, why is this important? This is when the pressure gets put on the government to spend their money so everybody understands how the budget cycle works and then you get your budget and your funding for the full year. So if you’re talking about one year money like O&M 3,400 funds, that goes away September the 30th no matter what happens. So the pressure’s really on the government and especially the contracts and offices to get things over the line.
So it opens up a lot of opportunities and we’ll talk more in a little bit about what those opportunities are, but when you’re breaking down, without getting too specific, but if you break almost the year into quarters, so from the contracting perspective, after September the 30th, it’s vacation time. So everybody has worked 12 hours, 13 hours, 14 hours for a quarter, three months, and that’s the time that people take the time to stretch their legs and catch their breath.
So that puts you through January. So when you get back and start getting into January, the next January, February, March is when the budget finally starts trickling down to units so they can start figuring out what they have, how much they can spend and finding places to put it. That next quarter is when the money starts rolling back up. So the match comes, the groups, the wings start pulling that money back up because years ago people would park money on contracts and then at the end or do things and then you get to the end of the fiscal year and there’s all this money left and we have to find a way to spend it. So first quarter for the government, catch your breath, second quarter budget falls out, try to find a way to spend it, the next quarter we’re rolling that money back up and we getting ready for the last quarter. Then once you hit that last quarter, it’s all hands on deck, right? Full court press. People are finding ways to spend the money and looking for cool, easy ways to get it done.
Riya:
That’s a great explanation JR. And I’ll just add a little bit more color on the company side and how this impacts the sales cycle. So I think for those who have done a couple of revs of the federal sales journey, then you are intimately familiar with end of year as well as just exactly how the way the budget cycle works impacts when you have conversations on new starts when you are working to push things over the finish line and how you’re trying to capitalize on some of those dollars at the end of year that government doesn’t want to lose for the next year. And so there’s looking to spend them as quickly as possible. And from the sales motion side, I think the two things that we really take away and advise our companies on is that it’s never too early to start thinking about end of year and asking about if there will be funding available or to get on an unfunded request list.
And the other is that we typically anticipate our sales quotas and our sales cycles to have maybe January, first quarter and second quarter are a little lighter relative to the end of the year. So Q3 and Q4 are usually the times where Dcode is really closing a lot of the big deals and the big opportunities and we want to structure our quotas and our revenue targets in the same way. And so January through April really is all about sourcing new opportunities, new leads, looking for those new starts JR.
And I can talk a little bit about how continuing resolutions can impact some of what you can do in the beginning of the year. And then by April may we’re really looking to start leveraging end of year as an opportunity to identify new contracting opportunities or get some things pushed through the door that maybe some of the programs we were talking to in January or December of last year didn’t have budget for a new start and seeing what we can get over the finish line and then really the June through August timeframe is operationalizing that.
So rarely are we having conversations right now about new opportunities with end of year. It’s really about, we talked about this in February, let’s now see if you got the money that you were hoping to get to get some things off of your unfunded request. And then September, we’re not trying to bother anyone unless it’s on a contract that we are already working on. But if you’re talking end of year at the end of August or September, it’s probably already too late. Most contracting offices and JR can talk a lot more about his experiences, have a July deadline in order to get things processed before the end of the year closes.
J.R.:
No, I was going to say that one thing that I meant to start off with and I did talk about the color of money, but just want to explain that all these things that we’re talking about in the year and the rush and stuff only applies to one year funds. So if you’re in the R&D world and stuff like that, you’ve got two year money. Now, it still happens, right? So because at the end of the two years there is another cutoff, but we’re usually better at planning that R&D money out than we are with the O&M just because it goes up and comes back down.
I was talking about that cycle. So the money comes down to the units and then towards the end of the year they start pulling it back up and prioritizing the commanders and what the organizations want and then it starts trickling back down.
So at the contracting level you really don’t know, you’ve got to an idea of how much money’s going to come down at end of the year, but you don’t know exactly what that’s going to be. So there’s weekly meetings that are happening with finance and you might be sitting at your desk and a million dollars comes down. So a lot of the work is preparing and having things in place that you can put that money on. It could be existing contracts and a lot of times it’s new contracts. And then should we get right into all the different methods?
Okay, yeah, so talking about all the different methods. So we talk about outreach and BD and talking to government people, so your audience changes depending on what time of year it is. So Riya was talking about that you had the time that you’re out hunting, you’re looking for your PMs and your organizations and programs that you want to reach out to. So once you get to mid-June or late June, almost July, so we’re getting there now, but July, August, those conversations almost don’t have to stop, but your real audience now is your contracting offices. So you want to reach out to them, you want to talk to them and let them know what easy buttons you have.
If you’re on IDIQ, if you’re a small business, woman owned small business or you meet any of those small business criteria to get a direct award or if you’re on a Phase 3, you’re eligible for a Phase 3. So now is time where the audience starts shifting to the contract and offices, letting them know that there isn’t an easy button. So the customer comes down, they div a contract, $600,000 comes back to the organization, they call the contract in office and they say, “Hey, can you obligate this?” And there’s really only one way to say yes and if that’s if there’s a direct award, if there’s any competition involved, it’s too late. So yeah, now’s the time to start talking to the actual acquisition professionals and letting them know how they can get to you easily.
Emily:
JR and Riya, would you mind also digging into some of the other audiences right now we’re focusing on those contracting offices, but who are some of those personas that people should think about from both a marketing perspective and business development perspective in other times of the year?
Riya:
Happy to chime in. So I think it all depends on if you’ve mapped out exactly who are your personas for some of the use cases that you have. If you were selling a tech product or software, then that really is your focus all year round and especially in the beginning of the year. I think one component that is really important to talk early on and especially in the April, May timeframe when you’re starting to have more messaging around unfunded requests and getting on your wish list is contracting as JR mentioned. And also finance because usually the contracting officers as well as your program manager is then going to have to go back anyways and talk to the finance office about what is left over in the budget and what kind of forecasting exactly how much there might be at the end of the year.
Because as JR mentioned, it’s always a toss up. You never know how much budget you might get or how much money might be left over at the end of the year and it might come really fast. And so there’s not really a good sense of exactly the range or the budget size. And so it’s nice to have those relationships earlier on in the year that you can then leverage and your program manager also has relationships with the finance office so you can have those conversations earlier on and have a better sense of forecasting in your pipeline.
So I think those are a couple of really important personas. Typically, have found that senior leadership or the higher up, if you’re talking at CIO, CISO level, usually they don’t really have a good sense of what’s going on when you get close to end of year, that’s usually a handoff to like, “You’re going to have to talk to my contracting officer or my program manager.” And so I’d say don’t waste your time unless you want to use them to drive a sense of urgency, which there already kind of is with end of year funding, they might not be the best personas to target, especially if you’re trying to bring in marketing or have some more proactive lead generation to focus a little bit less on that persona when you’re doing end of year campaigning and things like that.
Emily:
Yeah, I would add on to that from a marketing perspective as well, I think everything that you guys are saying resonates because Dcode also sells to government. So we are in sort of a similar position to many of our tech companies in our port codes. So this is not oftentimes marketing campaigns you need a few months for them to really run and be effective and get in front of some of these buyer personas that you’re trying to reach from a BD perspective.
And this time of year that is not to say that your marketing efforts are sort of kaput. There’s an option where you can just stay top of mind for a lot of these contracting offices and really continue to nurture these relationships so that when they’re going through that list of unfunded requests, you are in the forefront of their brains and if they have money then they can reach out. So maybe not the best time for a six-month ad campaign on LinkedIn to get in front of some of these COs, but definitely a time to continue to nurture those relationships and your marketing teams should be able to support that.
Riya:
That’s a great point because I think it’s also something we have been doing this year more than any other year that I think has been working in our favor is picking one product for end of year campaigns and being really specific about what the ask is and also thinking about interesting pricing packages so that if we have a contracting office that comes to us and says, “Hey, I need to swipe a credit card to get this over the line quickly.” We have some more creative pricing options than we would typically have during the year to get it over the line really fast.
And I’m sure JR could elaborate on some of those thresholds and some of the speed that contracting has to work through to get things over the line before the end of summer. But that was something that is particularly relevant during end of year time because everyone’s trying to maximize efficiency and how quickly things can go. And I have been in situations where if it was going to be a complicated procurement, contracting didn’t have the time and so we were just passed over on the unfunded request list. And that’s something obviously nobody wants to get passed up because it was too difficult to buy your product. And so we are always trying to anticipate some creative pricing packages or opportunities specifically for end of year so that it’s really, really easy to get to Dcode.
Emily:
I’d love to talk about that a little bit more. Can we dig into what exactly is an unfunded request list? Is it a literal list that people have where they’re going down the lines? What does it look like, how do you get on it? And then what are some of those creative solutions that you can use to make it easy?
J.R.:
So I’d really like to make it sound like it’s like some elaborate program or something and my knowledge is getting old. I’ve been retired since February, but no, it’s an Excel spreadsheet that units have. And so each unit creates their unfunded list. So we’ve expended our budget and the chance that we get into year funds, we prioritize in this Excel spreadsheet or whatever they use to track. We prioritize what we want the most. So when that money rolls up, that list will also go up as well. So say that you’ve got 35 items that are on this unfunded request list and then they get 2 million. They’ll actually just sort take the top, they’ll cut it off at 2 million and all these above that line get funded and it happens at different levels. Each unit’s or everybody’s money rolls up to a different level.
Some of it stops at the group, some of it goes all the way up to MADS Com. So you have to think about it. So if every unit in the MADS Com turns in five items, that’s a pretty big list and then it gets racked and stacked as it goes up. But back to the audience thing. So now’s not the time to be asking to be put on an unfunded list that at time’s expired. Now I did skip a really important part when I was talking about audiences as well.
So you’re small business professionals, so if you happen to fit into one of the small business categories that authorizes them to give you a direct award, the SBA in the small business professional in that organization is a real good person to talk to because the government also gets their goal grades by the quarter as well.
So we’re finishing up another quarter. The SBA may come down and say, “Hey listen, we’re really lacking on women in small businesses.” So guess where the next five awards or six awards are going to. And it could be veteran own small business or whatever it may be, but they’re going to look at all the different socioeconomic statuses and all the categories and give that unit a grade. And most of them really care a lot about that and that’s why it’s there. So they’re being tracked and making SBA that they’re following those. So don’t forget about your SBA person, understand thresholds, right? Select the micro purchase threshold and the simplified acquisition threshold. Anything over that’s probably out of the question for this time of year. So micro purchase threshold meaning that they can buy you on a GPC card. So the cool thing about the SAT now is that there’s a new GPC card.
I say new, it’s probably been around for five years, but it’s the GPC expanded use program. So if your service or your product is listed on a pre-priced contract, whether it be an IDIQ, I haven’t seen one use for a Phase 3, but I can make that argument all day long. I never had the opportunity to do it. I’d love to fight that battle for somebody and explain to somebody how that is a pre-price contract. But yeah, so IDIQs, BPAs, any of those things, if you’re listed on those, they can use that authority to use their GPC up to the SAT. So up to $250,000. So those are the two big ones.
And I even know a lot of offices now, so contracting offices put out their soft closeout. So it’ll be like, “Hey, if you want a construction project, it has to be turned in by April. If you want a service, it has to be turned in by May, if you want a product, we might take those all the way up to July.” So there’s different soft closeouts depending on the level of effort required by the contracting office. A lot of offices now are only accepting EUP requirements after that soft closeout, I’ll take that back. They used to not accept anything. Now there’s another tool. So they actually will take some requirements after the soft closeout as long as it can be done with the GPC.
Riya:
And just expanding on which JR is talking about, which is spot on. Every agency has some additional deadlines they have. So for instance, the IRS chief procurement office has three weeks of which end of year funds will come out to all of the directorates. And then they have those three weeks to determine what they want to buy and put in their requests. And anything after that deadline, which I think is the last week of June, anything over $25,000, it will not be accepted until the start of the new fiscal year, which is a little insane. But also just the internal rules that the procurement office is set for the IRS. So it’s worthwhile earlier on in the year to ask about any specific thresholds and deadlines that the office or organization you’re talking to might have specific to their agency because each of the agencies have their own deadlines and rules and thresholds and for instance, the IRS also doesn’t allow use of the expanded GPC at the same level that the DOD will.
And so it’s only 50,000 that they will even enable to use expanded GPC. And that’s just internal policy that could probably, if we sent JR in there, he could probably tell them all the different reasons why they don’t need to do that, but that’s just their rule right now. So it’s better to ask those questions earlier on in the sales motion before so don’t end up at the end of June asking for, well how long do you have? Or what’s the threshold around what you can actually get over the line in the next couple months? And then you find out that it’s like $5,000 and there’s no way any of your products are going to fit within that threshold. Ask early.
Emily:
That’s great advice. And that actually goes to one of the questions we just had come through the chat. The question itself is, does end of your funding work the same for DOD, IC and civilian or is it by an office by office basis? So I think that that sort of speaks to that answer too. Where would you recommend that people find information on end of year funding? Let’s say obviously leverage are the government contacts that you have and really talk to people to get an understanding for what timelines they’re on. Where else can people go for information?
Riya:
There are actually some really interesting reports out there. There was one that was put out a couple weeks ago and I’m not sure how we can share this. I’ll see if I could do some digging in the background. But there was a really big report specifically for the DOD aggregating all of the unfunded requests across all of the services and where they were going and why they were being used. One of the interesting takeaways from that document was a lot of it was unfunded requests from the programs of record. And I don’t want to get into a whole conversation on programs of record in this conversation, but I think what is interesting about that takeaway is that means that a lot of the unfunded requests were coming from prime contractors asking for additional money for the F35 for instance or for a component of a really big program office.
And so one thing that we recommend, especially if you have some channel and sales already in flight or you have some good relationships with one or two or a handful of prime contractors, is to take a look at what will be expiring or what’s up for recompete and reach out to your channel and sales partners and see if there’s anything that they want to get over the line quickly in leveraging other direct costs or something because they have a ceiling that they want to hit. Usually this is a time of a lot of getting ready for recompete and getting ready for a new fiscal year. And given a lot of these unfunded requests, at least on the DOD side, or going to the program of record level or that really big program office level. It’s probably another interesting way of tapping into a component of your federal sales like strategy that you might not think about when you’re thinking about end of year.
J.R.:
I mean I do think that if you reach out to the finance people or if you have connections inside the government, they might share that with you real time. “Hey listen, this is what we’re planning on getting.” And I also know that there’s a lot of days where you’re actually as a contracting officer, you’re reaching out to companies and saying, “Hey, so I’m may be getting this much money, so can you be ready to press… or because the contract has to go out, you have to sign it, you have to send it back so you make sure they’re at the desk.
So if you create those relationships with the government and the contracting officers, they might go to you first. And another thing too is I guess it’s maybe too late for this, but some offices that they’re still taking requirements. You can actually build a contract award without money. You can’t award a contract without money. So we do a lot of unfunded requests and then contracts and we’ll put a clause in there that says that this contract is contingent on appropriated funds. So you may do all the work now and then gets it in the year and nothing happened or it might be built and then they get the money, they can put it on the contract. So you might have another three weeks to maybe get something like that started, but it might possibly too late.
Emily:
That’s great. Thanks guys. Well I feel like it’s probably time now that we’ve formed up to tackle the elephant in the room, which is a continuing resolution. What impact does a continuing resolution have to this entire shenanigans? Where would you like to start?
J.R.:
So I’ll start, and Riya, you probably have a lot more information on this than I do, but here’s what I’ll tell you. Here’s what the CR does not do. It does not move September the 30th on the calendar. So when you’re under a CR, depending on which organization you’re in, the money can still go towards existing contracts. If you have options stuff like that, it doesn’t affect that and there are offices that will have money.
What happened with this last CR is it wasn’t the fact that people didn’t have money is that people weren’t sure if that money that they had was going to get replaced. So some offices were spending it and some of them were saying, “Hey listen, this might be all the money we get for the year, so we’re not going to touch it.” But in reality I’ll let you get more into that. But I just wanted to make the point that September the 30th is still September the 30th. So if the CR gets signed, I forgot whatever the date was, if you’ve got two months, three months, those rules don’t change. All the things we said before are still in play.
Riya:
I don’t think there’s anyone who loves the concept of having a CR until April or March, which was basically what happened this year. And then I’m sure those of you involved in fed sales had a similar struggle of there was a continuing resolution and so there were no new starts.
I will say what was an opportunity that I had not necessarily anticipated given how long the continuing resolution was this year, was that because the CR lasted for so long and a lot of the original plans that government had for what they were going to use their new starts on got delayed diverted or was overcome by events and obsolete, there was some additional funding that government had that they weren’t expecting because all of their new starts got messed up.
So we’ve actually found it to be a really interesting end of year time because we’ve heard more often than not, and definitely this year more than any other year, that there’s a lot more funding available because we had it planned for all of these programs and projects that are just never became a thing because by the time we got the funding it was six months obsolete. So it actually might work in your favor for end of year because then there was extra dollars that isn’t allocated to a certain project or program because it was no longer relevant by the time the CR ended and offices got access to their budgets for FY 2022.
Emily:
That’s great, thank you. And hopefully, fingers crossed and my toes are crossed, we do not have to deal with it this year, but what do we want to take bets? Do we think that we’re going to have another CR this year? Yeah. Okay. Yeah, that’s what I figured.
Riya:
The losing bet.
Emily:
So what advice would you give to people who are, maybe they’re just sort of scaling and launching their federal practice. If we are anticipating a CR what practical tips, if you could narrow it down to two or three, would you give a company on how to navigate that as they try to get some dollars onto contract?
Riya:
Okay, here’s three tips. I’ll be keep it succinct, it’s never too early to think about end of year and it’s not a lot of work to weave that into your messaging. So it’s as simple as in March asking about whether or not the program or office you’re talking to is interested in putting you on their unfunded request list or their wishlist if they get end of year dollars. And that’s really easy to bring up in conversation if you are remembering that this is the timeframe to do that. By the time July and August hits it’s too late. So don’t waste your time trying to capture all of these trash cans of money lit on fire. Really the springtime is your opportunity to capitalize on end of year funds and end of year is a really great way to nurture relationships and deals and opportunities that have maybe you’ve put in your parking lot or haven’t talked to in a while.
And that is one of the best ways to continue to source new opportunities around end of year is we found people we were talking to maybe a year ago or six months didn’t have budget then maybe we’ve been following up but not super intensely because they’ve indicated that they don’t have budget. End of year is a great opportunity to take deals like that and see if there’s anything new that you can get out of it because it’s very simple and it’s easy and mostly everyone in government understands when you’re asking if there’s going to be any end of year dollars they want to put towards this, what do you mean by that? So seize the opportunity there.
J.R.:
So I like recommending getting out there and meeting people. So the end of year is a stressful time for the government. So a lot of offices go to mandatory 12 hour days in August or whatever. So it’s all hands on deck. Everybody’s at their desk, everybody’s in the office. So seize the opportunity to go out and meet people. Some of the biggest impacts that people made on me was folks walking into the office introducing themselves, giving their business card and saying, Hey listen, I know what you’re going through if you need anything, anybody that does this for the next three months, 8:00 AM a hub zone or STVOSB. And I don’t know if those interactions always just kind of stand out. So when you do get that package on your desk for $600,000 and understand the only way to do it through 8A, what’s fresh in your mind is that the nice young lady or young man that came and talked to you and took the time to come see you.
So I think that doesn’t guarantee anything, but we’re all humans. And the other thing, too back to the CR thing, Burd is maybe it might be a good time to partner because the programs that are already funded are that already have money on them or option years and stuff on them are still going to get funded. So might be a good time to start talking about partnerships and making sure that you’re involved with an SI that’s going to receive funding no matter what.
Emily:
Could we dig into that a little bit further? How would you recommend people navigate those conversations with partners?
J.R.:
So even prior to the conversations, doing your research, right? So we just talked the other day about partnerships and not all IDIQs are created equal and not all SIs are created equal either. So you can do your research and find large contracts, large IDIQs, large programs and stuff that have a ceiling and a ceiling and an actual dollar amount or two different things. So do your research upfront and figure out which ones have traction.
So if you want a team with somebody that’s got an IDIQ that say it’s $6 million and there’s 2 million left on it or there’s a million dollars left on it, the likelihood is they’ll burn that up and they’ll get it extended. Now if you have somebody that has a 6 million contract and there’s one task order for a hundred thousand dollars on it, it’s kind of like equity. A lot of equity in a company that isn’t valued at anything is zero. So you don’t want to be on a large contract that’s not being used. So prior to the conversations, do your research and find out who’s actually got one that’s got traction and I’ll stop there for you Riya.
Riya:
I think you’ve covered everything and I think this is more general partners than specific to end of year, but one thing that has worked well for us in the past that I’m sure folks have had these conversations with SIs and maybe you’ve run into it and it’s really hard for them to feel incentivized to bring you on to contract quickly unless they’re also feeling pressure from the government side. And so definitely make sure if you’re going into one of these offices or organizations and especially for an end of year opportunity to have conversations direct with government, if you can identify or find a connection point in along with the SI or consulting firm or whomever the prime contractor is as well. Because otherwise it’s difficult to get that same sense of urgency with just working with the SI themselves.
Although end of year does help because as I said, they have a strict deadline of when funds might disappear and so everybody is working to get that over the line. And I think I saw a question that I’m not sure that we directly addressed so I can address it Burd, on what it means if someone says they have funding for FY 23 and that just means that they have funding for the next fiscal year. So it’s a little bit of a ramp if you are having a conversation in May or June and they say, yeah, I have FY 23 funds for that. That means basically that when the new budget comes in for fiscal year 2023, they’ll have money to put towards your product. So don’t expect that deal to move until after September 30th because it means that they want to leverage the new budget in order to get your product over the line.
Emily:
That’s great. Thank you. Yeah, I think Riya, your point about partners and how you should be leveraging your government relationships and nurturing those and your partner relationships at the same time when I was on the tech side of the house, that was the piece of partnering advice that made the most impact for our tech companies and it’s a good reminder for best practice, just keep those relationships warm.
One last question for both of you. What are a couple of tips that you can give people for things that they can do right now? I know that we’re sort of at the end and we’ve talked about how it’s crunch time, but if you had to help people prioritize where they’re spending their time and money, what would you recommend?
J.R.:
Well, I’ll say if you have a pre-price contract, if you’re on IDIQ or if you meet one of the socioeconomic statuses to where you can receive a direct award or if you’re Phase 3 eligible, now’s probably a good time to do a little bit of marketing and just kind of shoot that out to the acquisition professionals and let them know, add us to that list of the easy button.
And then number two is be available. So things are going to happen fast. So if a contracting officer gets a big chunk of money, they’re going to make a phone call, they’re going to shoot an email and sometimes they’ll wait an hour or two and if they haven’t heard back, they’ll call the next one. So those are two things and just really keep your relationships warm and genuine just in anything with sales. People want to work with people that make them feel good. So in contracting officers and the acquisition people are humans too.
Emily:
We did have one last minute question come through the chat. It says JR, I think you were talking earlier about differences between R&D efforts versus other types of efforts. Is there a difference in approach for end of year funds R&D projects specifically?
J.R.:
Yes and no. So like I said, so your R&D money, your 3,600 funds, I’m speaking for the Air Force, but the money is the same. So it’s still two year money if it’s R&D across the DOD. So you can still have expiring R&D funds. So if we’re talking about money that’s going to expire this September, then no, you don’t approach it any different. If it’s money that’s going to expire next year, it’s just business as usual. So I guess you would have to know and they’ll tell you. Are these expiring funds? How long are these funds good? And then that’ll dictate how you approach it. If they are expiring all the things that we just said still apply. If they’re not, then business as usual, but also still everybody’s at the desk right now and they’re going to be at the desk for the next three months. So it might be a good time, even if it is funds that aren’t expiring to really hit it hard because you have all their attention right now.
Emily:
Awesome, thank you for that perspective and Riya over to you for your closing tips and tricks that people can take home with them.
Riya:
Yeah, I think on JR’s last point, the worst possible scenario if you reach out right now and ask about end of year funding or the possibility of adding you on to an unfunded request list in beginning of July as they say no, and then you, okay, great. Well we’d love to talk to you about FY 23 so the worst possible scenario is that you are then just having a conversation about the first quarter of the next government fiscal year, which is always a great place to be, right? You’re just sourcing new opportunities for the next budget cycle. So I’d say just because you can’t make inroads with end of year funds right now doesn’t mean that it won’t lead to a conversation about a new start or something that can happen with the start of the next fiscal year for government, so after September 30th.
And so to definitely stay consistent and stay on top of the conversations because you never know what could shake up to be a really great opportunity for you for the start of the next fiscal year. And on the color of money component, that is a really important piece that we didn’t really talk about at detail around end of year, but JR and I keep saying end of year dollars and it’s not like a color of money that is end of year dollars. Every organization, every agency has their own type of funding that will be in this end of year dollar bucket. And so that is a question that I would ask early on as well of, well, do you have extra training dollars? Do you have O&M? What exactly is the color of money of your end of year funding?
And if you are a good salesperson and a creative salesperson, then you’ll probably find ways to fit whatever product you are selling into the bucket of type of funding that they have at the end of the year. But that’s something important to note. And there are also thresholds that will be different depending on the type of money like training, if it’s money for training, there’s usually some different threshold that people have to swipe a card or to get that over the line quickly than let’s say R&D. And so just understand that there’s some nuances. End of year dollars isn’t like a colorless money. It also is broken into different categories of what exactly that looks like and you just have to ask the questions.