Helping Your Clients Prepare for Big Opportunities

Your small business clients sometimes need to take risks in order to capitalize on an important opportunity. As a Pennsylvania accountant or CPA, you can help them bid on a contract, answer an RFP, or jump into a government contract as a subprime or a minority-certified business. Many small businesses don’t even know these opportunities exist. You can help them find these opportunities and help them scale their business.

In addition to standard networking, your business clients should be seeking opportunities to bid as subcontractors (also known as subprime) on government contracts.

Pennsylvania law requires that prime contractors who work directly with the government on projects are required to comply with subcontracting goals of Small Diverse Businesses (SDBs) and Veteran Business Enterprises (VBEs). The Socially and Economically Restricted Business (SERB) program offers qualifying companies certification, which can give these small companies a preference when bidding for subprime contracts. Prime contractors can benefit in a proposal when they subcontract with a SERB. Therefore, you should direct your client to the SERB, SDB, and VBE programs to increase their chance of being chosen as a subcontractor by a prime contractor.

Contracting, subcontract/subprime opportunities, and Requests for Proposal (RFP) can come unexpectedly and require a quick turnaround. Business and government entities seeking contractors often give very little turnaround time, which is, in a sense, part of the test. Whichever contractors respond rapidly and accurately to an RFP or other work opportunity will have the best chance of winning the bid.

Help your client be prepared to bid on very short notice. What will your client need at hand?

• All certifications, licenses, and insurance documentation to demonstrate that they are compliant with all applicable laws, regulations, and codes

• A clean set of current-year financials and three years of balance sheets to demonstrate that the business is stable and reliable

• A line of credit, since some jobs may require the purchase of special equipment or materials that will increase their efficiency and profit

• A proposal response team at the ready, including a proposal manager, salesperson, subject matter experts, compliance experts, and decision-makers (in a small company, several of these roles may be held by the same person)  

• A prepared proposal template that can be quickly modified for specific projects

While all potential jobs are different, most RFPs will have similar requests for your small business client’s field. Review several RFPs that would fit your client’s expertise and work with your client to create an outline of how they would answer many of these questions. With this template, they will be ready to fill in most of the questions quickly and will be able to focus on the aspects of the job that are unique. Some of these items may include:

• An executive summary addressing the specific needs of the company or government agency requesting proposals

• An overview of your client’s business, mission, values, and certifications

• A detailed explanation of how your client will complete the work

• Testimonials, examples of completed work, performance metrics

• A clear timeline for the various steps of the job

• Competitive pricing breakdown

Of course, not every opportunity is right for your client. Help them develop a “bid/no bid” procedure that reviews the RFP to determine whether it is a good fit for the company, whether they can meet all mandatory requirements, whether they have a good chance of winning the bid, and whether they would make a profit.

As your client’s financial expert, you can help them look at their financial strengths, where they need to make changes to be prepared to take on more contracts, and how to scale. If you have any questions about helping your small business clients take these big steps, reach out to our member community through our member portal. Our expert PSTAP members are always willing to help fellow Pennsylvania accountants and CPAs.