What Should you do to be Productive during a Government Continuing Resolution (CR)?
We are asked all the time by our clients "What should we do to be productive during a Government Continuing Resolution (CR)?". Since this is the 20th consecutive year that the Government has been under a CR. (Continuing Resolutions :: Carahsoft) and the Government has only passed a budget on time on only 3 occasions since 1977 having a sound strategy to ensure sales teams are productive during a CR is critical. (What is a CR: What is a Continuing Resolution and How Does It Impact Government Operations? | U.S. GAO)
The overarching theme around a CR to keep in mind is that CR's reduce the amount of time an agency has to complete a solicitation. Instead of a 12 month window to conduct market research, identify contracting vehicles and approaches to procurement, meet with vendors, etc agencies timeframes are compressed. If the FY24 budgets aren't approved until December (which is the current consensus), then agencies will only have 9 to 10 months to complete their work or risk loosing their funding at year end.
During a CR, the Government is essentially funded to keep the lights on and operations running at current budget levels- this means no new program starts or spending for new technologies.
With these limitations, sales organizations should use the CR to research and position themselves to be ready act the minute the new budget is approved.
Some of the key activities include:
Review the requested/proposed agency budgets for the upcoming year. Even though the budgets have not been completely finalized, you can glean a great deal of insights into which agencies are a good fit for your technology, which agencies are planning to spend and have initiatives that align with your technology.
Since the Government is operating under a CR, you can still meet with Government agencies and programs to educate them on your technology and work to influence requirements for upcoming solicitations.
Build out your partner network in advance of upcoming solicitations. If you are going to need a services provider or technology partner as part of a team to pursue opportunities, take this time to build the team and be prepared.
Those organizations that utilize the CR to better understand the market and position themselves with both Government agencies and partners are the organizations that are in the best position when budgets are finally approved.
(Note: If you are interested in learning more about the CR and Federal Budget our partner Carahsoft has done an extensive amount of research on these topics and it can be found at carah.io/FY24Budget.)