A Horse of a Different Color: Marketing in the Public Sector

Presented by Bernie Siben, CPSM

Marketing to public sector agencies differs in many ways from marketing to private sector entities, most particularly in the variety of procurement process and what you can do to develop/maintain client relationships. Federal professional services procurement is governed by the Brooks Act; most state-level professional services procurement is governed by state laws (“mini-Brooks Act”), ordinance or administrative rules/orders. Many cities have processes required by their various states’ enabling legislation, ordinances, administrative rules/orders.

Government agencies have their own multi-page forms, often with exacting requirements for team composition and content, and the process often has detailed evaluation criteria which may vary from one RFQ/RFP to the next. Contrast this with the private sector, where a client can give you a new project simply because you did a good job on the last one!

This session will address the legal frameworks for public sector procurement, including some of the politics of selection; talk about “best value” as a way to give objective scores to subjective evaluation criteria; and look at a variety of forms and real-world RFPs as jump-off points for discussion.

This Event is Hosted by Jacobs Engineering and will be held at their offices in Fort Worth on the 26th floor, Conference Room D/E.

NOW APPROVED FOR AIA CEU