Rolling the Dice in DC [Paperback]

Richard White (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 2, 2006

"Rolling the Dice in DC" explains the federal sales game and how it is played in the real world. The market is insider dominated partly out of necessity and partly because procurement rules are outdated. The book is written for managers and sales people, not contract administrators. It describes the day-to-day dogfight of competing and winning in the federal market. Newcomers to the market may be discouraged by some of the topics and truths discussed. Read it if you want to know the good, bad, and the ugly of the federal market, what it takes to enter the market, and the potential returns. The book is not for you if you only want to know how to pick low-hanging federal fruit and whether there is a magic bullet for entering the federal market. The focus is selling, not how to comply with federal red tape and administer federal contracts. The author is the CEO of Fedmarket.com and has more than forty years of experience in selling to the federal market.

Product Details

• Paperback: 144 pages
• Publisher: Lulu.com (November 2, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1430301546
• ISBN-13: 978-1430301547
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6 x 0.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,092,207 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars No Shortcuts in This Insider's Game. Author White Breaks Omerta, the Code of Silence, February 3, 2010

By 

Citizen John (USA) - See all my reviews
(TOP 50 REVIEWER)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Rolling the Dice in DC (Paperback)

This is the only book I've found that explains how federal contracting works in the real world. Other books provide important information but not the unwritten rules.

A famous line by the author on page 11: "Don't roll the dice in DC unless you know how the game is really played. Otherwise you will be taking unnecessary risks with your hard-earned dollars."

White teaches us that circumstances beyond our control require this to be an insider's game. If you want to participate, it's probably not different in essence to what was done in the days of the Roman Empire. You must become an insider. An insider is defined on page 37 as a company with both a facility security clearance and an accounting system approved by the DCAA. With just those two things that disqualify the overwhelming majority of potential competition, you'll be an insider. But a 1st Class Insider should have at least $15 to $20 million in revenues to meet past experience requirements for large projects.

White shows how the Alliant SB Contract intended to award perhaps 40 companies with $15 billion in spending. The point is clear. Multi-vendor contracts can be lucrative for insiders that have them. All the multi-vendor contracts protect government from having to always conduct an expensive demonstration of open competition through a public bid and proposal process. Getting a multi-vendor contract such as a GSA Schedule is a first step for emerging insiders. Those outside the process tend to assume that government conducts a free and open procurement program.

Richard White provides all the elements one needs to determine whether to prepare and submit a bid (roll the dice). This game costs a lot of money to play as the author makes clear. Ancient Rome surely had its own version of the same. You have to be very careful who you trust for reasons explained in the book. Many business owners generate enormous expenses before realizing any revenue as a result of believing in a shortcut or trusting the wrong people. The odds of success are greatly increased when you understand this industry, the players in it and finally arrive at the point where you can be the prime contractor.

Rolling The Dice in DC is unlike any other book. You'll understand why the path to becoming an insider is not easy but worthwhile. Non-insiders will always believe the government makes sure there is open and full competition. In all this, White does not seem cynical. Instead, he explains why it's not in the government's best interests to have full and open competition in federal contracting. Full and open competition would require much longer lead times from defining a need to fulfilling it and also much more effort to administer. The government is not going to spend that much of the taxpayer's money to ensure such a fair and open system, although it will go to trouble to maintain confidence that such a system exists. Again, this book describes the real world of federal contracting.

Proposal writing is another matter covered in real world terms. A lot of literature teaches us how to write winning proposals and encourages us to doggedly produce many proposals. White goes in a different direction. He explains that except for a truly rare case, the government buyer has been presold before a Request for Proposal (RFQ) is issued. One major way businesses get burned trying to break into the federal space is by committing resources to proposal writing without first having made inroads with the end user. Here, proposal writing is what a company does to avoid losing sales effort gains. White actually suggests RFQs should be mandated to come with a warning label that informs all about the real process of government sales. Clearly this author has broken the "code of silence" expected of participants in this industry, half-jokingly known as Omerta.

Rolling the Dice wraps up with suggestions of reform. I think it's unlikely government will implement these reforms soon because of the nature of bureaucracy. White uses these practical ideas to help us see the current system as do government customers and Beltway denizens. Most truly want the system to work better in the interests of the taxpayer in particular, but almost nobody is willing to go public. When we try to sell to the government, we're expected to not make waves by expounding on the unwritten rules. Perhaps that's why other authors stick to the voluminous written rules.

This is dry material to those not in the business. I could not put down the book, but I'm a participant. Of course, the written rules, beginning but certainly not ending with the Federal Acquisition Regulation, will require more of the reader. The Federal Acquisition Regulation is the starting point for the written rules. It's 1,977 pages long. Take a look: Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR) as of 01/2010.

2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars A nice draft, October 12, 2007

By 

Dennis F (Washington, DC) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Rolling the Dice in DC (Paperback)

This short paperback book had good common sense knowledge that is worth thinking about. But it lacked depth and went off topic too much. The author is clearly knowledgable about the acquisition process and has opinions on what could be done better, but that was not what was expected or advertised.

0 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Real insight about breaking into the federal market, May 12, 2007

By 

Robert Seidel (Brooklyn, NY) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Rolling the Dice in DC (Paperback)

This well written book offers a general blueprint for selling to the federal market. It provides true insight in how to secure sales with the federal government and does not sugar coat the level of effort required to sell to the real end user.

This book will save many small businesses time and money in their attempt to break into the federal market. Too many believe the hype that billions of dollars are just waiting for them to apply. This book dispels those myths and prepares the small business person to manage expectations and set up a thoughtful game plan.