The Art of Negotiating for Government Contracts

The Art of Negotiating^® for Government Contracts is a customized seminar tailored to both potential contractors (“offerors”) and negotiators on the side of Government who are entering into a supply contract.

These negotiations require proficient skills in bargaining, persuasion, alteration of assumptions and positions, give-and-take, applied to price, schedule, technical requirements, type of contract, and other terms of a proposed contract. The Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR) states that any contract awarded using other than sealed bidding procedures is considered a negotiated contract. These contract negotiations are exchanges, in either a competitive or sole source environment, between the Government and offerors, which are undertaken with the intent of allowing the offeror to revise its proposal.

The FAR guide to negotiating these contracts states that “Highly skilled negotiators will have a greater probability of success than negotiators who do not have the requisite skills. Good negotiators can often obtain favorable deals under adverse circumstances. Conversely, negotiators with poor bargaining skills sometimes fail to obtain satisfactory agreements even when the circumstances favor their bargaining position.”

This seminar will address all aspects of the initial offer, the competitive range, pre-award competitive and noncompetitive negotiations, competitive and noncompetitive discussions before or after the contract award, the facilitation of preparing/reviewing a final proposal revision, and post-award negotiations.

The seminar will teach the skills to achieve a contract that optimizes value for both sides—given the award criteria, the proposal, and existing constraints within both organizations.

This seminar will teach participants how to prepare and strategize for negotiations, gain management support, apply effective bargaining techniques, project honesty, overcome obstacles, foster team cooperation, and benefit from sound business decisions that maximize gains.

In The Art of Negotiating^® Government Contracts, participants will learn to:

• Effectively negotiate with an emphasis on bargaining skills
• Build lasting relationships based on trust, ethics, honesty and transparency
• Maximize financial gains
• Negotiate contracts
• Avoid the common mistakes in pre-award negotiations
• Properly evaluate the interests of the other side
• Decipher which skills and tactics to use at which points in the contract process
• Prevent and resolve disagreements
• Negotiate with solid business principles at the core
• Negotiate even after the contract is awarded, in terms of logistics, facilitation, and fulfillment.