Get To Know Your Capabilities

April 13, 2006

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If you are serious about being a subcontractor and selling your company's products or services to a prime, you'll need to know your capabilities as a supplier.

After you have identified your prime's needs and requirements, you need to decide whether your company can provide them--i.e., whether your company and the prime are a possible match.

If, at first glance, you decide that you cannot fit into the prime's needs because you don't make the specific product the prime uses, take a moment to reconsider.

You probably spend lots of time thinking about what your company does, makes, etc., but how much time do you spend thinking about what your company could do, make, etc.?

Try thinking in terms of your capabilities. How can you use your same equipment, skills and processes to make other things-perhaps things you never even considered before (and perhaps things that the prime needs)? Changing the question from "Does my company make this?" to "Is my company capable of making this?" creates more possibility (and maybe more business).

However, in the end, unless you provide--or have the capability to provide--products or services that can be an integral part of what the prime needs, you will just end up spinning your wheels and being disappointed. If your capabilities are compatible with what the prime needs, you are a potential fit. If they are not, move on to the next prime.

Re-thinking your process (be it welding or manufacturing or writing or whatever) in terms of the end product(s) that you are capable of producing can be good for your business, even if you never work for the government or a prime.

A few years ago, business was very slow for a small arc welding company that we know of. It did precision welding of industrial parts, but the economy had slowed down, none of its regular customers needed its normal services, and the company felt it had marketed to everybody in the area that might. Then at a meeting, someone had an idea: "We keep talking about working on the same kind of products. Let's not keep going in the same circles. Let's try to think about welding something we never tried before." When they began brainstorming about things they could make that were metal and that there might be a market for, it dawned on them that they could also make furniture out of metal.

Today, they are making lamps, chairs, and tables, among other things, out of steel and aluminum. In fact, they opened a showroom, and their furniture making could turn into a nice profit center for them.

What can you take away from this example? Don't get stuck on what you have always done or are doing now. Take the time to set a vision for what you can do.