This week I am going to go over how to do some basic federal market research. If you are in the market of pursuing a GSA Schedule Contract some drilldown is a good idea to determine your market size is advisable.

Here is how to conduct some basic market research using GSA Schedule in the Federal Marketplace. In this example we are going to use a Hypothetical Company in the industry or Language Services. This firm is also classified in its NAICS code as a Small Business, Location Georgia.

STEP 1: The starting point is GSA eLibrary – for this example I will look at “Translation Services” on http://www.gsaelibrary.gsa.gov/ElibMain/home.do

This yields several different schedules in which to choose however GSA Schedule 738 II Language Services is the schedule that fits my current search.

STEP 2: 738 II Language Services; under this schedule I find the SIN 382 1 Translation Services which matches what my hypothetical company does.

STEP 3: I click on that SIN (541930) and it brings up all the companies on the GSA schedule. I look for firms that are also small businesses and in Georgia. I find only one firm that is similar to mine.

STEP 4: I COPY >FIRM NAME< and then go to USA Spending https://www.usaspending.gov/Pages/Default.aspx and click on Advanced Data Search in the upper right hand corner.

I select the years I am interested in >2020< and past the firm name into the >Recipient Name< field and click the >Submit< button

RESULTS: For this example now look and can see the clients of the firm are the Dept. of Justice, Dept. of Commerce, Dept. of Defense, and the Dept. of Labor. I can also tell which GSA Schedule contracts were awarded directly off the firm’s schedule, they would be the Award ID with the GS in front of them, but also please remember, a great deal of firms are found from their GSA Advantage Listings which is more than likely how the Dept. of Justice found this GSA Schedule Contract holder.

This is a novice approach to Federal Market Research however; this quick and dirty approach can quickly yield results to see if digging deeper is warranted.