Market Research

Just wondering if anyone had guidance on the following topic: I'm trying to give my customers a bright line between robust market research and creating an unauthorized commitment. All guidance I've read, including the DAU course, encourage increased communication between my end user and the commercial sector. I'm for this, but I'm concerned about the private sector telling my customer what their requirements are, and my customer somehow obligating the government (despite periodic training on the pain of ratifications)!

I deal primarily with requirements < $1M.

Thanks!

Tell your colleagues that they are prohibited from committing the Government to any product or service offered by any contractor with whom they are doing market research. To minimize confusion in the minds of your colleagues and of the contractors, tell your colleagues to state clearly to the contractor that their market research query is made strictly for the purposes of market research and that it does not constitute a request for proposal, a contract, a promise to contract, or a commitment of any kind.

I always believed if the contractor was hustling, doing research, and providing quotes, etc. and spending an estimated 15 minutes or more of their time satisfying Government market research inquiries, then we may have a problem.

Contractor may be getting his hopes up, and it is our job to remind them of the process so this does not happen.

My advice is to use good business judgement and remind them (or encourage your agency clients to remind contractor) that this is only market research. And, I would advise agency clients who prepare requirements: Please, do not be be greedy and lazy and allow the contractor to do what should be Government procurement research.

EB

Any businessperson who gets a call or a visit from a potentially large customer is going to get excited and start trying to sell, which entails getting one's hopes up. Only a firm that has a lot of experience dealing with out-of-the-blue inquiries from government personnel will know to take it all with a large grain of salt. And any such experienced businessperson who gets an out-of-the-blue inquiry followed by a request for a quote will suspect that the CO is simply trying to document that he got competition. Their suspicion is probably justified. That is why my company refuses to respond to RFQs that follow such inquiries. It's usually a waste of time, and time is money.