SBA Has Free Training Resources for Government Contracting

If you are like us, you receive numerous offers (perhaps daily) of training, seminars, and conferences related to Government contracting. We've taken a few of these ourselves, participated in some, and a few years back offered training as part of business. Typically, these offerings are very good with excellent content and experienced and competent speakers. But they are also expensive. One could easily spend $2,000 and more to register for a two-day seminar/conference. If you have to travel to get there, that's added cost. There are alternatives to spending a lot of money. The Small Business Administration, for example, offers a number of FREE online training modules that cover many topics of interest for companies desiring to enter the Government contracting arena. Let's look at a few.

Learn How to Prepare Government Contract Proposals. This is a 30 minute course comes with a 50 page workbook and explains the Government's contract solicitation process and describes how to prepare a proposal. Topics include:

• Building the foundation
• Types of solicitations
• Standard forms
• How to actually write the proposal
• Cost and pricing
• Relationships and the wisdom of others
• Resources and assistance

You can burn through this course in 30 minutes but if you take the time to follow and study many of the "links" provided in the course, it will take longer.

Government Contracting 101, Parts 1,Part 2, and Part 3. These three courses lasting 30, 18, and 33 minutes each respectively, cover topics that help small business understand Government contracting programs. All three courses come with workbooks. Part 1 provides a small business introduction to Government contracting, describing prime and subcontracting assistance programs, SBA certification programs as well as woman-owned and veteran-owned business programs. Parts 2 and 3 provides a lot of information on how the Government buys and how to sell to the Government.

There are many other free training courses available in SBA's Learning Center (59 as of today). If you're interested in Government contracting, using SBA's resources is an economical way to proceed.