Michael Rogers, vice president communications for the Small Business Association of Michigan, interviews Sue Tellier, owner with her husband Jon of Jetco Solutions in Grand Rapids. From their website: “JetCo Solutions was started by a husband-wife team who were both public servants – Jon served his country in the Army and Sue trained potential contractors for the State of Michigan. Jon was passionate about entrepreneurship and Sue was motivated by helping small businesses diversify into the public sector.

Jon and Sue began the company with a singular goal: give small companies access to have a qualified, capable, complete government sales team. They knew what they didn’t want to be – the ‘typical’ government consultant generates meetings and makes connections, but doesn’t necessarily win contracts. This model leads to short-term relationships because connections and meetings don’t always lead to revenue. Small business owners are too smart to tolerate this model long-term.

Instead, Jon and Sue decided to cover the entire government sales life cycle with laser focus on the services required to win government contracts – effective research and capture activities upstream, bid/no-bid evaluation guidance, proposal management and RFP response writing. They measure everything, with client sales goals guiding decisions.

Meetings might be needed during the capture process, but meetings are not a measure of success. Connections must be complimented by effective bid writing, research and proposal management. Each JetCo client has sales goals and the JetCo capture specialist transparently reports on progress to goal.

This business model works, with long-term relationships – some dating back to 2009. The measure of success for the JetCo client team is to earn a permanent “government sales” block on each client’s organizational chart.”

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