What a Chief Procurement Officer Wishes Every Vendor Knew About B2G Market

Most vendors trying to figure out how to win government contracts focus on the wrong things. They chase the RFP. They pitch the procurement officer. They submit a proposal loaded with marketing language and wait.

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And then they lose.

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On Episode 3 of In Pursuit, host Mike Bitchick sits down with Jared Ambroser, one of the youngest members of Michigan's procurement leadership team and part of the team that won six Cronin Awards, essentially the Oscars of government procurement. Michigan is widely regarded as one of the best-run procurement organizations in the country, and Jared helped build it.

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What he shared is a masterclass for any vendor serious about breaking into the public sector.

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Stop Pitching the Procurement Officer

This is the mistake Jared sees most often, and he's direct about it.

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"I get meeting requests from vendors all the time. They're like 'Hey, we want to sit down with you because you're the chief procurement officer.' And I'm like — I'm more than happy to sit down with you, but I'm not your customer. From a procurement lens, I am vendor agnostic. I don't care who wins."

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The procurement officer's job is to run a fair, competitive process, not to advocate for any particular vendor. The person you actually need to reach is the end user: the department director, the manager, the team that will use your product every day.

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Get to them first. Understand their pain points. Learn what they wish their current system did differently. That knowledge is worth far more than any relationship with a procurement team.

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If You Find Out About an RFP When It Drops, You've Already Lost

Vendors with low win rates on government contracts often have one thing in common: they respond cold. No prior relationship, no understanding of the agency's specific needs, no context. Just a generic proposal submitted at the deadline.

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Jared is clear on the right way to build relationships before an RFP hits, and it starts much earlier than most vendors think.

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For large IT contracts, he recommends reaching out 18 months to two years before the contract end date. For smaller professional services contracts, 12 to 18 months. And for contracts still in their option years? Send a simple email asking whether the agency plans to exercise those options or go back out to bid. It's straightforward, professional, and it gets you the information you need to plan.

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The goal of early engagement isn't to get a vendor pre-selected, that rarely happens. It's to understand what the agency actually needs so that when the RFP drops, every word of your response is tailored to that specific buyer.

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"That advantage is actually more important than anything else — understanding your customer's pain points, understanding their business, being able to tailor your bid response to the customer as opposed to your out-of-the-box pitch that you give everybody."

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Government Experience Isn't a Binary Requirement

One of the biggest misconceptions for vendors trying to figure out how to get government contracts for the first time is that past government experience is a hard requirement. It's not, at least not in Michigan and many other states.

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What evaluators actually look for is similar size and scope. If you've managed a $15 million contract with a large regional insurance company that had complex compliance requirements and a public-facing user portal, that carries real weight, even if it was never a government contract.

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"You might not have the same size and you might not have the same scope, but you may have relevant experience that would still count."

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Jared's advice: break down your commercial experience into the components that mirror what government contracts require, including contract value, number of users supported, geographic coverage, compliance requirements, and whether end users were members of the public. Make the case explicitly. Don't assume the evaluator will connect the dots.

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Start Small, Then Scale

If you're trying to obtain government contracts for the first time, going straight for a large state contract is a high bar. Jared recommends starting at the city, county, township, or school district level, where the size and scope requirements are lower and easier to match with commercial experience.

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Once you've won and performed well at that level, you have the documented experience to pursue larger opportunities. And performance matters enormously. A failed first contract, especially a visible one, can follow a vendor for years.

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"If you're bidding for the first time in Michigan, you win a contract and you fail spectacularly — you're cooked. It's going to be very difficult to win a second contract."

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The public sector has a long memory. Start where you can genuinely deliver, build a track record, and grow from there.

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Being an Incumbent Isn't a Free Pass

There's a term in Michigan's procurement world: incumbentitis. It even shows up in their official training materials.

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It describes the tendency of incumbent vendors to assume the renewal is theirs, to stop competing as hard, let pricing drift above market, and submit proposals that assume the agency already knows who they are and what they do.

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"Every bid is a blank slate. We come in blank slate, and you have to explain to us who you are and what you do, just like everybody else."

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The incumbent does have one real advantage: they know the business. They understand what's working and what isn't. But vendors who treat that knowledge as a reason to coast rather than a foundation to build on will find themselves losing contracts they thought were safe.

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Cut the Marketing Fluff

Jared is blunt on this point: proposals filled with generic marketing language don't just fail to impress, they actively hurt your credibility.

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"We see a lot of bids where companies just put in marketing fluff — not a little bit, like hundreds of pages of marketing fluff. It's not valuable to anybody."

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Every sentence in your proposal should be load-bearing, specific to that agency, that problem, that contract. If a paragraph could apply to any government buyer in the country, it's probably hurting more than it's helping. Distill your response to what's being asked, answer each question with the detail it requires, and let your understanding of the buyer's specific situation do the work.

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Cooperative Contracts Are an Underused Entry Point

Not every government purchase requires a fresh RFP. Cooperative contracting, where one agency bids a contract and others are allowed to use it, is a legitimate and widely used path into the public sector.

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If you already hold a contract with one agency, ask whether it includes piggybacking language that allows other entities to use it. If you're pursuing cooperative vehicles like Sourcewell or NASPO ValuePoint, understand what Michigan and other states look for when evaluating whether a cooperative contract qualifies: was the original bid truly competitive? Does it include clear pricing and scope? Was it bid at a comparable size and complexity?

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Jared's advice to vendors: "If you know that Michigan is open to cooperative contracts and this contract includes all of those things, here's a contract that you could potentially use instead of going out to bid." Help the agency understand the path. Don't make them figure it out alone.

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What's Not Going to Change

Five years from now, AI will almost certainly reshape how RFPs are drafted, how proposals are evaluated, and how spend is analyzed. Jared is open to those tools, and Michigan has been doing machine learning and predictive analytics for years.

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But one thing he's certain won't change is this: procurement is a customer service profession, and a human has to be in the decision-making loop.

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"I'm not spending my money. I'm spending taxpayer money. I'm buying for somebody else. And so I need to know them and I need to know their needs."

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That means relationship-building, active listening, and a genuine understanding of what the agency is trying to accomplish. No AI tool replaces that. And for vendors, it means the fundamentals of how to win government contracts remain the same: know your customer, tailor your pitch, and deliver when it counts.

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The One Thing Jared Would Tell Every Vendor

At the end of the conversation, Mike asked Jared for the single most important piece of advice for a company with zero government experience trying to break in.

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His answer was simple:

‍"Understand what you're bidding on. And if you don't understand, ask questions. Know thy customer."

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It's not a procurement insight. It's a sales insight. It's a business insight. It just happens to matter more in government than almost anywhere else.

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This post is based on Episode 3 of In Pursuit, featuring Jared Ambroser, former member of Michigan's procurement leadership team. Watch the full episode for a deeper dive into cooperative contracts, reseller models, sole sourcing, and where AI is taking government procurement over the next five years.

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