Striving to be the Partner of Choice: Discussion with ICFs VP of Growth

Browsing LinkedIn a couple weeks ago, I came across a job posting shared by ICF Next, ICF’s integrated marketing agency. It caught my eye because the title associated with the open position was one I hadn’t seen before: ‘Small Business Partner Advocate’.

I loved it.

As I read through the posting, I was reminded that so many large businesses in the government contracting space ignore opportunities to proactively participate in the development of the small businesses they partner with. And, a shift from transactional teaming to a longer-term, relationship-focused model was needed.

Whether you’re running a small business or a large one, this quick, candid interview shows exactly how you should approach teaming as a government contractor and establishing yourself as the "partner of choice". 

Video Transcript:

Mike: Hey, Jen, happy Friday. So nice to see you again. How are things?

Jen: Mike K. I know it's great. Happy Friday.

Mike: We want to chat about small business, teaming and some of the commitments that ICF is doing in the market, which is really exciting, really awesome for the small business community. Before we do that, you want to sort of jump in, just introduce you and I know each other, but introduce yourself to whoever's watching.

Jen: Yeah, sure thing. I'm Jen Folsom and I lead growth for ICF next, which is the part of ICF that is marketing communications experience and digital work.

Mike: Awesome. A couple weeks ago I caught on LinkedIn, just scrolling around, I noticed that you guys posted a job for a small business partner advocate. And I reached out like, wow, that is amazing. Because so many large businesses, we work with small business, large businesses all the time, like so many large businesses have room to grow in that arena. Continuing to be sort of that like you said, small business partner advocate. I love that job title. Walk me through that. And just the commitment that ICF is sort of making with small businesses, like really exciting stuff here.

Jen: Yeah, for sure. You know, we saw that this is, you know, we we've always worked with small businesses and every agency and every public sector customer, we work with state local federal, civilian, and defense. But what we saw is a real shift in the market. And many agencies are interpreting the executive order on equity as an opportunity to increase that sort of small business set aside women own small business hubzones, you name it, right. So we knew could see that market was going in that direction. And, increasingly small businesses have their choice of who they want to partner with. They're interviewing you. It's not vice versa. And so we thought about this and you know, of course we always, you know, have this sort of legacy like prime or boast mentality. But we are shifting that to figure out that, there are a lot of other ways to get to our customer and a lot better ways to use small businesses. I spent the most of the last decade in small businesses, including running my own. And I think I come to this sort of relationship with a different perspective. I kind of understand both the value and the limitations of what a small brings to a large team and also been on the receiving end of some bad, large partner relationships. So I want to work really hard to make ICF the large business partner of choice because increasingly they have the decision making power and how they go to market.

Mike: What do you think that means? Cause I guess just giving you guys some kudos for a second, I've done my share of deals with very many, many large businesses. And it's funny many of the small businesses that I work with, they lean into ICF. ICF has always been extremely fair, extremely transparent, extremely willing to roll up their sleeves and get it done from a proposal standpoint and a capture standpoint and just very communicative through the whole process. Some of those things go a long way from a small business standpoint. And we've also worked with many large businesses that aren't transparent, put the small business in a box and they just say, Hey, go, go stay over there. And we'll reach out to you when we want. Talk to us about sort of maybe ICF sort of position on like, what does it mean to be a good large business of choice?

Jen: I think being a good partner on the large side, I mean, there's a lot of fiduciary responsibility. You know, we have a lot more scale resources past performance calls, but this country is built on small businesses and we know that right. We were all small business at one point. We try really hard to make this not transactional. This is not a one off, we're thinking about what long term strategies look like with our small business partners. For example, like we're doing an offsite with one of our small business partners. We have two active projects and three in the pipeline, but we want to look at a three year pipeline with targeted accounts and targeted capabilities, the small partner and us, and we're not gonna work together on some of these. In fact, we might end up competing against them.

That's the way this world works. But I think that if we are upfront honest, we don't go after their work share. And out years we don't try and put up all kinds of barriers about who can talk to what customer and when and really start from a position of trust that there is an enormous amount of growth for both companies that make sense. I mean, so many of the small, large, relationships just are drama filled and that's the last thing the government wants to see. Right? So, sometimes we're thinking about how do we demonstrate to the government with a teaming partner that we've been working together for 10 years with this agency. So we'll, co-author a blog post or try and get a speaking slot for our small business partners. In fact, recently we even brought some of our new small business partners that were new to this particular government agency, along with us in our capture meetings, which is just so unheard of, you just don't typically bring the smalls along with you, but we wanted to showcase that we are leading the edge with this.

We are making introductions on behalf of our customer. We want our customer who maybe has been burned by some small business partners in the past, but knows that that's a big, important part of their acquisition strategy. We want them to feel comfortable with the partners that we've chosen. So it's really thinking long term holistically. What's better for both companies in the long run and also kind of making some change of behavior on our end, frankly. A lot of the larges are like, this we're look federated, right? We're like we each had to have our own pockets and our own experiences. And if there's a bad experience from the small business perspective at one part of ICF that reflects on the whole company. I can't hear ICF has dead to me because they had one bad experience where maybe we were at fault, right? Maybe we didn't scope appropriately. Maybe we had some turnover at the PM level. Like we're all human here, but you know, really encouraging my colleagues to take this pro small business partner seriously. And this is a big part of our our marketing strategy.

Mike: Love that, love that. In the event that there are those negative experiences, how do you have those conversations with small businesses and how do you, because everybody's human to your point, how do you resolve it? How do you work through and just make sure that the next teaming opportunity or next capture pursuit is favorable for everybody, especially with the resource strapped, small business in many ways.

Jen: Absolutely. And you know, the earlier the better, and the more you can pinpoint the actual root cause the better and make do. The amazing thing about working with small partners is you're getting right to the leadership really easily. There's a phone call, there's a fewer number of people of hearts and minds to change about the experience, but you gotta really put your money where the mouth is and you can't make promises in vain. You have to, if you, if there's a delivery challenge or they didn't have the right setup, or maybe we had gave them LCATS that they weren't really prepared for, we have to be prepared to do that. The last thing we want is a cure notice. I mean, could you imagine, I mean, that, that's a horrible situation and it's even harder for the small businesses to recover from.

So, I think that we both need to do our due diligence, have trust in one another and get right to the heart of the problem. Sometimes these things are really fixable, right? For example, there's a lot of overs happening right now, right? I mean, like we just kind of don't know how things are gonna come out. That is a good position of trust relationship. Hey, if this goes small, we'll back you, if it goes full and open, this is the workshare. Cool, cool. So we're really going about this, you know, arms wide open on the large business side, that's two whole separate processes, subcontracts and contracts. And then like the small business there, like the, CFO who's probably writing all the contracts and the NDAs and a CEO is making this happen. So we try and think about what that partner experience looks like on our side too. How long do they have to wait? Can we reuse boiler plate? How do we make our sort of large business, publicly traded company, risk, abatement policies, more palatable to someone who needs to turn a deal faster? So, is it payment terms? Is it staffing? Do they need access to resources that we have? Do they need some help with like orals coaching? Those are resources that many of these companies won't have. Really thinking broadly about what's long term success for both of us.

Mike: I love that. I love what you just said, sort of the partner experience and it, it's not just the teaming and the capture, but it's the finance terms. And it's all of those things of just, how do we make our contracts as palatable as possible for a there's probably the CEO of the small business is the same person running the company, reviewing the contracts, doing the whole thing...

Jen: Taking out the trash. I mean, I've been that person and it's, it's a lot of roles for one person to play. So we know that, they're often, trying to get NDAs done at, you know, 8:00 PM after they've had dinner and put the kids to bed and back to their day job, the next day, billing eight or nine hours on delivery. These are really hard positions to be in. So trying to think about the general partner experience, and if it's not working in one area, then let's try and fix it. Is there another place that you make sense to work with us at ICF? A different kind of role, a different kind of project. I mean, there, there are just lots and lots of opportunities there. I just think we have to be kind of eyes wide open about what our own responsibility is in the partner experience.

Mike: Absolutely. Last question of the day, you mentioned a lot about trust, so maybe, maybe trust is one of those top three attributes from a successful partnering standpoint. What, what are the other, maybe two or three that immediately come to mind of? If a large business in a small business are gonna do really good work together and chase some of these contracts, what are those two or three things that are, are critical?

Jen: Transparency, 100%. Whether it's like opening the kimono a little bit, you know, we all have to be very sensitive about pricing. That's a hundred percent, you know, sure. Right. That's our business. That is our IP, but transparency like this is, Hey, you know what? I'm not gonna be cagey about this. I think you talked to us about this deal, but we think it's a better shot if we go with this other company. But our feelings are not hurt. We're all frenemies here within the beltway. Like, let's find another opportunity to work on right away, or let's bring you in, or I can do some horse trading on work, share to get you on to an agency. I know you've been targeting for a while, so transparency. It's okay to say, you're not going to team with them on something, or maybe you're going against them.

Just be really clear and upfront about it. Right. And third, I think, you have to keep your word. I mean, there are so many large businesses that leave their small businesses at the altar I've been on that end. And there are companies I don't wanna work with anymore. Don't leave me high and dry. Don't say you're gonna do something and not do it. So you really have to keep your word. And that does that circular sort of a trust relationship that comes back to it. If I could add one more it's you have to take the long view. And that's really hard for smalls. Smalls are trying to make payroll payment terms, get that rent paid, waiting on this, you know, 13th protest of the major vehicle they wanted to get resolved. They're really focused on making those short term numbers, but it's so important to build that two, three and four year pipeline. And I think that the small companies really benefit from the largest ability to have that longer term pipeline. And, you might give up a FTE here or there, but who do you wanna be working with in three years when that comes out again? Like that's what you really need to think about.

Mike Love that. So trust, transparency, keeping your word and playing the long game four great components here. Hey, appreciate the time. This has been amazing. I'll just say it again, ICF has been a huge advocate and asset and very highly regarded partner of choice of large businesses for many of our small business groups that we've worked with. So ICF is definitely leading the way in my book. So this is great that we have this conversation and you guys are, you guys are continuing to treat small businesses awesome. And focusing on that partner experience, like you said, so thank you. Thank you. Thank you. I know everybody's got room to grow, but ICF is definitely doing its doing its thing to lead the charge here.

Jen: I appreciate the kind words and you know, it's effective. It's really this taking this partner experience approach is a big factor in our own growth strategy.

Mike: Awesome. Thanks so much for the time, Jen.

Jen: Thanks Mike.