Rate Your Readiness To Be a Contractor

This "quiz" is not meant to be a serious scientific assessment. Its main purpose is to get you thinking about the government market, what areas you may need to work on, and what will be expected of you and your company. So, with that in mind, here are the categories for scoring:

Criteria	Score
Size of Business
If you have one to 500 employees and are committed to winning a government contract and willing to do your homework, give yourself +10.
If you get impatient quickly or plan on making only a half-hearted attempt to win a contract, give yourself -10.
Financial Capability
If you are financially capable of performing a contract and are going after the government market in order to increase or stabilize sales, give yourself +10.
If you are going after a contract just to stay in business, give yourself -20.
Quality Assurance Program
If you have a general QA manual, give yourself +5.
If your manual complies with a commercial quality or government standard, give yourself +10.
If your quality assurance program complies with the international standard (referred to as an ISO standard) for your industry, give yourself +25.
If you have no formal, documented quality assurance program, give yourself -10.
Office Efficiency
If you keep good records and have an efficient way of finding information, give yourself +10.
If it takes you a while to put your hands on a piece of needed information and you run your office on the "I know it's here somewhere" principle, give yourself -10.
EDI and E-Commerce
If you have the necessary equipment for doing business using e-commerce, give yourself +25.
If you don't have a computer and modem, count yourself temporarily out of the game. Start shopping now. Lose all points!
Internet
If you know how to do all the tasks we just talked about, give yourself +10.
If you can only play games, give yourself -10. If you lose to your kids, subtract another -5 points. If you know enough to go to your teenager and get some help, give yourself 5 points.
Bonus Points
Do you know how to get "specs & stds"? If you think that getting "specs & stds" means getting something out of your eye, give yourself -10. If you know that a spec is a specification or standard for a specific product or service, give yourself +10.
Do you believe that all you have to do is send in a bid and no matter what price you quote, it will be approved (like that $300 hammer you heard about 25 years ago)? If you do, give yourself -25. If you believe that your price needs to be competitive, give yourself +25.

OK, now for the rating.

If you scored 0 to 50, you might want to either rethink your idea for getting a government contract or work on acquiring the necessary resources and skills.

If you scored 51 to 75, you are heading in the right direction and probably just need a little assistance.

If you scored 76 to 100, you are ripe and ready to go after a government contract.

If you scored 100+, you have everything you need to start winning contracts. (If your score fell into this range, please contact us. We might have some money to invest!)