A November check-in is a structured look at where your federal position actually stands before the calendar year closes. It covers five areas. Are your registrations current, does your pipeline reflect real research, do your positioning materials show your latest work, can you respond to the next solicitation, and is this year's performance documented? Honest answers turn December into repair time and January into a running start.
A lot of federal work never shows up in a SAM keyword search, because it's planned in forecasts before it's posted, ordered under contracts that are already awarded, or posted to a closed group of contract holders. To find it, you work four .gov sources: agency procurement forecasts, orders on existing contract vehicles, GSA eBuy if you hold a schedule, and USAspending for contracts coming up for recompete.
You search SAM for subcontracting work and get a page full of prime solicitations. Most of them are too big to bid, and none of them say "subcontractors wanted." So where do primes actually post the work they hand down?
Government contract performance does not pause for the holidays unless the contract says it does. Delivery dates and periods of performance run on the contract's terms, while the government's own eleven federal holidays close offices, slow approvals, and stretch response times. This year adds a second variable: federal funding is only secured through December 11, 2026, a date that falls inside the same stretch. The contract still decides what's owed, but funding status now decides whether the office answering the phone is open at all.
A government contract is the government buying something it needs from your business. A government grant funds a public purpose the government wants carried out. For most small businesses selling a product or service, the contract side applies. Confirm which instrument a specific opportunity uses before you spend time on it, because the choice controls your registrations and your recourse after a loss.
Contractors can get involved in Four Corners flood recovery by contacting the local, state, and tribal buyers repairing flood-damaged homes, roads, bridges, and wastewater systems across northwest New Mexico, southwest Colorado, southeast Utah, and northeastern Arizona. Federal approval was still pending as of October 26, 2026, so confirm who is paying and keep your System for Award Management (SAM) registration active.
Federal contracting enters 2027 less settled than it looked mid-year. DoD suspended CMMC Phase 2 in July 2026, so third-party certification isn't becoming a November 2026 award condition after all, though the underlying cybersecurity rules stay in force. A separate NDAA requirement pushes DoD to expand how it credits commercial past performance by December 18, 2026. Meanwhile, procurement forecasts keep consolidating and firm-fixed-price contracts are now the government's stated default.
US Federal Contractor Registration (USFCR) marked 16 years in 2026. In August, the Editorial Board of Gov Business Review named us Federal Contracting Services of the Year 2026. Founded in 2010, we’re a private, third-party firm that supports businesses, nonprofits, and public agencies pursuing government opportunities, from first-time registration to sales pipeline coaching. We’re not a government agency.
Defining 2027 success means writing down, in numbers, what winning looks like for your business before the year starts: the federal revenue you are building toward, the pipeline that supports it, the capabilities you will add, and the relationships you will develop. A goal you can measure changes decisions all year, and this workshop walks through setting each one in a single working session.
