Some markets have a door. Most of them do not.
Every tool in this category tells you how big a market is. None of them tell you whether you can get into it. Those are different questions, and for a supplier without federal past performance the second one is the only one that matters.
openness 61 of 99: a door exists here
This is a real problem and the government says so
Federal policy on the contracting marketplace states that small business participation in the supplier base has declined for a decade, and that roughly three quarters of the companies registered in SAM do not win anything in a given year. Those companies are not all unqualified. A great many of them are knocking, patiently and for years, on doors that have not opened for anybody.
Permeability, not size
For every NAICS code at every buying office with enough history to mean anything, four things: how often a supplier wins there for the very first time, how large that first win typically is, which door it came through, and whether a first win ever leads to a second.
A market can be enormous and completely shut. Another can be small and genuinely open. The money says nothing at all about which, which is why nobody who ranks markets by spending ever finds the second one.
- How many suppliers won there for the first time in the last three years
- The typical size of a first win, which is almost never the typical award
- Whether first wins come through a set-aside, a competition, or a buy too small to bother with
- How many first-time winners ever won again, and how long it took
It only works if one company is one company
The federal record spells the same firm five ways. LOCKHEED MARTIN CORP, LOCKHEED MARTIN CORPORATION, Lockheed Martin Corp. and so on, often within the same office in the same year.
Count raw names and a market held for a decade by a single incumbent reports as several new entrants a year and scores wide open. That is not a useless answer, it is a harmful one: it sends a supplier to spend a year on the most closed market on the list.
Every number here runs on resolved identity instead, matched by UEI, then by CAGE, then by a normalized name. The identity work is what makes this measurable at all, which is why nobody else publishes it.
- Matched on UEI first, then CAGE, then a normalized name
- A supplier is one supplier however the record spells it
- A market held by one incumbent never reports entrants
- Nothing is estimated or inferred
UEI, CAGE, then normalized name
The door that leads nowhere
Counting first-time winners on its own is not enough, and this is the part that matters most.
Some offices hand out a steady trickle of small awards to new suppliers who are never seen again. By entrant count that market looks as open as any other. It is not the same thing at all: it is a market that gives you one consolation award and no relationship.
So every market also carries how many of its first-time winners went on to win a second time, how long that took, and how much larger it was. A market where two thirds of newcomers never return is marked down, and says so in words. A market where a first win typically leads to a second award three times the size fourteen months later is a ladder, and that is worth a year of your attention.
A list ranked for your company, not for everybody
A target is one code at one buying office. The list ranks targets by how open each one is and by how well it fits the company that is looking, never by how much money is there.
The fit comes from what your account already holds: the codes you watch, the state you work in, the set-aside certifications you hold and the size of your largest award. Each target says in a few words why it sits where it does, and the openness score is drawn as the terms that made it, the ones that added to it and the ones that took away.
Filter by code, buying office, agency, how open a market is, the size of a first win, and whether a first win there ever leads to a second.
- Ranked by openness and by fit, with the reasons on each row
- The openness score shown as the parts it is made of
- Filter by the size of a first win, so the door is one you can walk through
- Filter out markets where newcomers never return
- Save the list as a view
closer = ends sooner, bigger = larger last award
Each target opens as a plan that ends in what to do next
Open a target and you get a plan for that code at that office, put together from the record and read against your own account.
It opens with Do this next: a short list of steps, cheapest and soonest first. The steps are worked out by rule. Each one is listed only when a figure on the page supports it, and each carries that figure. No model writes them.
Under the steps are the sections they rest on: the door the last newcomers used, how this office buys, what is locked by a sole-source award, the vehicles you would have to be on first, who to go in with, who to talk to, and what is open or coming.
Track a target and its code and its office go on your watchlist, and the notice or contract to chase there goes on your pipeline with the first step as its next action. A plan downloads as an Excel workbook or a CSV file and prints.
- Up to seven next steps, each with the figure that justifies it
- The door: how first-time winners got in, and whether you may use it
- Who to talk to, named on the office's own notices
- What is open now, what recompetes and what is forecast
- A second tab: the paths a code travels
a score with no reasons is a horoscope
What a low score does not mean
A shut market is not a market you can never enter. It is a market where the entry route is not a bid: it is a subcontract, a teaming agreement, or a vehicle you have to get onto first. The score tells you which game you are playing before you spend a year playing the wrong one. Markets with too little history to judge are left out rather than guessed at. While earlier fiscal years of awards are still being added, the openness figure is marked provisional on the list and on the plan, because a supplier counted as new may have won before the years on file.
Where it is in the app
Customer intelligence, under Capture in the menu. Capture is the part of LastAwarded that decides what to pursue and wins it, one of the eight parts.
Related
- The paths a code travelsThe second tab of this screen: direct, through a prime, or through a vehicle.
- Subawards and teamingThe other way in, when the front door is shut.
- What it goes forWhat the work costs once you are in.
- Pipeline and calendarWhere a tracked target goes.
See who was last awarded in your NAICS
Every code, every buying office, every vendor and every recompete, organized from the federal record and read nightly. Open it with a plan.