The OASIS+ Nightmare: Why Growth Just Got Exponentially Harder

The notification email felt like winning the lottery: “Congratulations! Your firm has been selected for OASIS+.” Six months later, the celebration turned to desperation. Loss after loss after loss. That’s when it became clear: OASIS+ isn’t the golden ticket…it’s the cover charge into the most competitive marketplace in federal contracting history.

OASIS+ Didn’t Save Federal Contracting—It Broke It

GSA just announced the latest OASIS+ selections: 711 prime contractors on the Unrestricted Track, and 2,823 on the Small Business Track. When an agency posts a $50M Management & Advisory opportunity, you might compete with over a thousand other contractors.

With hundreds of qualified contractors in each domain and new AI proposal tools, agencies receive 2-3 times more proposals for every task order. Since most responses are generated from similar templates and databases, they look remarkably similar. The only differentiator left is what algorithms can’t replicate: genuine customer understanding built through trusted relationships.

The New Administration Advantage Nobody’s Talking About

Add the chaos of a new administration: hundreds of new personnel in key roles, unfilled positions, and people uncertain about budgets and priorities.

While most contractors are hunkering down—hoarding cash, freezing BD investments, cutting travel budgets—smart CGOs are seizing the greatest relationship-building opportunity in years. While competitors play it safe by staying in the office, proactive organizations are reaching out to new government stakeholders, forming first impressions about who can help them versus sell them.

The magic happens with customer-focused engagement: “What’s the biggest challenge you inherited with this program?” versus “Here’s what we can do for you.” People remember who genuinely cared about their success, not who delivered flawless capability briefings.

The Intel Gap That’s Costing You Millions

With hundreds of qualified contractors competing in each OASIS+ domain, superior intelligence separates winners from losers. Here’s where most contractors operate—and how relationship depth determines your competitive position:

No Relationships (the majority)

• Working from RFP language and assumptions
• Competing on price alone

Transactional Relationships (most of the rest)

• Same surface-level answers everyone gets: “We’re happy with performance.” “Budget is tight.”
• Still competing primarily on price

Winning Relationships (the winning minority)

• High-quality intelligence from root cause analysis of actual customer challenges
• You understand the “why” behind requirements.
• Customers share budget realities, internal politics, and evaluation priorities they won’t discuss with others.
• You’ve shaped solutions before RFPs drop.

The Trust Test: Game-changing intel lives in conversations that start with “Between you and me…” Only winning relationships generate this pre-RFP intelligence.

Bottom line: The first two categories force you to make lots of assumptions and be competitive on price alone. Winning relationships let you compete on validated solution fit, which is why the minority consistently outperforms.

How “Good Relationships” are Killing your Win Rate

Most contractors believe they have “good relationships” because they engage in social chit-chat. Yet when Hi-Q assesses relationship quality scores using its proprietary methodology, a troubling pattern emerged: most overestimate their relationship quality by 33% or more. They lack relationships that can influence decision-makers, and their intel sources are limited to one or two customer contacts.

The One Metric That Predicts Your Win Rate

Leading CGOs stop tracking activity metrics like meetings held and focus on predictive metrics like customer relationship quality score, stakeholder influence, and account penetration using Customer Relationship Score (CRS) methodologies that their competitors don’t have access to.

Ask yourself: What has this customer shared about actual challenges that weren’t in the RFP? Which stakeholders would advocate for your solution in meetings where you’re not present? If your team struggles to answer specifically, your proposals will likely blend in with hundreds of other submissions flooding agency inboxes.

The Four Moves That Separate Winners from Losers

Growth requires building relationships that actually generate intelligence you can use to differentiate your solution:

1. Map Your Stakeholders: Start with Program Managers and Contracting Officers who make decisions, then work outward to those who influence them.
2. Measure What Actually Matters: Stop counting meetings. Start measuring relationship quality scores for each stakeholder and rolling those up into account-level scores.
3. Train Your Team to Listen: Train them to ask: “Where do you see the biggest gaps between current solutions and what you actually need?”
4. Break Down Intelligence Silos: Create systems where customer intelligence flows between your delivery, BD, and leadership teams instead of staying trapped in someone’s head.

Why Agencies Will Never Choose You

With hundreds of qualified contractors in your specific OASIS+ domain, why would an agency choose you? If your answer is “our proposal was fully compliant,” you’ve already lost. The companies that win consistently have better relationships, superior intelligence, and solutions that address the real problems customers face—not just what’s written in the RFP.

I’ve watched competitors spend months crafting beautiful responses to RFP requirements, hoping their win rate math eventually works out. Meanwhile, the winners I work with are building relationships and positioning solutions months before opportunities even hit the street.

Here’s the bottom line: when everyone has access and everyone looks qualified on paper, customer intelligence becomes your only sustainable competitive advantage. The question is whether you’ll have it when it matters.