If you’re an executive in the Government market right now, I’m sure you feel the pressure mounting. That sense of uncertainty isn’t just stress. It’s a warning sign that requires attention!

We’re facing a perfect storm that’s reshaping everything. This includes

• Contract consolidations.
• Scrutiny from the Department of Government Efficiency
• Budget uncertainty and continuing resolutions
• Economic recession warnings
• Heightened competition as firms vie for every available dollar
• Customer upheaval from personnel changes to the elimination of entire agencies and departments.

This isn’t just a market correction. It’s a fundamental reshaping of the competitive landscape and a huge challenge for Chief Growth Officers and Corporate Leaders. The hard truth? Many organizations won’t survive this transition, and those that do will likely emerge looking significantly different.

Your ability to adapt and anticipate disruption will determine whether your organization thrives or becomes another casualty. Below are five areas where forward-thinking organizations have already pivoted to anticipate market changes – have you?

1. More Than One Contact Is Not Optional

Your primary client contact announces their retirement, and you realize your team hasn’t executed the account penetration strategy, leaving you with no intel source on a “must-win” opportunity.

Remember when one good contact was enough? Those days are long gone.

If your team’s customer relationships hinge on a single individual, you’re one resignation away from losing everything.

Ask Yourself:

• Are we well-positioned with other stakeholders to avoid a setback if our top contact were to leave tomorrow?
• Have you built connections with all stakeholders? Users, technical evaluators, contracting officers, and program managers?
• Can your team rebuild relationships quickly if your key contacts change?

Forward-thinking companies develop account maps and establish strong customer stakeholder networks, ensuring resilience even when key individuals leave. The risk of a single point of failure in a customer is more risk than they are willing to accept.

2. Intelligence Is Your Most Valuable Commodity

During a project meeting, your customer openly shares their frustrations about critical mission gaps. Your PM nods politely and then changes the subject to the first item on their agenda. This is a costly mistake.

As recessionary fear surfaces, BD and Marketing are easy places to cut overhead. This leaves your growth plan and pipeline at the mercy of team members whose primary responsibility is not growth.

Winning happens one engagement at a time. Every engagement is an opportunity to gather intel, and your delivery/ops teams will have hundreds, if not thousands, of meetings annually with the customer.

Therefore, every interaction your team has with clients holds critical intelligence—but only if they know how to recognize it. Most contractors ignore this gold mine, allowing vital intelligence to slip away.

Ask Yourself:

• Is your delivery team trained to spot and develop opportunities while doing their day jobs?
• Is your entire team trained to understand and capture customer intelligence?
• Does everyone understand that gathering and sharing customer intelligence is everyone’s responsibility?
• How many opportunities (new and on-contract growth) are left on the table because no one’s paying attention?

Forward-thinking organizations are training their technical and delivery teams to proactively gather and share valuable customer insights. They know how to integrate intelligence gathering into everyday responsibilities.

I recently watched a mid-tier contractor lose a “must-win” recompete because their technical experts felt that growth was somebody else’s responsibility. Their competitors won by leveraging “Double Threats”- technical experts with the technical and interpersonal skills to quickly build trust with various customer stakeholders.

3. Early Engagement Is Key to Winning

While you wait for an RFP to drop, your competitors are hard at work understanding the customer needs, submitting white papers, and shaping the solicitation to their strengths.

When most RFPs drop, the winners and losers have already been decided. That’s not cynicism—it’s reality.

Not engaging early in a turbulent environment often means you’ve already lost.

Ask yourself:

• Are you starting early enough to shape requirements or just respond to them?
• When was the last time you helped a customer solve a problem before they knew they had one?

Forward-thinking organizations engage customers early, proactively understanding challenges and influencing priorities, and solidify themselves as trusted partners long before an RFP is released.

I recently saw a small business beat a significant competitor who outspent them massively on trying to win the opportunity. The competitor did not know the small business had been working with the customer on a solution for 18 months before the RFP dropped.

4. Intelligence is the Differentiator. Is yours Real or Assumptions?

The last proposal you lost likely wasn’t because of your price or capabilities. Your competitor prioritized relationships and intel gathering, making their proposal focused on real customer intelligence, while yours was filled with assumptions. In the losing debrief, the customer’s words stung, “It was like you didn’t know us and our needs!”

Everyone claims to have “customer intimacy.” Most are kidding themselves.

Your team’s lack of customer intelligence isn’t just a disadvantage; it’s the reason you’re losing. Contractors pour millions into proposals but overlook the need for early and accurate intelligence.

Ask yourself:

• When was the last time your team successfully shaped an RFP?
• Are you submitting generic proposals filled with fluff instead of addressing unstated needs?
• Does your team uncover intelligence your competitors don’t have, or are you competing blind?

I’ve seen companies spend millions on proposals that missed the mark because they relied on assumptions rather than actual customer intelligence. Winning companies knew what the customers wanted and didn’t need to make assumptions about what they thought they wanted.

5. Is Your Team Equipped to Win Recompetes?

A “guaranteed” recompete is unexpectedly lost to a competitor who offers a more compelling solution. With fewer new opportunities, winning your recompetes is no longer optional. It’s a matter of survival.

Your competitors are inside the agencies today, influencing how your recompetes will look tomorrow.

Ask Yourself:

• If your BD staff is reduced, does your remaining team possess the skills to secure recompetes?
• Do you know what your customers think of your performance?
• Are you continuously improving your approach to address evolving customer needs?
• Are you prepared for hungry competitors to bid at or below cost to win your work?

Forward-thinking organizations ensure their teams understand customer priorities, regularly introduce innovations, and proactively demonstrate ongoing value.

A complacent incumbent is a vulnerable incumbent.

Your People Are Your Greatest Asset

In 2025, the line between thriving and merely surviving isn’t drawn by price or technical ability. Your fancy strategies, processes, and technologies won’t save you. It will come down to your people’s ability and desire to engage as part of the growth team.

Your competitors are already reshaping their organizations to meet today’s challenges. They view every employee as a “growth contributor” able to develop relationships, gather intel, and shape opportunities before your competitors even know they exist.

Take these steps now, not next quarter:

1. Assess which team members can contribute to growth and which can’t.
2. Train your team, especially technical staff, in intelligence gathering and relationship development.
3. Reward behaviors that strengthen customer relationships and intelligence gathering.
4. Conduct stakeholder mapping and execute campaigns to improve relationship quality with all the stakeholders.
5. Get your people in front of customers early and often

The winners in this new landscape won’t be the biggest or the most established. They’ll be companies that transformed their entire workforce into a growth engine before their competitors realized it was necessary.

Have you transformed your team to be capable of thriving amid relentless disruption, or are you clinging to an outdated playbook that’s already obsolete?

Companies taking decisive steps will emerge stronger when the storm passes. The rest may not survive.

The market has changed. Your competitors have already transformed. The only question remaining:

Are you preparing to win, or are you ready to be forgotten?