According to the Defense Department’s standards of conduct office, a professional trainer offering a contract geared to those interested in selling to the government “advocates practices that should not work at ethically sound offices.” It said that suggestions taught include:
Show up at federal agencies without an appointment and ask security guards to get you to the right person.
Become best friends with the federal employees you want to use your products (know their favorite sports team, ask them about their dentist appointment, know who their family members are).
Show up at an agency in the afternoon with popcorn just to say “hello;” to develop your new friendships.
If you want to sell to the armed services, hire former soldiers who served in Iraq.
Don’t bother bidding on requests for proposals if you first hear about them after they become public (the instructor says if a government employee didn’t call the night before to tip off that the request was going to be posted, then it’s too late to win the contract, the agency already has a vendor in mind).
Said the DoD ethics office, “For these suggestions to have merit, government employees have to be ignoring the fourteen basic obligations set out in Executive Order 12674, the Code of Federal Regulations, and DoD’s Joint Ethics Regulation. Don’t be an office that plays this instructor’s ‘game.'”
