Navigating change: a view from the front row
Gettyimages.com / Surasak Suwanmake
Carahsoft's founder and president Craig Abod shares insights on the ongoing shifts in the federal market and how they are reshaping the contractor landscape.
At GovExec's FedPulse 2025 event on Friday, GovExec CEO Tim Hartman and Carahsoft's founder and president Craig Abod explore how sales and marketing strategies will need to adapt over the next six months to keep pace with a dynamic federal environment. Carahsoft is ranked No. 25 on the 2025 Washington Technology Top 100.
Below is transcript of that conversation, edited for length and clarity.
TIM HARTMAN: Where are you seeing this administration saying “We want to invest?"
CRAIG ABOD: If you look at the last five, six administrations, they all come in with their own 100-day plan, President’s Management Agenda. When you put them all side by side, a lot of the themes are reasonably consistent. Cyber continues to be important.
FedRAMP, CMMC, cyber and the reusability of cyber solutions is really critical to the whole AI conversation. We're also seeing some emphasis around drone technology, military technology and law enforcement tech. So some new themes on to the mainstays of cloud, cyber and AI.
HARTMAN: Is there anything you're seeing in terms of the underlying changes to those trends?
ABOD: CMMC is getting reinvigorated, Katie Arrington is not going to let that go away. This whole supply chain, cybersecurity and supply chain risk management is gaining a significant amount of credibility and importance in what those conversations are.
HARTMAN: You have hundreds, if not thousands of customers, and across lots of different categories. What advice are you giving them in this moment?
ABOD: We look at the world as having three sets of customers. The vendors that we take care of, the network of resellers and integrators and small partners that are in front of customers, implementation partners, services partners. And then the government customers.
When we first got some of the requests for information from the folks in government, they came out with a bunch of software inventory requests. On the first day it was six or seven, very logical fields, Give me some data on what's installed in our agency. Then the next day, they added four or five other fields. Three or four days later, we get another spreadsheet with these blue fields in the far end of the spreadsheet (asking) what they use this for, why is it important to the mission, what would happen if they didn't use this product.
We looked at that and said we're going to have to resell every single deal and make sure our customers know not just what they're buying, but ask the hard questions of why they bought it, what is it, what it does and why it is important.
Then the second day, we woke up and went ‘This is what we all do, this is the business we're in.’ We've been trying to work with our vendor partners to pull this information properly and to make sure we're presenting it in a consistent manner to our customers. And we are working with the reseller and integrator ecosystem to help them get the right information and the right sales plays in so we can tell the right story to our customer.
HARTMAN: How responsive are they to that?
ABOD: One of our vendors pulled together their 40 best customers and the use cases at all 40. They ended up with a really powerful understanding of why the government has implemented hundreds of millions of dollars of their technology. It helped them formulate how they go in and tell that story to the folks that want to centralize a lot of the buying, which is an important emotion and desire all the way down to their end users.
You need to be able to tell the story to your boss and make sure your boss knows why this is important and how you're operating in an efficient, effective manner. Once you get your head into the process, it ends up being a good thing.
HARTMAN: When we talk about going on offense, how are companies doing that? What are you seeing in terms of where people are investing their marketing dollars?
ABOD: Over-investing in the downturns is an interesting and useful mindset to get into. When there was a state and local downturn, we very consciously tripled down on what we were doing in state and local. A bunch of our vendors pulled out because state and local budgets were turmoil. We looked and saw that instead of spending $60 billion and growing to $62 billion, they're going to spend $60 billion and grow to $61 billion.
Then you have this other odd phenomenon of when the market is really robust, and everybody wants to get into this government market. It becomes really hard because everybody's in this government market, and people who have no idea what they're doing, think they can come in and sell to the government. But when things tighten a little bit, a lot of people and a lot of California guys are going to pull out and say this market's too hard.
I tell the vendors we represent and the resellers we support that we picked this business and it’s too late for all of us to change businesses. We're not all going to go switch and be dentists. This hard part of the market that we're in ends up being a big opportunity, because the government will weed out the wheat from the chaff. People are now back in the office, and I can call their office number, and they answer their phone.
I think it's a good opportunity to get down to the agency, get in front of them and aggressively market to our customers. They need to hear our story. They need to hear our value. Emerging tech is really important and they’ve got to hear what's available and find ways to put it into their into their mission sets.