I'll try to be brief.
Put it this way, it's really in the DNA of anybody who runs a business that the thing you're always trying to do is to please your customers. The reason you're trying to do that is that you want them to be repeat customers. It's a mantra that “no customer is easier than a repeat customer”.
In the federal government procurement system, though, all of that investment is effectively wasted because no matter how well you do this time, you have to go back out to the street and start in again with a clean slate and you can't depend on having a happy customer.
We need a vendor performance management system not just to weed out bad vendors, which isn't talked about a fair bit, but really to provide a means of encouraging better vendor performance and rewarding that by doing exactly what you do every time you buy everything from a cup of coffee to a car. You go back to the people who provided you with good service. Why would the government not want to do the same thing for its small businesses and small suppliers, or any suppliers? Do business with the people who do a good job for you.
It frankly stuns our members when we tell them this, that there is actually no point in their trying to make the government happy because it doesn't matter. This just does not make sense to people in business.