Lee Iacocca knows them. So do Larry Ellison, Rupert Murdoch and Jack Welch. Anyone who stays with a profession long enough discovers some tricks of the trade. Sometimes, they come like an epiphany, and sometimes at the end of a long learning curve. But one word — experience — sums up the secrets of their success.

In the government contracting arena, small businesses have amassed a wealth of such secrets. This article offers advice from Guy Timberlake, co-founder and chief visionary officer of the American Small Business Coalition, a for-profit membership organization supporting small firms. Timberlake asked coalition members to suggest secrets of successful federal contracting by small businesses. An informal and unscientific poll yields additional information from some executives of small tech companies.

Sweat every detail

The old guard of systems integrators, the "Beltway Bandits" of the 1980s, often won government contracts by bidding on customers' broad needs. Small contractors succeed in the government sector now by focusing on one set of skills. That means working on a specific need, whether it's a classified installation for the Navy's Atlantic fleet or updating software for a Coast Guard base in Maine. You're not selling 1,000 desktop PCs to the Pentagon, you're solving a specific problem for a particular agency.

"We sweat a lot of small stuff," said Jeff White, president of Blue Canopy Group. "We live and die by our reputation and our brand, and we sweat every detail."

He said the old business mantra of "sell the benefits, don't sell the features" is as outdated as the mainframe. "So we ask our clients, 'How do you do what you do today? How do you accomplish X today?'"

Don't take anything for granted, he said, because the federal marketplace is too diverse. By asking precise questions, "the idea is to know the symptom before prescribing a cure," White said.

Dig a deep networking well

You can't walk up to a government information technology buyer and expect to differentiate your company from the hundreds of competitors because few unique characteristics distinguish one vendor from another. Instead, develop close relationships. Don't go to networking events to just collect business cards.