<p style="text-align: left;">Before you can legally sell business to the Government, you need to register with a few organizations. To kick this process off, you need to obtain a Data Universal Number System (DUNS). It’s essentially a generic id number to identify your company.</p>

<h4>Prerequisites</h4>
<code>[list style="list3" color="red"]</code>
<ul>
	<li>Legal Company Name</li>
	<li>Company Address</li>
</ul>
[/list]

[info]
You can read about it further here: <a title="http://www.dnb.com" href="http://www.dnb.com" target="_blank">http://www.dnb.com/</a>
The actual application is here: <a title="https://iupdate.dnb.com/iUpdate/companylookup.htm" href="https://iupdate.dnb.com/iUpdate/companylookup.htm" target="_blank">https://iupdate.dnb.com/iUpdate/companylookup.htm</a>
[/info]

This takes time. In our experience, this could be a few days to two weeks. D&amp;B claims within 30 days, but realistically, unless you have Company name trademark issues, turnaround will be sooner. We haven’t paid to expedite this, but if you’re in a crunch, that option is available.

See below for the steps involved in the registration.

<h4>Step 1:</h4> Search for a business name. This is to verify your business entity. Since you are starting a new business, with a fresh name, this search should be fruitless.
<center>[image icon="zoom" lightbox="true" title="D&amp;B Registration Step 1" width="800px" height="600px"]http://governmentstartup.com/site/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/DB.Step_.1.png[/image]</center>

<h4>Step 2:</h4> At the very bottom, click on the “Get a D-U-N-S number” link.
<center>[image icon="zoom" lightbox="true" title="D&amp;B Registration Step 2"]http://governmentstartup.com/site/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/DB.Step_.2.png[/image]</center>

<h4>Step 3:</h4> Fill out this form with <strong>your</strong> personal information.  This is <i>not</i> the form for your company yet.
<center>[image icon="zoom" lightbox="true" title="D&amp;B Registration Step 3"]http://governmentstartup.com/site/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/DB.Step_.3.png[/image]</center>