Any capture management process requires nearly constant oversight. While the rewards are worth the investment, it can still be easy to feel overwhelmed and wonder about the effectiveness of your capture management. Generating leads is expensive enough that it can be tough to justify the cost of a good capture management process when you are first exploring the options. When you are not an active part of the capture management process, however, you may feel like things aren’t moving or that you’re not hitting that important Government sales mantra: “always be shaping.”
The reality is that you might be dooming your company’s capture management process – but you don’t have to. Fix these three areas and see your capture management move from murky waters to smooth sailing.1. Overcome the Lack of Visibility Between Departments
Information silos can keep the pieces you need for a good capture management process separate. To make progress towards corporate goals, you need to break down the division between sales and marketing or logistics and gain greater insight into the overall pipeline. You need to see how work moves through your company and the different business sectors or products going out to customers. By tracking activity in the right areas, you can set goals that are realistic and profitable.
The budget is always one of the big stress points. Your internal budget shows:
- How much you can afford to charge for a product or service
- Gives you an idea of how much you can afford to invest in capture management
You need to break down every expense line by area so you have an in-depth look at costs and potential profit margins.
2. Muddy Revenue Streams
When you can’t see the money coming in, you can’t track progress. Different business units manage different amounts in terms of ROI. To measure progress, you not only need to look at the gross revenue but also the cost to acquire that revenue. You need to measure your financial activity against all of your investments. That will give you a clear picture of financial stability and how much you need to develop through your capture management process.
New accounting standards make revenue recognition a priority, and so should you. You can break down business unit goals, showing which areas are hitting target milestones. The more you measure your existing processes, the more confident you will be about strategic planning for future endeavors.
3. Failure to Track Growth, Both Macro and Micro
After you have a map of your existing workflow and a clear look at existing revenue streams, you need to look deeper into specific business units. How are units performing, and are they improving? Managing quotas starts by comparing growth to targets. When individual business units fail to meet performance goals, they may need a closer look. You’ll want to compare the activity of each unit to the personnel.
This allows you to identify rock star employees and find areas where team members could use another round of training. Don’t just compare progress to projections. Sometimes, realistic numbers get buried under a rosy glow. You need to look at actuals on a consistent basis to ensure your projections are accurate.
Final Thought
If you can streamline these processes and reports, and clarify how you do business, your capture management process can transform from a pitfall to a bridge to more revenue. You will need to invest time, money and other resources into capture management, but with the right tracking already in place, the ROI on every deal is clear, from lead capture to lifetime customer value.
