Skip Blackburn, Founder and CEO of BIT Solutions, has a knack for always seeing the bigger picture, built from all the pieces of experience he picked up over a lifetime of Government Solution sales. The steadfast leader wakes up every day with the burning question in his mind of “what could make this world better? What could make it easier for people?” He is supported every day by his Co-Founder, Drew Blackburn, CTO who has a vision for the technology solutions, always asking “What if…” Together they started BIT Solutions with laser focus on what the duo wanted to accomplish from the company and offer the customers. “I spent many years manually constructing Capture Management sales reports and presentations for Gate Reviews and meetings, which kept me from valuable time in front of the customer.” says Skip.“As an Executive, I managed sales teams that would have done the same. I knew there was a better way, and set out with the goal to create software that automated these types of manual processes.”
Most government sales business today requires a structured process to be followed. Unlike the commercial side, the government has a significant amount of public reporting and transparency, as well as multiple rules forbidding favoritism. Not paying attention to these rules results in many vendors losing bids without even being considered, a common rookie mistake.
Government Account Management, Capture Management, and Proposal Development are rich with color-based processes. From small businesses to large Top 100 federal prime contractors, the processes remain relatively similar. This is attributable to the fact that they’re adaptable and valuable tools for planning and organizing an overall win strategy.
As your company starts looking for new opportunities, you’ll realize how much information you need to make smart business decisions about which opportunities to pursue. The federal government awards thousands of contracts worth billions of dollars each year.
Narrowing down the list to something manageable requires a lot of information. Thankfully, virtually every bit of information surrounding government contracts is publicly available.
As we continue to mention how securing a face-to-face meeting with the Government can help to improve your Capture Management process, figuring out how to do so can be challenging. Often times there are hurdles you must tackle to get to the right individuals. Small business advocates can certainly be helpful, but you’re not the only business they’re working with. Because of that, the responsibility is encumbered upon you to continue to push to make those connections. In doing so, be aware and prepared for some of hurdles and subsequent strategies that can help you find success.
As an experienced capture management process consultant, working with numerous clients provides a platform in which you begin to identify areas of improvement that are shared from client to client. Although the companies may differ in size, be in varying states of maturity, and are focused on differing lines of business, there are five key mistakes that are consistently identified through the consulting process.
Employed during the capture management phase, Black Hat review processes may vary in implementation between companies and people, but the overall goal remains the same: to find the top competition for a government contract and analyze the strengths and weaknesses of those businesses, so you better understand how they will bid against you.
Recently I have seen many different people make comments about how software technology is not very helpful within the worlds of capture management and procurement. And while that may help to explain why so many contractors still rely on Excel spreadsheets and emails for NDA’s, TA’s and SubK’s, avoiding government-focused technological solutions is only committing a disservice to yourself.
In the coming years, there will be lots of opportunities for businesses that depend on government contracts. But how do you find the ones you can successfully capture?
