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What’s the best, most effective way to conduct your overall opportunity assessment process, to include capture planning?

What’s the best, most effective way to conduct your overall opportunity assessment process, to include capture planning?

By | consulting, government contracts | No Comments

What’s the best, most effective way to conduct your overall opportunity assessment process, to include capture planning?

At BIT Solutions Consulting, we advise our clients as follows:

At the very top level, there needs to be a strategic plan that’s ongoing and cyclical in nature. It should incorporate market analyses, budgets, marketing and technology plans, at a minimum. It’s a continuous exercise that ultimately dovetails with your business development team so they can start going after opportunities that make sense for your company.

Approximately 18-24 months before an opportunity drops, the first major phase of your opportunity process begins: Opportunity Identification. Here, market research and customer meetings take center stage and are critical to helping determine the viability of the opportunity; these activities will help you spot problems and issues that the customer needs help with and will be looking to be addressed in a proposal.

Your strategic plan should inform the opportunity identification process and establish those parameters by which you’ll sift through and narrow down viable opportunities to pursue. That said, it’s wise to go wider with your funnel and involve your capture managers to help do the sorting–this way, you don’t miss anything that could be viable, and you get those managers an early look at the potential opportunities that are on the horizon.

Once you’ve gathered all the opportunities, you conduct a Gate One review, which can be used at the lowest level to decide whether this opportunity is something you want to dig deeper into. As you narrow this list down, the process moves into the next phase, Opportunity Assessment.

Opportunity Assessment, occurring 12-18 months out from release, entails steps like attending industry days, gathering customer requirements and needs, and verifying alignment with your strategic plan and priorities. Your goal here is to eliminate anything that does not fit with your plan, since eventually, you’ll be putting real money, time, and other resources into actively pursuing the opportunity.

One tip for qualifying opportunities in this stage is to consult with previous RFPs in that space, do a statement of work analysis, and use the results of this analysis to assess your chances from a past performance and other award criteria perspective. You can also start assessing the incumbent competition and conducting more meetings with the customer to widen your perspective of their requirements, identify pain points, and other history relevant to the opportunity. Try to ascertain things like incumbent overall performance, employee turnover rate, position staffing timelines/delays, and whether the incumbent is liked or disliked.

In the Assessment phase, you’ll also begin formulating a solution and creating a price-to-win strategy to go along with that solution. This should include identifying a value proposition, and crafting a teaming and staffing strategy. Determine whether priming or subbing the opportunity makes more sense, given all of the known factors.

At the end of Assessment, hold a Gate Two review, where you’ll review the pursuit plan package and ask yourself whether you were able to gather enough information that indicates alignment with your strategy. This review acts as a “go/no-go” decision meeting, and should result in about 2/3rds of opportunities falling out of the pipeline. For those that make it through, you’ll assign a capture manager and identify a budget for the opportunity.

Finally, you enter the third phase: Capture Management, which typically occurs throughout the 3-12 months before the opportunity is released. Your capture manager should be doing things like executing a call plan, conducting an OCI analysis, refining the baseline solution, and updating the price-to-win as more information becomes apparent, among other activities.

You’ll finish up this third phase with a Gate Three review that includes verification that nothing new emerged in the draft RFP, for example, that suddenly disqualifies the opportunity. You’ll update your capture plan, develop an initial proposal plan, and assign a proposal manager to the pursuit.

We’d love to hear your feedback on how you go about navigating these processes, and are always available for a consultation call so you can see if we’re a good fit to assist you. Click this link to schedule a call today!

Attention all capture/proposal/project managers and writers/editors – BIT Solutions Consulting is looking for talent to add to our bench for freelance opportunities!

By | capture management consultant, consulting, News | No Comments

BIT Solutions Consulting is looking for talent

Attention all capture/proposal/project managers and writers/editors – BIT Solutions Consulting is looking for talent to add to our bench for freelance opportunities!

If you’re experienced at leading or assisting with government contracting capture efforts; have expertise in proposal development, writing, editing, or graphic design; or if you’ve done project management in the government contracting space, we’d love to talk with you.

BIT Solutions has numerous existing and upcoming opportunities with government contracting firms, for companies large and small, that we can match you up with, so don’t hesitate to contact us. We’re in one of the busiest times of the year with RFPs dropping daily, so there’s no shortage of work.

Click the link below to get in touch with us!

https://go.oncehub.com/LeeMixon

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Why Black Hat Review Processes Work

By | black hat, capture management, capture management process, consulting | No Comments

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.

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Can a CRM Improve My Capture Management?

By | capture management, consulting, process management, Software Solutions | No Comments

A government contract can be an incredible revenue stream; however, actually landing the deal can be a long and arduous process. That’s where customer relationship management (CRM) software can help. CRM technology is useful in managing and analyzing customer interactions. In the era of “the customer experience”, it’s increasingly vital to solve your client’s needs quickly and effectively. As a contractor, the government is your client.

If you are trying to improve your team’s capture management, a CRM can certainly benefit your company. Here’s how… Read More

Why Win/Loss Analysis Is Worth the Effort

By | capture management, capture management process, consulting, management | No Comments

When you win the pot in a poker game or trounce a friend at a game of golf, your euphoria doesn’t always lead you into deep analysis about what worked or what led to your win.

Professionals spend a lot more time analyzing every step they take along the sales cycle so they can find out where they went right. The same is true when they lose. Professional sports teams invest millions on post game analysis, practicing repetition of strategies that worked and finding ways to resolve weaknesses.

While it is fine to just enjoy the win or bemoan the loss during friendly competition, you need to pay more attention to your win/loss analysis for success, and to create a repeatable capture management sales process. Read More

6 Interview Questions to Ask Capture Management Consultants

By | capture management, consulting | No Comments

Working with capture management consultants can help you prepare for new business opportunities that your current staff simply can’t accommodate. When you predict a future surge in workflow, you need a plan and skilled employees in place to handle the increased workload. Consultants offer you the flexible and expert hours you require, often at a fraction of the cost of a regular, full-time employee.

The challenge lies in finding the right prospect for your business: Which capture management consultants are the best fit for you and your company? As you search for your next consultant, be sure to ask every interviewee these six questions before signing a contract. Read More

Top Capture Management Process Best Practices

By | consulting, government sales, proposal management, salesforce | No Comments

Industry best practices become the SOP because they consistently yield the best results. Capture management best practices help create a repeatable, scalable process that generates the highest probability of a win for every prospect.

As you develop your internal processes to maximize your government contract opportunities, you need to keep these items in mind. Read More