A great business developer is a “people” person who builds and sustains long-term relationships with customers and partners, finds opportunities, and closes deals. This naturally requires legwork and face time with people, sometimes translating into drinks, golf, and dinners. Unfortunately, some business developers equate business development with kicking the bobo with friends high up in the Government, fine dining, and exclusive golf courses. They call it “opening doors.” They say BD takes time. And while that much is true, it is easy to mistake movement for progress, and lose sight of the goals.
One of the first steps in capturing an opportunity is to conduct a win themes development and strategy session. Win themes are a conclusive set of reasons why the customer should select you over the competitors. Win strategy is determining what it takes to win, and what a potential winner would have to do to make it an obvious choice from the customer’s standpoint.
When you are in a position of an editor or a reviewer, remember that the authors put a lot of work into the proposal, so be respectful and productive in your criticism. You want to treat your team members like fellow adults, and shape your feedback accordingly.
Let’s talk compliance. Compliance, as you know, starts with a proper proposal outline. Proposal managers need to decide which sections of the statement of work to discuss in the outline, and which sections to exclude. It is the outliner’s job to really understand the big picture, and ensure it is structured and annotated in the way that the writers understand the context of their sections. The outliners have to figure out how to tell a great story within the constraints of being compliant.
I spent about 7 years in the infantry, 5.5 years with the 82nd Airborne Division, and 27 months in Afghanistan. This Veterans Day, I want to encourage everyone to work more with veterans and understand the unique skills they bring to business development. Veterans often struggle with transitioning back into the civilian workforce, like I did when I first exited the Army. They often find it hard to translate their valuable experience from their time in the military into the business environment. Yet, many of the skills that our highly trained military personnel have picked up in the field translate very well into the office environment.
We need to get prepared to sprint until the next crisis and potential shutdown that is just around the corner. In the business development world, now is the best time to get in contact with your Government customers. Fit in your capture activities while you can. This stop-and-go, strapped-for-resources type of environment could end up being the new normal for a while. Whether we replay this fiasco all over again in a couple months remains to be seen, but that has been the trend as of late. Regardless, we must go on and serve our customers as if the politicians will work things out between themselves.
