Most problems that surface when Government contractors struggle with writing winning proposals are systemic, upstream issues related to flawed opportunity identification, qualification, and capture, not the just proposals themselves. If a company bids on an opportunity that doesn’t fit and has no customer knowledge, producing a generic-sounding proposal is the best a proposal team can do. Issues related to Business Development (BD) and capture that hurt proposal probability of winning (Pwin) include:
- Not enough opportunities in the pipeline to keep the company bidding on enough proposals
- Difficulty prioritizing opportunities that all look good
- Not enough or not the right kind of information on the opportunities to prioritize them properly and decide which ones to pursue
- Ad hoc attention given to the pipeline
- No or limited dedicated business development personnel/expertise within the company
- No or limited pre-proposal preparation (capture)
- Difficulty recognizing good teaming opportunities or connecting with teaming partners
- Low win rate on the proposals submitted
Few companies spend the necessary time to regularly scour the various paid opportunity databases to find interesting opportunities and enter them into their pipeline. Even if they do, many regard opportunities listed in paid databases as gospel and do not call the Government to verify if those opportunities are real, so they end up wasting time and money on chasing opportunities they can’t bid on.
Opportunities don’t follow the proper process of going through the regular review and maturation cycle. Companies resort to “tracking” pursuits instead of properly capturing competitive bids. “Tracking” typically refers to waiting for Government actions such as a release of a Request for Information (RFI) to respond to, or a draft Request for Proposal (RFP) to review and ask questions about. It may also include completing a couple of actions such as finding teaming partners. Tracking is a way of appearing proactive while “phoning-in” capture.
The flawed BD approach results in wasted resources and opportunities. How do companies begin to break this cycle?
The Solution – The Winning Edge Package
To address these common challenges, OST Global Solutions developed The Winning Edge Package. After seeing thousands of client organizations struggle with specific tasks, we have developed a subscription-based service to raise our clients’ win probability and make a significant impact on their growth. Our Winning Edge Package has five major parts you can use in various combinations depending on your needs:
- Strategy Session to work with you to learn about your company, document your BD strategy, and identify opportunity search parameters.
- Market Analysis to determine what agencies to focus on and what customers to market to.
- Account Plan to deep-dive into an agency and create a BD roadmap.
- Opportunity Identification to ensure opportunity is a fit and to find enough opportunities to fill your pipeline and meet growth goals.
- Opportunity Qualification to ensure the opportunity is real, conduct capabilities gap analysis, perform preliminary competitive analysis, and determine the macro win strategy. This will help you make better pursue/don’t pursue decisions. The Opportunity Qualification briefing will also serve as a mini-capture plan sufficient to arrive at the proposal in style on smaller pursuits.
Our Winning Edge Package results in higher bid, capture, and win rates; fewer resources dedicated to pursuing phantom or low Pwin bids; and less attrition from BD staff due to consistent losses.
OST will manage your pipeline to ensure progress throughout service delivery. The structure of our service is focused on customer needs and incentivizes us to consistently perform at a high level. The deliverables from this service will result in opportunities with high Pwin moving through the pipeline and leading to customer-focused winning proposals.
Reach out to us if you want to learn more about the service and how we can meet your growth goals.
Read more about the OST Winning Edge Package.
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