Business Development and Capture – is There a Difference?
#009 Does your company have the capabilities to support the proposal and get on the team?
There is a future, federal contracting opportunity, and your small business is interested in participating on a team. When locating a prime to support, it is important to understand whom you’re speaking with and what to present to be a valuable member of the bidding team.
Let’s Define the Roles!
During the identification or exploratory phase, the Business Development (BD) lead or manager is charged with discovery and assessing new business opportunities that align the prime’s strategic market focus and customer access. This role also takes on the role of a player/coach throughout the entire process of securing these opportunities. For most large businesses, the BD lead is charged with putting together the gate one briefing.
Some of the BD lead’s responsibilities include:
Managing the new business pipeline
Build and maintain customer relationships.
Implement rigorous capture plans.
Ensures strategic alignment and focus.
Conduct competitive analysis and develop proposal strategies.
Initiates NDAs for partner relationships
The BD Lead is charged with delivering:
A qualified new business pipeline
Bid & Proposal resources are defined and managed.
Approvals have been obtained for Gate 1 Reviews
The Customer Call Plan with the Capture Lead is in place.
Marketing communications requirements for new business are determined.
Competitors have been defined.
Once the BD Manager has fulfilled their responsibilities and gained Gate one approvals, the Capture Manager takes over. The Capture Manager plays a critical role in ensuring effective communication with customers throughout the entire proposal process, including adhering to the prospect opportunity requirements. They are responsible for strategizing and executing the capture plan to include developing the gap analysis.
The Capture Manager is responsible for:
Coordinating with the customer and managing the acquisition project effort
Developing capture strategy including customer profile and competitive analysis
Facilitates strategy development, gap analysis, and resource allocation for proposal management plan.
Coordinates pricing and conducts various team meetings.
Likely drafts initial executive summary and leads team in developing solution and work breakdown structure.
Coordinates all subcontract or teaming relationships.
The Capture Manager is charged with delivering:
Defining customer issues, needs, hot buttons, and discriminators.
Finalizing and executing the capture plan
Executes the call plan with BD Manager
A marketing campaign plan is developed and executed.
Gap analysis is conducted.
Competitive analysis is performed.
Teaming agreements are established.
Executes Gate 2+ reviews.
Gap Analysis is the key to success!
As noted in the Capture Manager’s deliverables, the individual is charged with conducting a gap analysis on the opportunity’s technical information, customer knowledge, and past performance requirements. If you are pursuing an opportunity, you should conduct a gap analysis on the opportunity prior to engaging a potential prime contractor.
The gap analysis matrix (reference above) is an analytic tool used to identify critical areas of support needed to cover all the technical areas of the proposal. If you are seeking to be added to a future bid, you should build a gap analysis first, prior to finding a teammate who needs your capabilities. Does your company have the ability to provide technical writing, customer insights or corporate past performance of similar size, scope, or complexity that aligns to the RFP tasks? If so, then you are in the game!
For additional thoughts on teaming agreement strategies, please review my prior newsletter on It Takes a Team(ing)!