Hiring Business Development Team Members in the Public Sector

Let's talk about hiring Business Development folks in the public sector.

Let's start with a Capture Manager at a large Systems Integrator - we will call him Joel.

Joel has been a Capture Manager at Company A for ten years, and over that time, the company has grown from $3B in annual prime revenue to over $7B in annual prime revenue.

Joel's focus is the Navy, specifically Naval Air Systems Command, where he has captured mid- 9 figure opportunities year after year.  

Joel likes his team. He has a great relationship with two of his Solution Architects and has a great Business Development lead. She has been identified as the top opportunity identifier and shaper within the company, and the proposal operations team, the largest in the market, is always ready to support his pursuits.

Joel doesn't see much room for movement above where he is. Like many large companies, there is a bottleneck at the top.

Joel decides it’s time to move. A few of the companies that have partnered with Company A before have reached out to him to gauge his interest over the past few years.

One of them has just broken out of the small business designation and, after several conversations, offered him a leadership position as the SVP, Capture and Proposal Operations. They have access to Seaport and strong quals within the Navy. It’s a perfect fit on paper.

Recognizing their size, Joel only asks for a slightly higher raise than he has now; the company offers him a sizable commission on his new captures. Financially, it makes sense.

Joel comes into Company B with aspirations to start where he just was – focusing on recapturing the work he’s been winning for ten years and building that out.

Joel has a junior business development person identifying opportunities for him and they are great with tracking things coming out. They don’t really have experience calling on the government though.

That’s fine; he’s called on the government before he can help there.

They have a solution architect, but she’s 100% billable and leads their largest program as the technical lead.

That’s fine; they can work around that schedule. Joel’s helped solution for opportunities before and this should be similar.

There are three proposal people. One senior manager, she’s great, and two junior people that graduated last year.

In the first 90 days, it’s pipeline building time – Joel puts in several familiar opportunities but notices that Company B can’t quite meet all the requirements and partners are no longer knocking on his door the way they were at Company A and now he needs to go out and find those as well.

With all the above, can we agree that Joel is going to have a hard time replicating his success at Company A?

It’s simply company sizing.

Company B spent their budget on Joel to be the missing piece to more contract awards. Joel assumed he could since he had experience across the whole pursuit lifecycle but didn’t realize he had to play the majority of the roles in a team effort.

And pursuing opportunities is absolutely a team effort.

This investment left little to build the team around him, leaving gaps in key capture areas and thinly spread resources.

Despite these gaps, executives are anxious for their investment to pay off and push the new hire for results, usually forcing them out in two years with a sour taste left on both ends.

The most challenging thing in this market is recruiting. Glassdoor, with its very high-level salary data, makes it even more challenging because they take the average salaries of the people in Company A, and they combined that with the salaries being paid for the same role at companies half the size of Company B.

Put yourself in Company A’s shoes – are you going to hire someone from a small company that has captured $5M/yr deals to the same salary you pay your folks that capture $500M/yr deals?

So, how do we fix this?

It starts with setting realistic expectations on all sides.

Capture Managers – ensure there will be a team to support you and if there isn’t, find a way to augment that before you take the role.

Executives – start with realistic goals for your new hires. Past success doesn’t automatically mean success here if you don’t have the company designed to help and the structure in place to enable that success.

Marketplace – there’s a gap in compensation data that includes the need to incorporate the breadth of variables that come into play in this market. I’m not saying someone should create something, but it would sure help many companies.

And most importantly, evaluate the opportunities you put investment behind. Start by understanding what the actual cost of a pursuit is by using this free tool.

If you are looking for a structured approach for evaluating opportunities saving your business a ton of money – check this out.  

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Josh Cramer is the VP, Business Development and Strategy at Key Solutions, a Washington D.C. based consulting firm that helps companies better position their organization for success in the public sector by providing end to end opportunity life-cycle support.

For an in-depth guide on targeting the public sector and setting your team up for success, access the KSI Advantage Capture and Proposal guide here.

To learn more about how our team can help you build, improve and execute in the public sector visit our website or follow us on LinkedIn.