Too Busy to Win, But Definitely Have Enough Time to Lose

“I Do Not Have Enough Time to Do That”

I have often heard business developers and capture managers in the government contracting (GovCon) marketspace make this statement. Such a comment is made by them when they are encouraged to do the necessary analyses (e.g., Issue and Key Factor Analyses, Notional Winner Benchmark, Competitive Assessment, Discriminator Qualification) to enable the winning of their next competitive GovCon pursuit.?What such business developers/capture managers are really saying is that they are unable to do what they are paid for because they think that they have far more important things to do. Oh yah, like what? Normally people that are “too busy” do nothing at all.

The Problem

When a business developer or capture manager fails to take the time to do the necessary upfront analyses “before the writing” in order to win a competitive GovCon opportunity or to perform other essential actions (e.g., validate key elements of their company’s offering with the customer), then they typically end up advancing a losing pursuit. They often provide the C-Suite with a false sense of confidence on the true state-of-the-opportunity.?Even worse, they place unnecessary burden on those further down the business development lifecycle (i.e., proposal team members and pricing team). These individuals are typically already under a lot of pressure. Now they are being asked to try to resuscitate a dying pursuit at the last minute.?At best, what most often gets delivered is on time and compliant, which is essential, yet not enough in most cases to get to a competitive win.

The Need

There is a need today for an innovative capability that enables business developers, capture managers, and others to perform the upfront thinking and analyses necessary to win a competitive GovCon pursuit.?You can call it a Cloud-based strategic analysis support system (SA2S), which:

• Enables key analyses essential to winning a competitive GovCon pursuit. For example:

―???Issue & Key Factor Analyses

―???Notional Winner Benchmark Analysis

―???Competitive Assessment

―???Discriminator Qualification

―???Gap Analysis

―???Win Strategy Development

―???Win Theme Formulation

―???Proposal Strategy Development

―???Strength Inventory Formulation

• Visually and digitally integrates captured data.
• Preserves digital threads of context of the company, customer, and competition as it pertains to the capture effort at hand.

Such a SA2S capability would allow business developers and capture managers to ensure that their competitive efforts produce the right strategies to counter the competition; result in a robust inventory of strengths against evaluation factors/subfactors to score the most points possible; and more well before any writing in response to the final solicitation ever starts.

The Benefits

In particular, the benefits of such a SA2S capability are that it would:

• Help do the necessary “strategic thinking before writing” in the opportunity assessment, capture, and proposal planning phases of competitive pursuits.
• Enable better decision-making, particularly at the C-Suite level.
• Assist with answering the most important question when pursuing a competitive pursuit ― “Why your company?”
• Support the design and development of the solution for your company’s competitive response.
• Store the rich context of how and why a deal was bid to increase overall company value over time.
• Capture the company’s intellectual capital to enable future growth.
• Quantify the growth status of your enterprise.
• Lower the cost of capturing new business.
• Protect the customer business that your company already has.
• Treat the Proposal Team as internal customers of a company’s business development and capture efforts versus falling victim to inadequate thinking and analysis earlier in the pursuit’s lifecycle.

Take the Time to Win

There is now available to the GovCon marketspace an innovative Cloud-based strategic analysis support system or SA2S capability.?The SA2S is called “SET?”, and it is specifically designed to enable both business developers and capture managers to do the necessary “strategic thinking before writing” in the opportunity assessment, capture, and proposal planning phases of competitive pursuits.?As a result, SET enables the winning of more competitive GovCon opportunities and increasing the overall enterprise value of GovCon companies by providing the benefits and more. ?

Author: Copyright 11 April 2023, Peter Lierni, Founder, Solutioneering, LLC

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