Wearing Many Hats is Hurting Your Organization

Just based on your title – I can typically tell if you have more responsibilities than a single role should entail. It comes from the many conversations I’ve had with people just like you.

The people that I'm referring to are those that are responsible for all the tactical activities involved in Business Development and Capture Management.

The one thing I’ve found is that there is no single person capable of doing both Business Development and Capture Management at the level that they should be done.

This may be an unpopular opinion, especially for those that are responsible for doing both.

Sure, there are people that understand what each role is responsible for and what the expectations should be. Even the best, most experienced executives can combine the two but if they are responsible for both, they will be AVERAGE at best.

If they have the necessary Capture acumen, I can guarantee that they aren’t identifying and shaping as many opportunities as they could. On the flip side – if they are consistently identifying a large amount opportunities, they absolutely aren’t assessing the opportunities well enough to justify an investment from the business.

Both issues lead to missed business growth and excess costs.

Let’s breakdown these roles to better detail the importance of keeping them separate.

Business Development

As someone who has worked in Business Development in both the public and commercial sector, I can tell you that they are viewed very differently by organizations and recruiters. A Business Development Executive at a Commercial company will struggle to find comparable responsibility and compensation in the Public Sector due to the fact they don’t have X amount of years selling to a specific client.

The same is said for Business Development Executives in Public Sector moving into the Commercial Market.

I believe this is because there is a fallacy in the public sector on the importance of the relationship/network of the Business Development Executive and not enough focus on the meetings and production they can generate. This is a separate discussion.

The point, and one I strongly believe can accelerate many organizations in the public sector, is that many of the Business Development principles taught in the Commercial Sector – should be used in the Public Sector.

To be successful in Business Development in the Public Sector, the focus should be on identifying opportunities that align with your organizations capabilities.

Easy to say and relatively easy to do thanks to subscription services.

But to truly be successful, Business Development Executives must also ensure they meet with Procurement, the Decision Maker(s) and End-Users to shape the opportunity and ensure that their organization is positioned to win. Miss meetings with any of those individuals and you will miss out on an important opportunities to shape requirements.

This is an identical approach to the one their Commercial counterparts use on Enterprise deals.

A good Business Development Executive should be identifying opportunities that are ideally 7 to 12 months away from the RFP solicitation. More than a year, and the opportunity has a risk of morphing or evolving into something else.

The focus for the Business Development team should be to identify the appropriate opportunities, take the necessary steps to shape the opportunity and present the business case for the pursuit to the Capture Manager to assess.

Capture Management

The Capture Manager’s responsibility is to be that filter for the opportunities being sent their way.

The goal and focus of the Capture Manager should be to eliminate any opportunities out of the pipeline that don’t meet their business’ criteria for an pursuit that they can win. Those opportunities that do meet that criteria – a strong Capture Plan should be developed.

A strong Capture Plan is typically resource heavy and will utilize Solution Architects, Pricing Leads, Proposal Management, Staffing Leads, potential Program Managers, Price to Win analysts and additional SMEs. This is a business cost and the time of these individuals should not be wasted on opportunities that haven’t been shaped by the Business Development team and approved by the Capture Lead.

To build a strong Capture Plan, the Capture Manager should facilitate the Solution Development sessions including Technical, Management, Staffing, Subcontracting and Pricing conversations. And yes, this is the phase you should be engaging your Proposal Manager, your Pricing lead and your Price to Win/Competitive Assessment team.

Facilitating these sessions will help the Capture Manager better understand how well your business is positioned to pursue the opportunity. Some opportunities may be removed for various business reasons such as the price will be too low or your organization is missing technical expertise that you don’t want to subcontract out. The more thorough and honest your Capture Manager is with this process and analysis – the better the outcome for the business.

When building out a strong Capture Plan, it is great to see the team realize they aren’t in a good position to win and to stop the pursuit. It means they were honest with their business and realized that they could push out a proposal – but they would get the exact same result if they didn’t.

"The strength of the team is each individual member. The strength of each member is the team." --Phil Jackson

Are you wearing too many hats?

Now think to yourself, are you able to put in 40 hours a week hunting, shaping and delivering opportunities?

Can you also find 40 hours a week to stringently assess these opportunities?

If you find yourself responsible for both – don’t be discouraged. Understand your strengths and implore your business to hire the role that will complement you. Then, you can work in tandem to provide better opportunities for your business.

As a business, push current or prospective executives to better understand where their capabilities lie and then augment them with additional team members as necessary.

Additionally, having a process in place that your business aligns to that can withstand any changes in personnel and ensures you have metrics across the opportunity life cycle will set you up for long-term success.

As an organization that plays a large role in the proposal development space – we know firsthand that the proposal team will be grateful for the quality of opportunities you send over if you define roles and are stringent on your opportunity screening.

One point that is also extremely evident – whether you are small business or a large systems integrator – how organizations define roles varies across industry.

Define your roles and responsibilities or it will lead to challenges in hiring, pursuing opportunities, understanding how roles overlap and most importantly – winning. 

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Josh Cramer is the Director of Business Development at AOC Key Solutions, a Washington D.C. based consulting firm that helps companies better position their organization for success in the public sector by providing proposal development and capture management expertise.

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 win your next bid visit aockeysolutions.com or follow us on LinkedIn.