You Win or Lose Competitive Pursuits in Capture

Most Competitive GovCon Losses Are Already Determined Well Before You Even Step into the Arena ?

A friend of mine from when I served in the United States Navy many years ago was from Wyoming and was big into rodeos. In fact, he was skilled at roping horses. We recently reconnected, and I told him that I recall a comment that he once made to me and that was that a cowboy’s ability to successfully rope a horse during a competition and in particular win the competition was determined well before they ever stepped into the arena.

He reminded me that was true because if you do not do the necessary upfront work (e.g., physical conditioning, practicing), then you will not be able to perform in the arena. For example, only when you can successfully rope a dummy 50 times in a row on the ground without missing, then you are ready to rope off your horse from the saddle.?

To me, his statement is analogous to trying to win a high-dollar value, solution-based, mission-critical, competitively bid prime contract in the government contracting (GovCon) marketspace. This is because there is so much upfront work that has to be done before a GovCon steps into the arena of writing a proposal response to a competitive government solicitation.

The Problem

A common issue is that many GovCons do not know how to efficiently and effectively do the necessary upfront work to win a high-dollar value, solution-based, mission-critical, competitively bid prime contract. Many technology vendors are trying to push artificial intelligence (AI) tools into the proposal writing space of the GovCon business development lifecycle. Such AI tools provide value but are limited in their ability to support the full scope of upfront work (i.e., thinking with human judgement and expertise) that is necessary to win.? This effort is collaborative by nature and very dialogue-based. In particular, a challenge exists with integrating the many collaborative analyses that occur in support of capturing a competitive pursuit and providing a traceable, defensible, and explainable measure of their goodness to enable the win.

The Need

There is a need today for an innovative capability that enables business developers and capture managers to be more successful in their roles— particularly an automated software that helps them to perform the essential upfront collaborative business development and capture-related analyses needed to win.? You can call this innovative automated software capability a “Collaborative Strategic Analysis Support Software” for winning competitive opportunities. It would allow a business developer and capture manager in particular to:

• Assess the goodness of business development efforts in support of a bid/no-bid decision.
• Conduct:

―??? 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 integrate captured data.
• Preserve digital threads of context of the company, customer, and competition as it pertains to the capture effort at hand.
• Build an inventory of proposal strategies and “scoreable strengths” in advance of any proposal writing and then allocates them to a requirements-driven outline to facilitate scoring the most points against the evaluation criteria.? As it is often said, if you do not have the proposal strategies and strengths in advance of the writing, then what are you writing to?? You cannot get the proposal strategies and strengths in advance of the writing unless you do the necessary upfront thinking and analyses.

The Benefits

In particular, the benefits of such a “Collaborative Strategic Analysis Support Software” capability are that it would:

• Ensure the right opportunities are being worked and bid
• 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.
• Lower the cost of capturing new business.
• Support collaboration across the lifecycle of the pursuit in the post-COVID-19 hybrid work environment just as effectively as if the members of the pursuit team were working face-to-face.
• Protect the customer business that your company already has.

Capture Your Next Competitive GovCon Win Early

There is now available to the GovCon marketspace an innovative cloud-based or on-premises-based “Collaborative Strategic Analysis Support Software” capability called “SET?.”? It is designed to enable business developers, capture managers, and others involved in a competitive pursuit to do the necessary “up front strategic thinking before writing” in the opportunity assessment, capture, and proposal planning phases of competitive pursuits using customer empathy.? As a result, SET enables the winning of more competitive pursuits and increases the overall enterprise value of GovCon companies.

Author: Copyright 25 January 2024, Peter Lierni, Founder, Solutioneering, LLC

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