In one line: Contracts are usually won long before the solicitation comes out, by choosing the right opportunities, understanding the customer, and building a win strategy and the relationships to back it.
Core idea
Three related functions bring in work:
- Marketing works out future needs and generates interest and leads.
- Sales converts prospects into paying customers and closes the deal.
- Business development builds lasting value out of the company’s relationships with customers and markets.
A short way to put the difference: sales is about how to sell, and business development is about where.
The course frames this as a leadership skill, not just a sales one. Engineering leaders are expected to understand how their organization earns revenue, to know its strategic objectives, to build relationships across it, and to market themselves and their teams credibly. The examples come from U.S. government contracting, the world’s largest single customer. The planning, process and format carry over to commercial, academic and internal proposals.
How it works
1. Capture phase, typically 6 to 18 months before the solicitation:
- Qualify the opportunity. Check its fit with what we’re good at, who we already serve and where we want to go. Ask whether it could become lasting business, and whether the money is there now and likely to stay.
- Build the customer relationship. Meet the customer before the solicitation, ask questions and listen. Trust and credibility built now are what the proposal will draw on later.
- Develop a win strategy:
- what the customer needs to achieve
- which of our capabilities give an advantage
- what competitors will offer and how we counter it (a black hat review)
- what our winning approach is
- how we will show the benefit to the customer
- Form the capture team, internal and external, including partners.
- Respond to the request for information (RFI), often 2 to 6 months before the formal request for proposals. In some programs a white paper serves as the qualifier. Either way, the response must set you apart.
2. Proposal phase. Turn the win strategy into a compliant, persuasive proposal (see Proposals and White Papers), hardened by staged reviews (see Color Team Reviews).
3. Post-proposal phase:
- Track notices of who is in the competitive range and who wins awards.
- Request a debrief, win or lose. It is the cheapest lesson available.
- Save reusable material for the next bid: past performance, résumés, facility descriptions and quality plans.
In practice
For many engineers, the first contact with business development is a request to “help with a proposal” two weeks before it is due. By then, most of the outcome is set. Engineers who join capture early, by talking to the customer’s technical staff, shaping the requirements and testing the technical approach, have far more influence on whether the work is won and what it looks like.
Questions to ask yourself
- Can I explain how my organization makes money, and where my work fits in that?
- For the next opportunity we pursue, what do we know about the customer that a competitor doesn’t?
- Do we ask for debriefs when we lose, and act on them?
Connections
- Next steps: Proposals and White Papers, Color Team Reviews. Pricing the bid: Cost-Based Bidding.
- Upstream: Business Strategy, Opportunity Identification. Relationships: Networking.
- Capabilities exercised: Communicating and Advocacy, Initiative, Vision, Interpersonal Skills.
Sources
- DHS S&T (2011) Long Range Broad Agency Announcement 11-03 [1]
- Course lecture on the pursuit of new business; no public source.