The First Three Things

At The Networx Group, we are often asked specifics how to get started in government contracting, how to expand our federal footprint, or how to increase our win rates on federal pursuits. Recently a partner asked, "What are the first three things we need to do after we have identified a potential opportunity?"

Two different scenarios come to mind:

a.) When was the opportunity identified?

b.) When was it released to the public?

Now realistically, there could be a whole series of "3 Things" you could do at different stages in the procurement cycle. The answer is certainly different depending on whether you are a micro or small business with only one or two people dedicated to business development or if you are an established prime contractor with a full suite of business development, capture and proposal managers and supporting personnel.

For the purposes of this scenario, I will assume we are talking about a small to mid-size federal contractor that has a few people that are tasked with winning federal business. I will further assume, initially, that we are discussing an identified opportunity that is pre-RFQ….so we may be in Sources Sought or RFI territory.

There are preliminary questions that you have to ask yourself as a team:

1. Do you know the customer? Have you done your research to understand the mission of the agency or office and how your solution will solve a problem?

2. Does the customer know you? Have you done a capability briefing or met with with this particular program team or contracting officer? Do you have past performance with this office or agency?

3. Do you know your competition?

4. What is the acquisition strategy?

If you feel that you have solid answers to these four questions, then you are well on your way to increasing the success of your pursuit. Now let's move on to the real purpose of this blogpost...to answer the question. What are the first three things you need to do once an opportunity has been identified?

1. Get the team together and establish the cadence of your proposal cycle. Get your proposal manager involved quickly. Find out what you need to effectively deliver a winning proposal.

2. Establish a winning theme: This is where your capture manager shines. Your capture plan should be able to supply the strategy based on the things we discussed before….

a. Do you know the customer? Have you done your research to understand the mission of the agency or office and how your solution will fit.

b. Does the customer know you?

c. Do you know your competition?

d. What is the acquisition strategy?

The capture management team will be able to develop a theme that emphasizes your strengths, mitigate your weaknesses, highlight your competitors weaknesses and downplay your competitors strengths.

3. Get executive buy-in (if you need it) and then execute! There is nothing worse than getting deep into a procurement cycle where you have spent time and effort into capture and proposal planning and technical writing only to find out that what you are going after doesn’t have the support of leadership or is in a direction contrary to corporate strategy.

You need business development intelligence to understand what is coming down the line. You need capture management strategies that help you synthesize what you know about your organization and your customer and provide some of (if not most of) the content and relevancy about the proposal. And you must have a proposal management function, or cycle, or system that actively manages the day- to-day calendar of deliverables and reviews necessary to meet the customer’s deadlines and produce a high-quality winning proposal.

You don’t necessarily have to have personnel in-house in all of these roles to be successful, but it certainly helps to be able to segment responsibilities across the full spectrum of federal business development. What you do need to have….what you must have to be more successful in pursuits...is a well-reasoned approach that incorporates aspects of what we’ve discussed.