Proposal Reflections

Five weeks ago, I had the pleasure of presenting a webinar dissecting six key tactics to help improve your win rate. These tactics include: Applying a thorough strategy in the opportunities pursued Starting pursuits earlier to gain an understanding of the customer and competitive landscape Documenting the intelligence gained from the business development and capture stages Applying rigor in the bid decision process Making your proposals easy to score Conducting lessons learned so you can understand where you are doing well and where you need to improve In this week’s article, I do a deep dive into another one of those critical tactics: documenting the intelligence gained during the business development and capture phases. Capture Planning One of the biggest downfalls I see with the capture process (other than skipping the capture phase completely) is a lack of capture documentation. Once the company decides to pursue a potential opportunity, the capture manager needs

Four weeks ago, I had the pleasure of presenting a webinar dissecting six key tactics to help improve your win rate. These tactics include: Applying a thorough strategy in the opportunities pursued Starting pursuits earlier to gain an understanding of the customer and competitive landscape Documenting the intelligence gained from the capture or sales stage Applying rigor in the bid decision process Making your proposals easy to score C onducting lessons learned so you can understand where you are doing well and where you need to improve In this week’s article, I do a deep dive into one of those critical tactics: applying rigor in your bid decision process. Make Smart Bid Decision One key reason win rates may be low is that the company is making poor bid decisions. This is a hard one for many companies because it is so difficult to ignore the sunk costs that have gone into a pursuit; however, smart organizations will not discount the opportunity costs of developing and

Three weeks ago, I had the pleasure of presenting a webinar to the APMP Maple Leaf Chapter. In this webinar, I dissected six key tactics to help improve your win rate. These tactics included: Applying a thorough strategy in the opportunities pursued Starting pursuits earlier to gain an understanding of the customer and competitive landscape Documenting the intelligence gained from the capture or sales stage Applying rigor in the bid decision process Making your proposals easy to score Conducting lessons learned so you can understand where you are doing well and where you need to improve In this week’s article, I do a deep dive into one of those critical tactics: applying a thorough pursuit strategy. Win Rate vs. Capture Rate Before we discuss the pursuit strategy in a bit more detail, I wanted to touch on win rats vs. capture rates. Win rates are calculated by taking total opportunities won and dividing by total opportunities pursued, while capture rates are the total

Two weeks ago, I had the pleasure of presenting a webinar to the APMP Maple Leaf Chapter. In this webinar, I dissected six key tactics to help improve your win rate. These tactics include: Starting pursuits earlier to gain an understanding of the customer and competitive landscape Applying a thorough strategy in the opportunities pursued Documenting the intelligence gained from the capture or sales stage Applying rigor in the bid decision process Making your proposals easy to score C onducting lessons learned so you can understand where you are doing well and where you need to improve . In this week’s article, I do a deep dive into one of those critical tactics: starting earlier. Opportunity Lifecycle One reason it’s important to start earlier is that it enables you to implement long-term planning surrounding your growth and pursuit strategies. Long-term planning provides corporate awareness of upcoming opportunities aligned with strategic goals. By