Leader or Follower?

Capture strategy development is hard. Initially, there are lots of holes in your knowledge and strategy. This often gets translated into a sense that it is too early to develop a strategy and that the effort will be wasted as events move along.

This is true if you want to be a follower, a position of minimal influence and insight.

Of course you don’t want to be “a follower”, but we see it time and again, bidders wait to the last minute (or later) to figure out who the competition really is, what the customer really wants (as opposed to what is written), who potential teaming partners are and what they really want.

What They Really Want

Note that what everyone really wants, and what they say they want, are often very different things. Core motivations are hard to get at. It takes time and patience. Developing a strategy will inform your line of inquiry, getting you closer to the truth about motivations and fears. Remember, business is an entirely Human enterprise, with the full range of emotions buried within.

It takes time, interaction, relationship building and active listening to answer some of these questions. It takes time to actively seek out competitive intelligence. People will leak all sorts of useful information if they are carefully primed at a time when their guard is down.

Informing Decisions

Pursuit Strategies and Capture Plans inform partnering decisions, R&D and capital investments, strategic hiring, messaging and communications and GR/PR plans.

Initially they usually can’t be definitive about a range of critical issues: who should be prime, who do we need as partners, what are the real risks, and what is driving the customer’s needs? This is OK, as unknowns illustrate what you need to learn, what you need to listen carefully for. You can be the crafty fox at the hotel bar, at a conference lunch table or on the trade show floor if your thinking and listening skills are honed by a good preliminary capture plan.

Write It Down

A plan is essential, and not writing it down is a major mistake. We see business development leads who claim to do it all in their head. They wave their hands around, speak with authority, declare that they have the inside track, and tend to regurgitate local truths (myths) as fact.

We all know how much more difficult it is to write up a strategy than to think about one. You have to answer all sorts of questions and make logical connected arguments. You need to find and organize facts. Additionally, your work is subject to review and critique. If it is all in your head, it is opaque to others and is probably not complete.

Capture strategies need not be long winded massive documents. We recommend a series of PowerPoint slides which force brevity and that can be easily shared and reviewed. These will grow over time, but can start out as a table of contents and initial thoughts and facts.

Done well, a capture strategy allows you to truly become an influencer, able to encourage the evolving requirements and programmatics in a direction that is favourable to your solution.

Don’t Squander Precious Time

Usually there is time to get this right, but unfortunately the inclination is often to wait and “save hard earned discretionary funds”.  The truth is that inaction usually proves to be the most expensive and risky path forward.

An effective strategy will not lock you into a single course of action. It sows seeds, identifies priority actions and sets up off-ramps that allow you to bury emotional attachment and focus on winning. It contains nuggets of information that are likely to be of value across multiple pursuits. Early well considered capture planning will save you money in the long run and improve your “win probability”.

Be the fox amongst the hounds.