9 ways to fill your business opportunity pipeline

A great way to fill your pipeline is through divide and conquer. It's easier to eat the pie one slice at a time. Don't think of the total number of leads you need to find to hit your numbers. Instead, think of how many leads you need in each slice. Then strategically consider how big each slice should be. Is one dominant? Should you avoid having all of your eggs in one basket? Which ones are required to maintain your revenue, and which are the targets for growth? Here are some ideas for how to divide your pipeline and make filling it easier:

1. New customers. A new customer that you have not done business with before has the largest potential long-term value. And costs the most to gain. New customer leads should be part of your investment strategy. Targeted relationship marketing is the best way to find and develop new customers, but it requires time, patience, and investment. It can also generate the highest return on investment. But it will not be the only way you divide your pipeline.
2. Existing customers. Once you “have your foot in the door” with a project for the customer, you can look for other ways to serve them. Consider both vertical (similar specialization or other buyers in the same agency) and horizontal (other types of work or other agencies with similar needs) strategies. If you have a happy customer, make sure they understand the full range of your capabilities. 
3. Organic growth. Don’t overlook whether your existing customer projects can be expanded. It might require modifying your contract and the customer may need additional funding. But this often takes far less effort than a new procurement to get those same services. Organic growth alone will usually not hit the big numbers you need, but it can be a nice boost.
4. Recompetes. Recompetes are a wonderful hybrid. You can target them years in advance. They should never be surprises that catch you unprepared. You can selectively and efficiently conduct relationship marketing by targeting recompetes. But you are limited to business that’s already out there, known by your competitors, and an incumbent might (but maybe not) have the advantage. Recompetes are usually a big slice of the pipeline pie. 
5. Prime contracting. The price for controlling your own destiny is finding and winning your own customers. The prime contractor gets to claim the past performance, gets the most facetime with the customer, and gets to decide how workshare gets allocated. But a prime contractor has to invest more in its pursuits. A lot more. 
6. Subcontracting. Not being responsible for the proposal is great. But if the prime doesn’t absolutely need you, you may not get what you expect. Leverage is required for success. Unique product providers with something needed by an integrator or service provider sometimes choose this route and successfully avoid a lot of overhead. It’s a lot harder for a service provider to be irreplaceable. Some amount of subcontracting, especially when playing the small business teaming with large business game, can be part of the mix. Large companies seek small businesses to round out their subcontracting goals and get a piece of set-aside contracts. Small companies seek large companies to enhance their qualifications and resources, giving up part of the potential revenue to increase their probability of winning. But outside of construction and products it’s rare to see companies only do subcontracting. 
7. Public vs private sector. Sometimes public sector companies think they have something they can sell in the private sector. And sometimes private sector companies covet big juicy government contracts. But very few companies are good at both. Most attempts are disasters. The marketing, accounting, finance, sales cycle, organization, policies, procedures, regulations, and culture are very different. It’s a lot like having a split personality. Be skeptical of filling your pipeline by reaching across the public/private sector fence. If you want to go there, consider investing in a subsidiary that will be a company with the right attributes to do business on the other side of that fence, but that can share resources with the parent.
8. Products vs services. If you sell products, services can be a natural add-on. If you sell services, they can sometimes be productized. Adding products or services can help you with organic growth. But sometimes it’s really more of a marketing and positioning strategy than a new strategic marketing where you can fill your pipeline. Ultimately, what and how your customers want to do things will determine whether you can do this successfully more so than the value proposition. But it's worth considering as a way to add another slice of pie.
9. Contract vehicles. Adding contract vehicles won’t bring you business. They make it easier to close the sales you originate through relationship marketing and the risky game of solicitation announcement prospecting. Some contract vehicles lend themselves more to opportunistic bidding more than others. But opportunistic bidding as a strategy is a great way to destroy your company’s future potential. Assigning target numbers to new contract vehicles is usually a guessing game. 

Lots of other things can potentially impact your pipeline, but may not be strategies for filling your pipeline. For example, change of any kind such as technology, regulatory changes, reorganizations, and other transitions can create the need for procurements. But jumping on a trend is not the same thing as having a sustainable approach to filling your pipeline. 

But maybe your pipeline is not the problem. Maybe it’s your win rate. Double your win rate and you can hit your numbers with half as many leads. Improve your win rate by a more realistic 20% and you need to find 20% fewer opportunities to bid to achieve the same revenue. This is mathematically the same as finding a way to fill 20% of your pipeline. You shouldn’t be thinking about filling your pipeline without also thinking about your win rate. Investing in one without considering the other will not produce the best ROI.

Regardless of which approaches work best for your company to fill its pipeline, make sure you are measuring your win rate, cost of sales, and ROI for each approach separately. Some approaches to filling your pipeline will have a better ROI than others. Your win rate in each slice of the pie is going to be different. And those difference matter strategically.