What to focus on first when considering a capture process

Description

You don’t create a proposal function and implement a new process that impacts other departments in a single step. It’s better to start simple and increase the sophistication over time. But where do you start? What is the least amount of process you can get away with?

To understand this, you have to change how you think about process. It’s not about steps. You don’t start with fewer steps and add more over time. Instead, it’s about starting out with the right goals and improving your ability to fulfill them over time.

Here is a basic list of goals that can get you started:

1. Start the proposal with the information required to win it. This means developing an information advantage.
2. Be able to articulate what it will take to win. This means having an information advantage and that requires relationship marketing that starts before the RFP is released. This is easy to say and hard to do. It is the core of Capture Management.
3. Define proposal quality as one that reflects what it will take to win. This means articulating quality criteria for how to assess whether the proposal reflects what it will take to win.
4. Turn what it will take to win into instructions for writers and criteria for reviewers before you start writing. The better you become at Proposal Content Planning, the smoother the proposal will go, the better you will mitigate your proposal risks, and the higher you win probability will go.
5. Validate the content plan prior to writing the narrative. Without this critical step, the proposal outline and win strategies will drift all over the place and who knows what the proposal will end up being. To achieve this goal, you need to build around it instead of trying to fit it in.
6. Review what was written to ensure that it reflects the content plan as well as what it will take to win. Don't just review the proposal to make sure it sounds good. Review it against a standard. Proposal Content Planning and with written quality criteria provides that standard.

Achieving the goals matters more than the procedures you follow. You can evolve those procedures over time to more reliably achieve the goals.

To simplify the process even further, simply remove items from the list. Take a look and see which items can be deleted. If you can find any. You might also prioritize according to where you currently feel the most pain. Is it pre-RFP pursuit? Figuring out what should go into the proposal and how to present it? Achieving consistently effective reviews? There is a stream of information that integrates them all. In many ways, managing the flow of information is what Capture Management is. But you can get started without having the entire process fully integrated. You can get started by just focusing on one goal.

To implement the process, start by being clear about what the goals are. Then think through how to achieve each one. The more you document the process, the easier it will be to set expectations. However, simply having the goals is a huge step for getting everyone on the same page. Forget formal process language or telling people every little detail. Start with what goals to achieve and questions to answer. Give people checklists, examples, and suggestions for inspiration.

Each time you successfully prepare a proposal using this approach, raise the bar. Improve your approach. If you run into problems or challenges, then consider adding goals to prevent them in the future.