What is a Capture Manager and how do they impact win probability?

A Capture Manager is a dedicated person assigned to winning a business pursuit, and provides the leadership, coordination, resource allocation, strategy, and management needed to prepare the winning bid.

A Business Development Manager is responsible for opening new territories and markets and generating a whole portfolio of leads. They feed the open end of the pipeline with leads and qualify them.

Capture Managers are most often used for large complex pursuits with long sales cycles, where closing the sale will take the business development manager’s attention away from pursuing the other leads. Capture Managers take the qualified leads and close the deal with a winning bid. A Capture Manager is supposed to give dedicated attention to just one bid. They sometimes work on multiple bids, but rarely are they active at the same time. It's not about capacity, it's about dedication. You can't be dedicated to winning if you are not dedicated.

A Capture Manager plays a key role in between business development and proposal writing that can greatly improve your chances of winning the pursuit. Without a Capture Manager, what usually happens is that companies stop lead generation to work on proposals that are led by staff with large skill gaps who are inexperienced and knowledgeable about what it will take to win.

You can't just give someone the title "Capture Manager" and make it so

Being a Capture Manager is the hardest job in the entire company. It requires qualifications and experience that cover a wider range than most people have. Consider all the things they need to know to maximize win probability:

• A Capture Manager has to know what to offer, how the offering should be designed, and how to make cost/value tradeoffs. 
• A Capture Manager has to not only have the technical skills to know how to do the work, a Capture Manager also has to know how to sell.
• A Capture Manager has to not only know how to sell to the customer, but has to be able to sell the opportunity within the company. A big part of a Capture Manager’s job is negotiating and persuading people to support the pursuit.
• A Capture Manager has to know pricing and contracts well enough to negotiate terms and win. They have to be aware of the price to win.
• A Capture Manager has to know enough about proposals to anticipate the information required to write the winning proposal and be able to find it.
• A Capture Manager also has to have enough authority to make decisions and work through other people without being constantly second guessed.
• A Capture Manager has to be able to take risks, know which risks are worth taking, and how to mitigate them when you can.

On top of all that, a Capture Manager has a high chance of getting fired if the bid loses.

Capture Managers are hard to find but worth the effort it takes

How many people exist that can cover all of those skills and consistently win?

Assigning a Capture Manager who can’t check all those boxes lowers your chances of winning. It replaces strategic intention directed at winning with gambling based on hope as a strategy.

Companies that automatically assign the future project manager as the Capture Manager will usually be assigning someone with large skill gaps. If it’s a recompete, the project manager may also have bias regarding the current state that prevents them from being sufficiently innovative. 

The incredible difficulty in finding a top-notch Capture Manager is one reason companies often turn to consultants. But this isn’t a perfect solution either. A Capture Manager needs to know your company’s history, resources, culture, and capabilities. That can’t be learned quickly in meetings.

A Capture Manager also needs to know your customer’s preferences. Some companies bid without even knowing their customer’s preferences. You generally won’t get that knowledge by hiring a consultant, even one with some experience at the customer’s organization. But you might get it if the Capture Manager can spend enough time getting to know the customer. Unfortunately, consultants usually aren’t given the months required to develop that level of insight. And yet more than half of what goes into winning proposals comes from before the proposal even starts.

Capture management is about return on investment and not lowering your bid costs

Most companies go for what is cheap and convenient, and then convince themselves it’s an effective choice. Don’t be that kind of company. Be the kind that understands win rate math and how achieving a high win rate is about return on investment. Your company should manage its pursuits to get the highest return instead of managing them to get the maximum number of bids with the lowest investment. Winning is worth it. Losing is what's expensive. So bid to win and don't try to convince yourself that bidding to lose without doing what it will take to win somehow saves money. Just doing the best you can and hoping is not a good strategy for maximizing your win rate or your return on investment.

The skill of negotiation is vital

Being a Capture Manager requires strong negotiation skills. Everything that you need a company to decide or put effort into in order to win the pursuit will require negotiation. Every person you engage in helping bring home the win will require negotiation. Oh, and then there are negotiations with the customer.

The customer is easy. All you need to do to negotiate with the customer is to discover their preferences and give them what they need in a way that’s better than their alternatives. It’s your own company that will be hard. Who is going to discover the customer’s preferences? How much effort will be required to do things and where will the resources come from? Who has the authority to decide every little thing? How do you get the price low enough to win? What is a price that is low enough to win? How do you get it all into your proposal, articulated effectively, and submitted on time? Oh, and if you think the customer is as easy as it says above, think twice. Negotiation is fundamental to capture.

You can skip Capture Management if winning isn't important

All opportunity in your company comes from growth. And most must-win, high-value opportunities require capture. It’s a hard job. And everybody depends on it succeeding. It’s worth a dedicated, quality approach. Don’t skimp on the qualifications of your Capture Manager. Make the person you need available. But don’t just assume that getting the right person is all it takes. Hiring the right people is not enough. Surround your Capture Manager with all the organization, process, and resource advantages you can to maximize your win rate.

Put the least amount into it that you need to win every time.