• Building a business development organization
• Positioning and capture planning
• Training business development personnel
• Motivating business development performance
• Creating effective marketing and sales plans
• Teaming to win

Building a business development organization
Think about what it takes to build a professional sports team. Simply gathering exceptional talent does not produce a memorable performance. Winning requires leadership, a clear vision, a transparent structure and a shared desire to perform at a high level. And of course, it requires practice.  There are five elements needed to build an effective business development organization:

• Teamwork: Build a new culture
• Leadership/shared desire/structure
• Leadership -- visible senior management
• Shared desire to team
• Structure: business development systems -the key to continuous improvement

Capture planning
Capture planning is a consistent element in winning large contracts. But to succeed, it must be a mandatory, formal process scrutinized at the top. Prepared by a capture team, the plans are reviewed by high-level management and various "experts." Once approved, they are the baseline for monitoring all actions aimed at winning.

The real goal of the capture plan is to win the competition before the RFP is issued or before an invitation to present is received. A good capture plan moves the client to the position where working with your firm is the best option.

Business Development (BD) Training
ClientView has found that you should not expect much from business development training in formal classroom or seminar settings. What produces the best revenue growth is modified on-the-job training (MOJT). MOJT combines real-life daily practice with targeted delivery of relevant material tied to a company’s BD system.

Motivating Business Development Performance
Recognition -- Celebrate victory! Your company is so much more than technology and structure. It’s all about people, hard-working people who deserve credit for a job well done.

Incentive -- The team is the target Incentive compensation for large contract business development must recognize teamwork. Winning large contracts requires alignment of behavior, systems, recognition and reward. That makes it worth the effort to integrate incentive compensation into the company-wide system.

Effective Marketing and Sales Efforts
Strategic interviewing -- the key to understanding your client:
Most companies surveyed by ClientView believe that presenting their capabilities to a potential client is critically important to their business development success.

They are simply wrong. Untimely presentation of company capabilities is a common marketing and sales mistake.  What makes the greatest contribution to successful marketing and sales is LISTENING.

Compliance – the key to avoid losing:
In competitive procurements you should pay as much attention to not losing as you do to winning. Failure to respond to some minute detail can lead to a rejected proposal. To avoid losing, you should:

• Carefully read every RFP
• Listen to your customers’ comments
• Clearly understand their needs
• Be absolutely sure that every nuance is fully addressed

Teaming
We have seen top firms lose very large contracts thanks to the blindness of corporate ego. Too often, they delude themselves that size and a successful track record mean that their employees are the only ones who can provide key technologies and capabilities. But big firms have weak points, too. When they do not recognize them, they set themselves up to lose.

The only mandate that makes sense and builds revenue over time is to put the best people and resources on every assignment- whether from within your organization, or without – and a sole focus on delivering the best outcome for the client.

Interested in learning more?

 More details are available by downloading our complete White Paper Below

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Download Our White Paper on Six Actions to Winning Government Contracts

ClientView LLC is a business development firm providing executive-level business development consulting to companies that sell products and services to the federal government and commercial customers.

Our services include strategy development; marketing, positioning and proposal training; capture planning; and proposal creation and production.