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Attention Business Owners, Executives, Business Developers, Capture and Proposal Managers!
How to Double Your Probability of Winning Bids by Mastering the Art of 'Capture' Complete Course in Positioning to Win Multimillion-Dollar Contracts BEFORE Writing the Proposal Join me for an eight-part webinar series
taking place over a course of eight weeks, happening RIGHT NOW through September 2nd
When my phone rings, and a potential client calls, about 90% of the time the story is the same: we've got a Request for Proposal (RFP) in and we need you to help us immediately. I say – great, would be happy to help you. By the way, have you done any capture? I hear either "yes," "some," "not much," or "what do you mean?" I then ask the potential client a few questions to assess how prepared they are to bid, and often proceed to talk them out of bidding (and myself out of business) even if the answer to my opening question about capture may have been "yes". See, the truth is, even when callers answer "yes" and they KNOW that "capture" is a standard industry term for pre-proposal preparation (everything you do BEFORE you get a bid request), often they don’t know WHAT to do and HOW to do it well. As a result, they spend precious time and money preparing for the bid response for months... ...When in fact they'd be better off not wasting resources on writing the proposal they are not going to win. See, the big secret of companies with REAL
BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT MACHINES bringing in a PREDICTABLE STREAM OF REVENUE
(no matter what the economy is doing) is that they have mastered
the Art of Capture. At the start of my career, I'd take a proposal job when I would hear that "yes, we did capture" without asking any other questions. I was just relieved to hear that my client understood what "capture" meant, so I assumed they knew what they were doing. Once I’d begin writing the proposal, I'd realize that my understanding of capture was vastly different from theirs. I scrambled, worked all-nighters, and logged in 100-hour weeks to catch up and create a quality proposal. I slept on an inflatable mattress or in my office chair, and didn’t see my family for weeks at a time. But no matter how many extra hours I worked, there were many things that were impossible to correct late in the game. The right teammates were already taken by the competitors, the customer's door was long shut because of the government procurement rules, and the approach and win themes were patchwork instead of an elegant, well-thought-through solution. I always felt bad because my client could have had much greater chances of winning had they JUST DONE A FEW THINGS DIFFERENTLY.
My name is Olessia Smotrova-Taylor, and in addition to being a trainer, I am a CURRENTLY practicing, hands-on capture and proposal manager in the Washington, DC metro area. I lead highly competitive government pursuits in the services and solutions industries for a variety of customers. My win rate is 94% for single award, and 99% for multiple award contracts. I am also on the board of directors of the Association of Proposal Management Professionals (APMP) National Capital Area chapter (NCA), and am the editor and chair of the APMP-NCA Executive Summary newsletter. Prior to consulting for such companies as Northrop Grumman, Unisys, IBM, and DynCorp International, I won business for Raytheon and Lockheed Martin. I have been working on 10-20 government proposals each year for over a decade. I managed capture efforts for pursuits ranging from $2 million to $20 billion. I won every single pursuit where I was in charge of both capture and proposal development. During my career, I have studied more than a dozen publicly available and corporate capture management systems, attended presentations and read books and articles on the subject, and have painstakingly recorded best practices and lessons learned in applying them. The first problem that I found was that not enough people knew those systems or really understood how to apply them to their particular industries and situations. Although many were called "capture managers", and their duties included pre-proposal preparation, they never had formal training in the subject. Capture is its own profession with its own processes, secrets, and IT IS A RELATIVELY NEW FIELD having been fully defined only in the last decade or two. (No wonder so many don't know what "capture" means!) The second problem was that many of my client companies that did business with the government for a LONG time, had great proposal management processes and toolsets, but had almost nothing documented or implemented where it came to capture! They didn’t even have the most basic tools! Can you imagine how shocked I was to find out that even the best of them didn’t have what it took to truly position for the win? The third problem was that most capture systems I studied were either too difficult for practical application – or too simplistic to fit the highly competitive bids. Most of the good ones are geared towards aerospace and large weapons systems industries (which is the origin of many modern capture and proposal processes), not so much the services and solutions industries – the kind of business more than 40% of the U.S. Government contracting world is in today – and you may be as well. These systems offered a set of process steps and a laundry list of "to dos" but in my mind, didn’t truly answer the question: what simple, actionable steps could you take to get you closer to winning, and what strategies work? The answer to this question is the very essence that distinguishes great capture that gets your win probability way, way up from a mediocre attempt at preparation. So when it comes to positioning yourself to win proposals and maximizing your probability of winning, you need 2 things: 1. The right strategies: 2. A complete system: So, I worked hard to develop my own very practical approach to capture with a set of proven strategies, templates, checklists, tools, and solutions. My goal was to document my approach and understanding that connects the dots and provides a holistic view of capture, rather than focusing on a sum of parts and laundry lists of "to dos". Join me for an eight-part webinar series starting on July 15, where I am going to share with you my streamlined, no-nonsense system for mastering the art of capture. This system will help you stop the gamble and frustration of losing the contracts that would be perfect for your company. It will help you double your probability of winning, and get you to have predictable success in the federal marketplace.
I am going to offer you the most sophisticated techniques and tools - at a level that's understandable for someone new to this field, but useful for veteran proposal professionals. You can apply these techniques and tools to your next pursuit and double your probability of winning. OK, before I go into sharing EXACTLY what you'll learn in my system for Mastering the Art of Capture, here is what my students said about the quality of my webinars:
The U.S. Government is the largest customer in the world, so it is worthwhile to discover how to position yourself correctly to get your share of the pie. Here is what I am going to teach you in the webinar to help you win more proposals more often:
Do you know how to find perfect customers for your offering in the vast federal market? How do you tell that they are good customers for you? How do you fill your pipeline? What questions do you ask to determine that this is the right pursuit to chase? What can you do to create opportunities and to shape them? You will find out how to:
It goes without saying that the sales process for the government is not that different from the commercial sales process - you have to have a relationship with the buyer. Companies that believe they can find an opportunity on FedBizOpps, submit proposal, and WIN - are wasting a lot of money and energy. Just because the government is required to publicly post their procurements does not mean that you should go ahead and bid, and this is a level playing field. There is ALWAYS much more to the story than you see posted on FedBizOpps or some agency website – there is always a STORY BEHIND THE RFP STORY. And there is ALMOST ALWAYS a human aspect to the equation, where people are much more likely to trust someone they know than someone they don’t. Do you know the rules of marketing to the government? Do you know exactly with whom to build the relationship (hint: it is not just the contracting officer)? Do you know how to approach them, and how to continue working with them until the door shuts and the RFP comes out (and even after the door shuts)? Do you know how to gain a comprehensive understanding of what keeps your customer up at night, and what are the influences on their buying process? Would you like to find out how to build an effective rapport so that the customer knows and likes you? How can you leverage this relationship to influence the requirements without getting yourself into a conflict of interest, or when it is good to pre-vet your solution, and when it is NOT? Here is a sampling of the customer relationship topics we are going to cover in the webinar:
Win Strategy is a comprehensive plan that prepares you to finish on top; it looks at all aspects of the opportunity, and leaves no stone unturned. It incorporates a priority-driven action plan with deadlines and belly buttons assigned to each task. Win strategy also incorporates the development of resulting win themes, and the best value story. In the webinar, you will discover how to:
How do you identify your main competitors' likely strategies and shortfalls, and subtly exploit their flaws in your proposal? As your competitors work just as hard as you to overcome their flaws in time for the RFP release, how do you take into consideration the dynamic change? In the webinar, you will learn how to:
Do you know how to develop a teaming strategy, identify the right partners and subcontractors that AUGMENT your areas of expertise, bring discriminators, and don’t overly dilute your scope? How to decide when to sign an exclusive agreement, and when a non-exclusive deal is OK? How do you figure out how to move forward with a teaming arrangement before someone else snatches up a great teammate, and how not to tie yourself up prematurely? What are the impacts of teaming arrangements on your offer and capture management? The webinar will cover how to:
Intelligence fuels every aspect of your capture effort and your proposal response. Do you know how to gather comprehensive intelligence from a variety of LEGAL sources? Do you have a system of documenting this intelligence in a way that is useful for the proposal team? The webinar will cover:
Do you know how to develop a Concept of Operations (CONOPS) – and when it is necessary? Do you know how to postulate key requirements, effectively develop solution architecture, refine program/system concept, and draft a persuasive executive summary - all in preparation for the handover to the proposal team? The webinar will cover:
What students say...
When is the webinar taking place?
All webinars are on Wednesdays at 1:00 PM - 2:00 PM Eastern Time. (It is GMT-5 for our international customers - to check what time it is in YOUR time zone, click here. Format: Webinar (you need a phone to listen and ask questions, and a computer with Internet connection to see the slides)
Classes will be recorded, so if you miss a session, you will be able to download the audio recording of the live class and listen to it at your leisure – in your car, or an iPod - anywhere you are. I am confident that if you apply my proven tools and techniques that you will see positive results immediately ... So I am offering my No Risk Guarantee!
This webinar won’t be offered for a while after this opportunity, and probably not at this highly affordable price point (which is significantly lower than anything comparable in the market), so make sure you take advantage of it. I’m looking forward to helping YOU receive the keys to MAXIMIZING YOUR WIN PROBABILITY OF THOSE CONTRACTS you've been looking to win to grow your business!
To your success, |
will GREATLY increase your probability of winning and I trust that
you will employ all the tools, techniques, and approaches I offer
you, I am going to give you an outrageous guarantee.
