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The OST Approach to Federal Business Development Service
OST Global Solutions is a premier business development company located in the metro Washington, DC area (in Silver Spring, Maryland). Our core staff have supported 18 out of the top 20 federal contractors, as well as dozens of small and mid-size businesses. We have won more than $18 billion for our clients since Olessia Smotrova-Taylor founded the company in 2005. We specialize in the full cycle of business development. We have more than 900 consultants specialized in business development, capture management, proposal management, proposal writing, cost strategy, pricing, orals coaching, graphic design, desktop publishing, marketing, and other professions that are integral to winning business.
To help you grow our BD Service touches upon the entire business development lifecycle, although we mainly encompass the areas inside the dotted lines (steps 2.0, 3.0, 5.0, and 6.0). We initially started out as a capture and proposal training and consulting company (steps 7.0 and 8.0 below) but have expanded our offerings in order to help our clients bridge the gap between capture BD, capture and proposal support.
The reason we started offering this service is because many of our clients shared with us their frustration with their current state of business development. They either weren't growing fast enough because they weren't bidding on enough projects that were in their sweet spot, or they had wasted money going after poorly qualified opportunities that they had no chance of winning. All of these were symptoms of a broken BD process.
To add an insult to an injury, a majority of them had a
bad experience with their business development service provider (either an employee or a consultant). We found that this is because of three reasons:
• Most business developers get their jobs purely on the merit of their relationships - where the word "relationships" is akin to magic. The truth is that relationships are not enough. Federal Business Development is a profession. Most business developers lack professional training and experience in business development, capture, and proposal management. As a result, it may take up to a year to find out, the hard way, that they don't know what they are doing, when results are few and far between, and the company has risked its money and business future on this one business developer.
• Business developers tout their relationships to get hired, but the truth is that many of those relationships go stale within 2-3 years if not actively cultivated. Also, many of these relationships are not that strong to begin with. In reality, it takes a special kind of person to maintain ongoing relationships with current leaders: they have to have previously held a high position, be currently active (and successful) in the business arena, be the kind of a congenial person that people want to spend time with, and be someone who routinely does favors for people so that they are compelled to do the same in return. These individuals are few and far between, and if one is lucky to land a rainmaker of this caliber, they will cost upwards of $250,000 a year and incentives (even if they want to work for you full time, which many do not).
• With few exceptions, most companies don't have a way to measure the effectiveness of the Business Developers' work. At every check in, one is told that "Business Development is a long-term investment and one can’t expect to see results right away". Although that is somewhat true, and one may see some results (a few meetings with potential customers and one or twoopportunities that may surface), most companies don't have a realistic way of measuring how effective their BD person is. Successful BD includes extensive metrics, documentation, and research results that will allow you more control and visibility into this vital part of the business.
 To help our clients, we created a service that would solve all these problems by having a highly trained and experienced team that uses a proven methodology, the latest best practices in finding and vetting opportunities, state-of-the art tools, metrics, and, of course, the right relationships in Washington, DC.
Our Business Development Service will not only identify the opportunities in your core competency, but will help you determine whether you have a chance in winning an opportunity. Utilizing higher service levels will help you greatly increase your probability of winning government contracts.
P.S. If you think of someone else who could benefit from this information, please, forward it to them!
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