Foundations of Capture Management

Winning Government Proposals in Advance

Classroom Training in Rockville, MD, on April 17-18, 2012

Capture to winning government proposals is what attending a course is to getting an A in a final exam graded on a curve where there can only be one A. If you cut classes during the semester, your chances of getting that only A are low no matter how smart you may be. Same with winning proposals – if you skip capture, your win probability based on acing a proposal is low.

Foundations of Capture Management course will arm you with real knowledge and tools you can apply immediately to capturing contracts.

You will master techniques for customer engagement, intelligence gathering, win strategy development, competitive analysis, teaming, solution development, and more. This is an interactive 2-day workshop that is 40 percent lecture, 50 percent exercises, and 10 percent discussion. It will teach you real skills to raise win probability of the government contracts you pursue.

Why should you attend this course: The reality of government contracting is that most competitions are decided before an RFP ever hits the street. During the pre-proposal preparation process, which is called capture, vendors work hard to ensure that the RFP is written with their specific skills in mind, and that the government customer wants to select them over the competition. They position themselves as the favored vendor, and win the race before their competitors get out of the gate. Yet, many government contractors skip capture and hope to win by writing a compliant proposal. They are doomed to waste precious B&P dollars and burn out their staff, while their win rates remain low. They fall into three categories:

1. Those who, until recently, have not realized why capture is important.
2. Those who know they should prepare in advance, but don't know how. They lack the skills and proper training.
3. Those who are familiar with a capture process and know it's important, but believe they don't have the budget to do capture on top of spending money on a proposal. They think that doing it by the book would be too expensive and complicated in their fast-paced and short-staffed business environment. Part of their dilemma is that the classic way of doing capture is "death by process", with dozens of steps and slides to fill out. Adapting this lofty process to daily work takes years of experience and a concerted effort, so they lack a working understanding of capture that's practical and affordable.

If you fall into any of the above categories, this course will be immensely useful to you.

This course includes: process maps, templates, questionnaires, forms, the exact how-to, and the thought process behind it all to make it both practical and applicable to your business. It is based on:

• More than a decade of studying publicly available leading proposal industry's processes.
• Internal win processes of 7 top government contractors who are among those with the highest win rates.
• OST's own painstakingly collected lessons learned and best practices.
• Innovative approaches borrowed from other industries such as sales and marketing.

Date: April 17-18, 2012 (Tuesday - Wednesday).
8:30am - 5:00pm (continental breakfast and afternoon snack included).
Location: Metro Park North Business Center, 7361 Calhoun Place, Suite 560, Rockville, MD 20855
(check our Visitor Guide for location details, driving directions, nearby hotels and restaurants, and more).
Course completion: By attending this class, you will receive 3 CEUs towards your APMP accreditation, or 3 PDUs towards your PMP. At the end of this course you will get a Certificate of Completion.

How is this course different: Many capture courses cover the basics of capture as well as the top-level process. Although they give you some basic vocabulary and top-level understanding of capture, they fail to prepare you for the day-to-day work in the "trenches" of capture, and show you how to face the realities of leading pursuits with limited resources. Also, most courses focus on why and what you have to do, but not the how. This course will arm you with real knowledge and tools that you can apply immediately.

Who should attend this course: The course is for capture managers, proposal managers looking to expand their professional competencies, business developers, business managers and owners, sales executives, and project personnel who would like to gain understanding of capture to help their company grow. If you cannot afford to waste another minute or dollar writing a losing proposal yet again, would like to get out of a reaction mode, become proactive, and win more - this class is for you.

Learning objectives: Upon course completion, the participants will have learned and be able to put into practice:

• Understanding where capture fits in the business development lifecycle.
• Identifying five types of decision makers and developing relationships with the customer.
• Preparing customer profile and contact plan.
• Collecting the opportunity intelligence in ethical ways and analyzing it for applicability to the capture effort.
• Developing a capture plan.
• Developing a win strategy and compelling win themes.
• Identifying top competitors and performing competitive analysis.
• Identifying and vetting potential teammates.
• Postulating the requirements before RFP issuance.
• Developing Concept of Operations (CONOPS) and solution sets for proposal sections.
• Staging capture materials for proposal.
• Preparing a proposal plan.
• Preparing a capture schedule.
• Organizing the capture team.

Course curriculum: Here are some of the topics we will cover in this course.

Day 1 highlights

Module 1: Introduction
- Introductions and learning objectives.
- Introduction to capture and overview of the capture process to offer you a big-picture perspective.
- Overview of the class project.

 

Module 2: Customer Engagement
- How to create relationships and customer contact plans with your government customers.
- Four key tasks for interfacing and building relationships with government customers.
- How your customer buys, and how understanding this process can help you gain an edge to win.
- How to identify five key types of government buyers and buying influences and what they want.
- Customer contact plan for marketing, information gathering, and influencing.
- Rules of interfacing with government personnel that you don't want to break at any cost.
- 20 questions for gathering information from the customer during a visit.
Exercise: Identify customers and they key goals from intelligence sources and business development inputs. Create a customer profile and draft contact plan.

 

Module 3: How to gather actionable intelligence - since the best-informed wins
- Ethics of intelligence gathering and how to avoid legal repercussions that may cost your business.
- How to collect intelligence during government site visits, proposal conferences, and industry days.
- The most useful capture research databases and other paid and free online resources.
- How to analyze opportunity background and history.
- Purposes and key components of a capture plan.
- How to develop a capture plan.
Exercise: Development of a draft capture plan for an opportunity.  

 

Module 4: How to develop a great win strategy and win themes to prepare you to finish on top
- What exactly is a win strategy.
- How to develop a viable win strategy.
- How to devise top-level actions that create a winning offer.
- How win strategy is related to win themes.
- Three types of win themes.
- How to develop powerful proposal-level and section-level win themes that drive your strategy.
Exercise: Identify win strategies and resulting action items.

Day 2 highlights

Module 5: How to analyze your competition
- Techniques for identifying competitors and their likely strategies.
- What information to collect on your competitors.
- Where to find information on your competitors ethically.
- Relationship between competitive analysis, teaming, and other aspects of capture.
Exercise: Identify top competitors and perform competitive analysis. Update capture plan.

 

Module 6: Teaming
- How to choose and engage the right companies to create a team that compels the customer to select you
- How to decide when it is beneficial to team and when it is not.
- Teaming strategies pros and cons.
- How to decide between priming, subcontracting, joint venture, or a contractor teaming agreement (CTA).
- How to allocate scope between teammates.
- Where to find teammates.
- How to select and vet teammates that will contribute to your win.
Exercise: Identify potential teammates and update capture plan.

 

Module 7: How to develop the solution pre- and post– draft RFP that will wow your customer
- What is solution development.
- Typical problems with solution development.
- How to postulate the requirements.
- Concept of Operations (CONOPS) development techniques.
- Developing solution sets for proposal sections.
- Staging capture materials for proposal use.
- Preparing a proposal plan.
Exercise: Develop a solution for a proposal segment and document in a capture plan.

 

Module 8: How to manage your capture effort effectively while conserving your resources
- Sequence of capture steps and decision gates, and how they line up to the government acquisition process.
- How to develop an effective capture schedule that conserves your resources but enables you to prepare well.
- How to organize your capture team.
Exercise: Develop a capture schedule.

 

Module 9: Summary and recap.

 

About the instructor: Olessia Smotrova-Taylor is the President and CEO of OST Global Solutions, Inc. She is a currently practicing capture and proposal manager who has won more than $17 Billion in new business. As one of the proposal industry leaders, she is on the Board of Directors of the Association of Proposal Management Professionals' (APMP) National Capital Area (NCA) chapter and is the editor and chair of the APMP NCA Executive Summary e-zine that won 2010 APMP Communications Award. She regularly presents at the APMP's international and other conferences, roundtables, and proposal boot camps, and runs popular training webinars on business development. She is currently designing and preparing to teach a Masters-level course in proposal development for Stevens Institute of Technology. She has 16 years of experience in proposal and capture management, marketing, and communications. She is a prolific author, speaker, trainer, and blogger, and is well-known in the global proposal community. Her self-study course, Executive Summary Secrets, sells worldwide. Prior to starting her own consulting company, she won business for Raytheon and Lockheed Martin, and wrote for the Financial Times of London.

Seating is limited. Do not delay registering.

Fee and registration: For team discounts please change quantity of attendees at the checkout and click "Recalculate" to get the discount. Register 3 weeks before class date and receive $100 off per attendee as an EARLYBIRD discount!

• $1390 per one attendee ($1290 if registered 3 weeks before class date).
• $1250 per attendee when registering a team of 3 or more ($1150 if registered 3 weeks before class date), discounts apply at the checkout.

(click on a link below to register):

April 17-18, 2012 class

For additional questions please call 301-384-3350 during normal business hours. If you'd like to pay by invoice please send an email to service@ostglobalsolutions.com (NOTE: the payment must be received prior to the course start date).

Cancellations and rescheduling policy: Cancellation notification must be received 10 business days prior to the training date. Upon notification, your registration fee will be refunded less a $100 non-refundable processing fee. Any cancellations beyond the 10 business days are non-refundable, but the course fee can be applied towards another training course, webinar, or an OST Global Solutions training product. No refunds will be made for the cancellation of a rescheduled course. Attendee substitutions may be made at any time. Payment must be received prior to the course date. No-shows are liable for the full class fee.

P. S. If you think of someone else who could benefit from this course, please forward this invitation to them!