Business Development for Project Personnel

This course is intended for subject matter experts (SMEs) and project personnel who are integral to a high-performing business development organization.

The class covers how to become part of a company’s growth engine and why it’s important for project personnel to engage in the business development and capture process.

It covers BD and capture concepts at a level ideal for project personnel and shows them specifically where in the process they can make the greatest impact.

Project personnel work alongside your Government customers every day and understand their hot buttons, true “care abouts,” and vision for the future. Training your project personnel on BD will give them an opportunity to help the Government solve critical challenges.

This course teaches your project personnel how to increase

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The scope of your existing projects.

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Deepen and improve your relationship with your customers.

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Find the most important information to win a specific contract.

Course
Curriculum

Day 1

Module 1: Understanding Business Development as a Project Person

Business Development (BD) life cycle and its key steps
Your job is not business development – or is it?
Where and how you fit into the BD Process
BD functions of onsite/project staff
Where your roles fit with the BD organization’s roles
Who is who in your BD organization
What your BD organization does
Opportunity identification
Capture management and six aspects of capture
Proposal management other tasks to feed the “growthengine”
Overcoming the reluctance to “sell”

Module 2: Understanding and Working with the Customer

Four goals when working with the customer during capture
Procurement basics
Why and how the Government buys
Five categories of customer and what role do they play in your company’s BD success
Talking about new opportunities with your customers
Understanding your customer’s needs and recognizing “pain”
Understanding your customer’s psychology and motivations
Ethics rules of engaging with the Government customer
Describing your company’s and/or team’s capabilities correctly when meeting new contacts
Creating strong relationships and becoming a trusted advisor

Module 3: Serving as Liaison between the Customer and the Company BD Organization

Recognizing a new opportunity
Questions to ask the customer to collect information
Shaping the opportunity and influence the requirements
Why and how to vet your proposed solution
How to communicate effectively with your BD organization
What to expect from your BD organization
What information your BD organization will need from you
Portability of work to other contracting vehicles
White papers exploring the problem and solutions
Unsolicited proposals with company’s solution

Day 2

Module 4: Intelligence Gathering for Project Personnel

What information your BD organization needs and why
Collecting intelligence during project execution onsite
How to collect intelligence at the site visits, proposal conferences, and industry days
How to distill information from customer presentations and reports, information from end users, the opportunity background and history, and research
Rules on how to gather information ethically to keep the company out of trouble

Module 5: How to Contribute to Win Strategy

Understanding the components of win strategy
How project personnel contribute to developing a winstrategy
How to win as an incumbent or how to beat an incumbent
What are win themes
How win themes can figure into your win strategy sessions, and how to change your win strategy into a list of cohesive action items

Module 6: Competitive Analysis for Project Personnel

Avenues for the project personnel to identify competitors, gather competitive intelligence, and determine their strengths and weaknesses
The types of action items project personnel could undertake to stay ahead of the competition

Module 7: Assisting in the Team Formation Process

Basics of teaming:
- Why team and when one should team
- Forms of teaming
- Teaming strategies
- What to look for in a teaming partner
- NDAs and Teaming Agreements
How project personnel can help the BD organization with forming a formidable team

Module 8: Contributing to Solution Development

Contributing effectively to the solution development, win strategy sessions, and other BD organization-driven workshops

Module 9: Summary and Recap

Recapping the course
Checking knowledge
Discussing takeaways and questions

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

Gathering information ethically

What your BD organization does

Understanding your customer’s needs

Overcoming the reluctance to sell

Where and how project personnel fit in the BD process

How to distill information from customer presentations and reports, and conversations with end users

How to collect intelligence while you are onsite