The B2G Process - Where Does It Start?
In this series of blogs CLEVER will discuss the seven steps of the business development process, with some hints about how they are addressed by the CLEVER Cloud Portal. This discussion covers step 1.
CLEVER-BD knows Government business development is a long-term proposition requiring patience, and a massive amount of intelligence gathering. It also requires analytical decision making, problem solving, marketing, sales, relationship building, teaming, solutioning, pricing, proposing, and more. All of which creates enormous complexity. Add the need for staff with special talents in a variety of disciplines, tools to access intelligence, someplace to organize everything and the complexity continues to grow.
Yet, we often hear people talk about BD in simplistic terms. What are the phases of this activity, just BD-Capture-Propose? Sounds simple enough, you just need one person who knows each of the three steps. So, starting with BD – what is it, really? Most people respond it is all about having relationships. Put simply – who do you know?
Despite the simple talk, companies small and large struggle every day to find the right people to develop/execute the right process. Of course, the process purveyors who want to make money offering training can take even the simplest concept and turn it into a very long check list with a template for good measure. And there are plenty of tools you can subscribe to that will take government info and reformulate it to make it easier to access, just so you can have mountains of data-points to wander through. Add to the checklists and data tools a CRM to track it, and you have a process? Or do you? CLEVER says not quite!
Is it really all based on relationships? [A CLEVER knowledge point - analysis of the previous employment relationship between the executive team of the company that won a contract and the organization awarding the contract indicates this type of favoritism comes into play about 28% of the time - but keep in mind, this does not mean the company was not deserving of the award, and it also means that previous relationships probably do not play a role 74% of the time. Still, it is a data-point in your intelligence gathering you should consider when making a bid decision.] Do all the intricacies around intelligence gathering, probability of win, price to win, win strategies, teaming composition, incumbent capture also make a difference? In all the discussions on getting BD right, have we really found the right starting point? According to many people, if it isn't who you know then it’s finding the right opportunities to pursue. But why is defining right so hard? Maybe it's hard because it’s not the place to start!
According to CLEVER a go-to-market plan is the first step, but what is it and how do you build one? CLEVER says it can't be some abstract plan. It needs to be a detailed strategy on how to approach and penetrate the market. At this point it might be good to ask yourself, do any of your BD tools have the ability to help you build such a plan, and then actually use it in implementing your BD process? If not, your BD infrastructure has failed you already. Does CLEVER do this –yes. What are some of the elements that CLEVER considers?
Definitions of your major markets and within each, specific business areas with prioritized tags to allow a clear picture of what you do, what your specializations are, and what you want to do.
In the government space performance history is always important, whether your company has prior projects, or you are just starting out and going to use the personal experience of you and your staff. Is your current infrastructure capable of absorbing previous statements of work and understanding them to profile your history? Can CLEVER? Yes, CLEVER reads and builds its own knowledge base describing the work you have done.
Certifications and socioeconomic classifications, customer history, prioritized target customers, contract type and solicitation type preferences, lead time framework, bid value thresholds, competitor profiles, geographic interest, and more – all become part of the CLEVER Market Profile for your firm.
This composite picture is the start of an intelligent process done right, but what do you do with it? – CLEVER has an answer for that in Part 2 of this blog series