Do BD Support Vendors Set the Right Expectations
Its about saving BD time by working fewer but higher quality deals that move through capture faster, so you can be better prepared for more bids!
I got an email from a vendor that provides various tools to help BD people be more effective. To promote their tools they have 4 value propositions they claim their tools will deliver. Every vendor does this, including my company, so to be fair, anything said here should be applied to us as well. What I think BD and Executive staff have to do more of is think through whether these claims are realistic, can they be delivered on by the tool set being offered, are they even possible within the framework of the government acquisition process, and are they really a benefit that will help you reach your financial goals?
The best way to show why these questions need to be asked is to take some examples. Lets look at one example for each question:
1. Value - 'Raise the average deal value for your company.' Is this realistic? Anyone can choose to bid on larger deals, but can you handle it financially if you win? How is this tool being offered going to help you with that? If the deal is way bigger than your company, is the government's cost review going to raise risk issues? If you have a target for the value of your pipeline bids, does one large bid artificially boost your pipeline value - how will you adjust for that? Maybe your problem is you are chasing things that are too big for you, so why is this even a value proposition?
2. Value - 'Improving your win rate.' If the tool set provides a detailed capture process and measures progress step-by-step, helps you build a comprehensive win strategy covering the seven primary stories every proposal needs to tell, provides a good Price-to-Win analysis tool, and a few other things, it might help you with your win rate, but does the vendors tool set actually do this?
3. Value - 'Reducing the average sales cycle.' Is this even possible within the framework of the government's acquisition process? There are things a tool can do to help you spend less time developing an opportunity, but that is different from reducing the cycle time. The government will issue its RFP when it is ready, and there is little to nothing you can do to change that.
4. Value - 'Increase the number of active opportunities.' This one drives me a little nuts because my experience in helping companies through our CleverBD tool is that most BD people suffer from trying to chase too many things, and the tools we see do not provide capacity planning and flow controls to help you determine how many deals your resources can effectively convert to bids submitted. So, is this really a benefit?
Don't get me wrong, I am sure if you talk with us about CleverBD we are not perfect - and if so we want to find out about it. All I am saying is, don't just accept that what sounds good really is? Ask hard questions, and make sure what you are investing in not only has the potential to deliver real value, but it is comprehensive in addressing the entire BD process, not just pieces of it. There is no point in spreading your information and documentation all over the place if you can have it in one place. Ask - does the tool plan pipeline requirements and capacity, does it intelligently evaluate and match you to opportunities, will it help you build win strategies, does it provide a detailed step-by-step capture process that can be time bound and measured, does it help with incumbent capture, will it help build pursuit strategies, will it deliver competitive and incumbent analysis, does it house and track key contacts, does it calculate PWin based on competitive win rates, does it help you manage internal and external communications, does it provide comprehensive performance measures for pipeline momentum, bid momentum and overall BD performance? Now, add some questions of your own and share them with me!