3 Smart Strategies to Integrate your Business Development Team

How many people in your company are involved in your response to a government RFP? Your business development team (BD team) may include capture managers, marketing staff, proposal managers, proposal coordinators, editors, writers, subject matter experts, and graphic artists. But you have an extended team, who need to be well informed and integrated with the BD team to complete their support tasks easily and quickly.

Your corporate points of contact for contracts, human resources (HR), IT and cybersecurity, quality, facility security, and safety may all provide direct or indirect inputs to your BD process, including:

• Review DRFP or FRFP to develop questions to submit to the government and identify issues and potential risks in the solicitation.
• Analyze contract deliverable requirements list (CDRL) for impacts to contract execution.
• Prepare and distribute Non-Disclosure Agreements (NDA), Teaming Agreement (TA), and other data calls during capture management phase.
• Draft proposal narrative for their area of expertise.
• Participate in team meetings and the color team review process.

Team communication and collaboration is essential in today’s virtual workspace. Make use of timesaving tools to keep your team on track with a centralized capture and proposal management software solution. When you implement a centralized solution, you can designate the users, define their roles, and assign permissions. Internal contacts can be added as users and immediately integrated with your BD team.

As a new contract opportunity is added to your BD pipeline, capture managers can assign users – including those security, safety, and other extended team members – to the opportunity team and your team is ready to collaborate.

Integrate the BD Team with the Extended Team

Opportunity Centric data management will keep your extended team and BD Team in sync. Since capture and proposal managers work with an opportunity throughout its lifecycle, all information and data should be linked and organized by opportunity. Each opportunity in your BD pipeline is the hub for all information – from identification to capture to proposal development and submission – every document, note, email, and much more can be organized and linked to the specific opportunity. This organization will keep your extended team up-to-date on schedules and meetings and they will always know where to find information.

Designate a secure document library and include document permissions, tags, revisioning, and co-authoring abilities with Microsoft 365. Use a consistent document, file, and folder structure so all team members know where to find the documents they need to complete assignments and where to upload their completed documents. Ensure access to documents is controlled in accordance with your CMMC certification level.

Create automated workflows for information requests such as Non-Disclosure Agreements (NDA), Teaming Agreements (TA), capability matrices, and other data calls. This makes it easy to know who has received the data calls and assess completion status without additional emails. The capture manager and proposal manager can assign tasks and check the status to ensure tasks are completed. Team members can be notified of writing assignments, complete assignments, provide status, and participate in the Shipley color team review process as needed. This reduces miscommunication while users are supporting multiple opportunities at the same time.

These strategies can be incorporated into your BD process using new or existing software.  Capture and proposal automation software is not just for proposal managers – it supports your entire team and helps them to be more productive as they contribute to your success.

Download 5 Easy Ways to Increase Your Proposal Win Rate and get your team working together, submitting better proposals, and winning more business!