8 Skills You Can Master for Better Capture Management

Every company needs documented processes to guide their Business Development, capture, and proposal managers through the BD lifecycle. Companies may adopt BD phases, decision points, gate reviews, and color team reviews from the proven Shipley model, they may create their own, or they may implement a combination of the two. Most companies follow a similar set of industry phases or stages for potential opportunities:

• Identification/Vetting
• Qualification/Assessment
• Capture Planning and Management
• Proposal Planning
• Proposal Development
• Post Proposal Submission

The Capture Phase of BD is typically from 6 to 24 months and includes gathering information from your BD staff, customer, competitors, teaming partners, and past contracts or bids. You will then formulate winning strategies from this information and analyze the many variables, processes, deadlines, decisions, and data points and how they relate to each other. All of these interactions require planning, data gathering and organization, and performing the right tasks at the appropriate time in the capture process.

These skills will help capture managers navigate the capture process:

• Understand who has most significant role in the Business Development process – the Capture Manager, Proposal Manager or possibly someone else.

• Proactively develop a capture plan and integrate it into your corporate knowledge base so information is accessible and useable by your Business Development team.

• Build a better Qualification Matrix help you make better business decisions by methodically and continuously qualifying potential bids.

• Develop a Capability Matrix to assess capabilities, past performance, and customer experience against RFP or custom requirements and aggregate team responses to support gap analysis and teaming decisions.

• Continue refining win strategies in concert with the Proposal Manager after the RFP drops, to ensure your solutions are customer focused and in line with RFP changes.

• Conduct a formal Black Hat Review to honestly assess your company and your competitors’ positioning with the customer. Implement strategies to showcase your strengths and mitigate your weaknesses, while exposing competition weaknesses and diluting their strengths.

• Leverage the extensive capabilities of Microsoft 365, including Teams integration, co-authoring and collaboration features, and more to help your team work together and streamline data gathering and documentation.

• Ensure your capture strategies are compelling in the draft proposal volumes by partnering with the proposal manager to ensure a successful Red Team Review.

Download our Capture Management Toolkit, which includes a SWOT Analysis template for a Black Hat Review, qualification matrix, capability matrix template, and other customizable capture planning tools to improve your capture success!

With the right skills and tools, you can become a more successful Capture Manager and lead your team to victory!