Recruit the Best Business Development Team

Sometimes we waste time trying to figure out who is in charge. It can be as confusing as listening to a rendition of ‘Who’s on First’ by Abbott and Costello. To avoid confusion, the Business Development Team must work together, understand their roles, delegate authority, and exercise that authority to carry out their assigned responsibilities.

Your BD team may include:

• Company Executives
  
  
• BD Managers
  
  
• Capture Managers
  
  
• Proposal Managers
  
  
• Coordinators
  
  
• Support personnel – contracts, pricing, safety, security, and human resources
  
  
• Subcontractor capture, proposal, technical, contracts, and pricing personnel

Each team member has a role (or roles), responsibilities, and authority. They must all know who is up first. Everyone cannot run the first leg of a relay. There must be a plan to successfully complete the race, and everyone must know, understand, and follow that plan if you want to win more government contracts. The roles listed below may be different than those at your company, but they are most likely being performed by someone on the team.

Assign Roles and Responsibilities to the Team

Company Executives maybe include the COO, CEO, or a VP. These executives may not be involved in the day-to-day details of capture and proposal, but they are responsible for committing corporate resources to the bid and for executing the contract successfully.

BD Leadership or Managers identify potential opportunities, manage an opportunity portfolio, and gather information.

Capture Managers use their technical skills and proposal knowledge to develop proposal win themes, capture strategies, and the overall Capture Plan. They combine sales, pricing, and contract expertise with leadership skills to build a winning team.

For some companies, BD and capture functions are executed by the same person. Others employ a team of people. However, your company is organized, you need to know what must be done, by when, and by whom. This is a requirement if the team is going to work together efficiently and reach the goal.

Proposal Managers produce the written sales documents, based on Capture Manager inputs and manage the entire proposal process.

Again, each team member has a role (or roles), responsibilities, and authority and must know who is in charge. If part of the team does not understand the plan, they will not be able to fully support the plan, which will cause time delays, morale issues, and possibly even chaos.

Work Together for the Win

In the BD cycle, developing a winning bid is not merely a series of hand-offs from one separate phase to another. Rather, BD is a team sport. Everyone may be involved in each phase but have a different level of effort or leadership opportunity. There must be a designated lead for the entire BD process and for each phase of the process. Everyone on the team must recognize the authority of the lead and support them through the entire BD lifecycle.