Business Development Lifecycle

Are you currently a government contractor (#GOVCON)? How do you develop and capture business?  Do you have a GSA MAS Schedule and respond to every RFI, Sources Sought and Request for Quote (RFQ) that gets issued?   You can do business this way but is it the most efficient way?  I don’t believe it is, but I know companies that operate this way.

Average Salaries for BD Directors in the Richmond, VA area. Source Salary.com

As you can see from the salary chart, you can spend a lot of revenue on BD personnel.  Due to the level of financial commitment, taking a “shotgun” approach to BD is not recommended.   You will want to strategically invest your BD personnel’s time as efficiently as possible to get the largest return on investment possible.

Market Identification:

How can you best insure that you are investing your time wisely in the #GOVCON market?  There are no “magic” bullets to BD.  It is all going to depend on where your company is at from a past performance, relationship and capability perspective.

You will need to partner with your Leadership team (it might just be you) and define what your strategic goals are for the company.  Some examples may be to grow revenue by X% or to obtain Y new customers in the next 12 months.   You will want to lay out goals for the short, mid and long term.  Everyone always knows what they want, usually to make money but many business leaders struggle with the HOW.  Whatever your goals are, make sure whatever you are doing in your business can be tied back to your strategic goals and missions.

Who Has Money to Spend?

There are several ways to figure out which agencies have money to spend.  You can look at the annual budget report from OMB.  https://www.govinfo.gov/app/details/BUDGET-2022-BUD/context is a good place to start to understand what is in each year's budget.   You can analyze year over year to see whose budget is going up and who is taking cuts to help you zero in on some of your target markets.

USASPENDING.GOV gives you several views of the government agencies spending profiles.

To successfully develop new, long-term revenue streams, you will want to align yourself with Markets that are aligned with your capability (Past Performance data) and maybe even with relationships you may have with government staff, influencers or industry partners in a specific market.   Business Developers who target specific opportunities before they understand a market segment win fewer opportunities at greater expense, and they introduce risk to their company’s efficiency and profitability.

Business Development Lifecycle

We have talked a little about how to identify markets that you may be able to penetrate and achieve a revenue stream through.  But how should you structure your BD Lifecycle?   That depends.   Are you a startup? Do you have any PRIME contracts?  Is your company at least profitable? 

Take a look at Shipley’s BD Lifecycle - https://www.shipleywins.com/blogs/business-development-lifecycle/.  I call it, “The 96 Easy Steps of Shipley”.  If you are a $100M company, you probably have the resources to follow the 96 Easy Steps, but when you are a startup or a smaller company, you are going to have to tailor the lifecycle to what your business can effectively execute.

Using the words of Shipley, “Regardless of the market, it is critical that organizations establish and adhere to a repeatable process that allows them to compete and win business in an efficient and effective way. The process must fit the organization’s size and competitive environment.”

“Remember, a business development lifecycle is much more than a “proposal process” because it involves all phases of business development based on the strategic vision of the organization.”

What should your BD Lifecycle look like?  At a minimum you should have five stages.

• Opportunity Identification
• Opportunity Qualification
• Opportunity Pursuit
• Opportunity Capture
• Opportunity Bid/No-Bid

Depending on the size of your company and the depth and breadth of your BD Team, you can have many more stages.   What is important to remember is, FAIL EARLY.   Not every opportunity you find on SAM, Agency Forecast or BI Tool will turn into a bid.   The earlier you can identify that the opportunity is not a fit for your company will allow you to spend the necessary cycles on another opportunity with a better chance of realizing revenue.

Opportunity Identification:

Do you have a process for identifying opportunities for your company to pursue?   If not - you should have one.  There are literally a million opportunities that you will find in various portals such as Sam.gov, 

Agency Forecasts and the cadre of business intelligence tools that you may use.   But which ones are a fit for your company?

As you discover the various opportunities you should ask yourself the following questions.

1. Does my company have a current capability that meets and exceeds the stated requirements?
2. Do you have any experience in the Agency (not the contracting agency) that has the requirement?
3. Do you know who the incumbent is on the opportunity and are they well perceived by the customer?
4. Do you have any insight into the Agency and their mission?
5. Have you met with the Small Business Office for the Agency?
6. Do you have anyone in your professional network that is currently supporting the agency and/or division?

There may be other questions that you want to ask yourself before you commit your business development budget to pursing this particular opportunity.

Why so many questions?   Can’t I just find an opportunity and bid on it.   I have always heard that if you don’t bid, you can’t win.   Well the short answer is yes you can bid on something without asking yourself some pointed questions but by asking yourself these and other types of questions it will help you effectively capture business instead of bidding on something that may be wired for another company or that your capabilities just don’t fulfill.   Remember, Business Strategy = Smart Growth.

For example, you may find an opportunity that is in a market segment that fits your capabilities but this particular agency may traditionally use contract vehicles that you don’t have access to.   If you didn’t ask yourself some of these questions you may have invested time into this opportunity when you don’t have the contract vehicle or you don’t have partners with that vehicle in order for you to pursue.   This will enable you to Fail Early and invest your budget in a more winnable opportunity.