Capture Planning – the Nitty Gritty

By Ann Martin | Harkcon's Vice President and Business Development Specialist

You’ve identified some new business that your company wants to win, now what? Selling to the Federal Government takes time, fortunately since the Federal Government tends to move slowly, once you’ve identified a new business opportunity, you may actually have the time to “capture” the work! On large opportunities, capture can take as much as 12 or more months. On smaller opportunities, you may only have a few months to perform capture before the opportunity is released for bid.

Capturing the work involves defining a plan with associated actions that will increase your company’s odds of winning. Continuing to collect more detailed intel about an agency’s challenges and understanding strategic plans and budgets will enhance your ability to create and present a winning solution, once a request for proposal (RFP) is issued.

One simplistic framework for performing initial capture is based on many of the items considered when defining PWin. The goal of initial capture actions is to ensure that PWin (at the time the RFP is released) is at least at 90%.

The capture plan is a living document, start with a simple outline and expand as you move forward and gain additional information. In the next blog, I’ll outline what goes into a capture plan.

If you would like to contact the author of this blog, send an email to blog@harkcon.com and reference the title, "Capture Planning – the Nitty Gritty."