One of the great indicators of a healthy GovCon practice is a full pipeline. Everyone loves seeing the millions of potential dollars that could be coming your way. But many times, you can be lulled into a false sense of security—and hope—by your pipeline, especially if you’re not involved in the details of every opportunity.
As a federal government contractor, you can’t afford to take “flyers.” Time, resources, and budget are typically scarce even in the most successful government contractors and wasting them on low-probability opportunities is crazy, if not irresponsible.
As a leader of your company, you know how important it is to have an “honest” pipeline and to focus on quality, not quantity, of the pipeline. But unfortunately, some of the other tools we use tend to focus on the quantity, and not necessarily the quality.
Most Federal Government Contractors use some type of front-end opportunity discovery tool, like GovWin, Bloomberg (BGOV), GovTribe, or SAM.gov (formerly FedBizOpps or FBO), to search for opportunities that meet a certain set of criteria, as defined by the company. The good—and the challenge—of these systems is that they discover a lot of potential opportunities. Many companies go ahead and pull all these opportunities into their “pipeline,” whether the opps are pushed or imported into a software-based system or downloaded into a spreadsheet.
You now have a pipeline full of opportunities that meet your specified criteria. But many—if not the majority—of those opportunities are not worth your time and effort.
So, how do you make knowledgeable, fact-based decisions about which of these opportunities deserve your time and effort, and which ones don’t? You need quality data and information. Knowing—or not knowing—the right things about each opp will give you the necessary ammunition to make the right decisions about which opps to pursue.
We’ve identified four things you can do to help ensure you’re tracking and responding to quality opportunities.
1. Identify a Set of Required Data and Information for Each Opportunity
Containing one of your keywords or being published by an agency you’re currently working with or would like to work with doesn’t make for a quality opportunity. Nor does the data and information you can download about the opp. You need real information, which isn’t necessarily contained in the RFP. For example, you need to know the history of the opportunity/contract, the key substantive contacts (not just the contracts person), the incumbent and how they may be perceived by the agency, and some connection to the opportunity. In most cases, this “connection” is absolutely critical. It may include some “inside” information, insight you have gained through networking and research, or personal connections to those within the agency. But this intangible information is oftentimes a key decision criterion for companies.
If you can’t get this information from your BD team, the chances of you winning the contract are in question. Granted, you can begin your research now and get some of that info, but once the RFP is announced or released, it’s too late. It’s absolutely essential that you are able to identify this key set of data and information.
2. Capture and Track Required Data and Information in Your Pipeline
A pipeline is more than just a list of opps. It should contain fields where the above type of information—and much more—is captured and updated frequently. Within your pipeline, create “Required” fields to ensure the above information is not just known, but captured for the record. By identifying these fields, you’re setting the expectation with your BD and capture teams that they must have this information. Without it, you can’t create the record, or submit the opportunity to the gate review process, as we’ll discuss below. You’re also ensuring a level of consistency across all the opps, and across all the team members. No one can complain about additional requirements or additional scrutiny when everyone has to do the same thing and have the same information. You’re also not wasting time and effort on those opps you don’t know anything about. You can either flip past them or remove them from the pipeline altogether.
There are many software-based pipeline tools on the market, but very few that are built specifically for GovCon. When reviewing the tools, ensure you’re getting something that will actually support your information needs and your processes. Many of the pipeline tools on the market today are more focused on commercial sales, in a transactional model, with short proposals or quotes and quick turnaround times. They don’t support a gated, phase based approach to opportunity management, the detailed nature of capture activity, or the robust document management features required for proposal development and review.
3. Formalize Your Gate Review Process
Most Federal Government Contractors have some type of gate review process in place, or at least some of the elements of one. It’s important to formalize that process and ensure that all opportunities are subject to it. The concept of the gate review process is that to move an opportunity forward and assign resources to it, it must have “passed” the gate, meaning that it has all the required data and information, and that it has been vetted by your gate review team. Formalizing your process adds structure, organization, and consistency to the mix. And, most importantly, it ensures every opportunity plays by the same rules and gets consistent discussion and scrutiny.
There are many software-based tools available to help formalize the gate review process. A good pipeline tool will also have the capability to create a gate review process. A system that captures, tracks, analyzes, and reports against the opportunity data can provide valuable structure and organization to the process and provide some insightful reporting that can be used as input to all future opportunities and pipeline discussions. Good gate review software will also provide automatic notifications, calculations, triggers, actions, and integration with front-end and back-end systems, email, and Office products.
4. Use the Pipeline Tool During Meetings
Using the pipeline tool as the foundation for your pipeline review meetings accomplishes three purposes: 1) it increases visibility and accountability, 2) ensures everyone is working from the same sheet of music, and 3) helps enforce the data requirements and ensure all required fields are completed. Sharing the pipeline, opening up each opp, and reviewing the data and information for each is a great way to ensure the quality of the opp.
Visibility and accountability are two words you hear a lot from leaders of Federal Government Contractors. Leaders know that visibility into the pipeline and each individual opp is critical to the go/no go decision making process. Actually projecting or sharing the pipeline during meetings increases visibility—everyone can see it. It also increases accountability. When you see each opp, you can also see who’s adding the required data and information, and also who knows what they’re supposed to know about each opp. Such visibility—and potential praise or exposure—is a great motivator to do what you’re supposed to do.
Using the pipeline tool during meetings also helps ensure everyone is on the same page. It just saves time and confusion. No worrying about the most-recent version, things being different across different versions, and so on. Everyone can see the pipeline, the opps, and all the required data and information.
And finally, it helps enforce your data requirements. Again, the visibility drives accountability and provides incentive for your team to add the necessary data and information to the opps.
Moving Forward
So, if you want to ensure you’re spending time on quality opportunities, focus on the four above steps. It will provide consistency, focus, and some level of confidence that you’re pursuing the right things.
If you’re interested in checking out an automated, software-based pipeline tool, take a look at R3’s WinCenter for Opportunity Management. WinCenter is built specifically for Federal Government Contractors and meets many of the suggestions and best practices identified above.