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Color team reviews are business development milestones at which experts and managers work to improve the win potential of pursuits. Done correctly, they are a cost effective way to improve the overall success of your capture planning and proposal development efforts.

Most of us know how vital color team reviews are to ensuring a well-written, concise solution for our customers. But these reviews can get tricky and become ineffective if we’re not careful. During Shipley’s most recent webinar on color team reviews, we were asked many questions about how to hold effective reviews. But, by far, the most popular question was, “who do I invite?”The answer? It depends on the size, scope, and complexity of the pursuits as well as the size and mission of your organization. Color team reviews should be tailored to fit the environment and the pursuit size and complexity.

A cycle is a progression through a series of stages leading to a desired result. In business development, the lifecycle is about winning business. You’re not winning just any business, but business that is sustainable and profitable that helps the organization meet its objectives.

Capture Planning is the process of identifying the opportunities, assessing the environment, and devising and implementing winning strategies oriented toward capturing a specific business opportunity. Consistently successful capture planning requires a written, action-oriented capture plan.

Bidding on large contract vehicles, including multiple-award IDIQs (for instance Governmentwide Acquisition Contracts [GWACs]) can be challenging and time-consuming for any organization...

Capture (opportunity) management requires careful and precise execution of a well-developed capture plan. Developing the plan is important. Executing the plan is difficult but essential. Capture managers are generally made, not born. Most organizations develop capture managers internally as they gain awareness of company strategies for growth or market positioning. The capture manager is generally the primary person responsible for winning or losing opportunities and directs customer contact before, during, and after a proposal is submitted.

Some best practices in proposal writing, improve your writing and your win rate by applying these seven rules

Storyboards and Mockups are planning tools used to develop and review new content before writing text. Like any tool, they should save time and improve quality to justify their use...

Probability of Win (Pwin) remains one of the most misunderstood concepts in business development today...

Bid decisions are decisions gate reviews triggered by ongoing customer or opportunity intelligence. The opportunity manager (or capture manager) along with management determines whether to advance, defer, or end the pursuit. The decision hinges on whether you have the capability or can obtain the resources to pursue and subsequently capture an opportunity that meets your business objectives.

A proposal strategy is a plan to write a persuasive, winning proposal that sets you apart from your competitors. Proposal strategy must align with the capture strategy in order to create win themes that tell the story...

Theme statements are not sales slogans, like the catchy phrases most commonly seen in consumer marketing. They are based on customer hot buttons and motivators.

The role of business development (BD) and sales professionals is the same across all industries—to win business. The key difference between high performing BD professionals and organizations relative to their peers lies not in their ability to close deals, rather their ability to effectively qualify their pipeline opportunities. Most importantly, high performers know when to kill a low-probability opportunity and they get it out of their pipeline as quickly as possible.

Value propositions establish customer value based on the business relationship. They describe how the seller’s solutions will improve the customer’s business and how that improvement with be measured. Value propositions are opportunity and customer specific and are developed collaboratively with the customer throughout the pursuit cycle...