Capture/Opportunity Planning

Most sales and marketing veterans agree that 40-60 percent of the time, customers decide whom they would prefer to buy from before proposals are submitted.The aim of capture planning is to position the customer to prefer your organization and your solution to the exclusion of all competitors or to at least prefer you prior to any proposal submissions.

What is capture planning?

Capture planning is the process of identifying opportunities, assessing the competitive environment, and implementing winning strategies oriented toward capturing a specific business opportunity. Consistent, successful planning requires a written, action-oriented plan.Some organizations use the terms “capture plan” and “opportunity plan” interchangeably. However, many account plans are not opportunity specific and may merely allocate the organization’s revenue objective among accounts. Capture planning is opportunity specific, following the pursuit decision gate milestone that continues in parallel with proposal planning and preparation until the opportunity is awarded.

Who should join the team?

Assign an individual to the capture manager role with the responsibility to win the opportunity, manage the capture planning process, and manage the capture team. This team can comprise the capture manager, program manager, and proposal manager. Note that roles are not necessarily position, and an individual might assume multiple roles and support multiple opportunities.

How do I get started?

Envision a capture plan as a framework, a series of folders or buckets where the capture manager assembles and organizes opportunity-specific data by topic. Use whatever system or software that works best for your team.Apply the following ideas in your organization to improve your capture planning:

• Implement a capture planning discipline to capture new business more efficiently.
• Select a compatible medium—whether text, presentation, or online—to develop, review, share, and update capture plans.
• Keep the process dynamic, flexible, interactive, and current.
• Maintain a balance between planning and execution.
• Gain and maintain senior management approval and support.
• Commit the right people to the capture team.
• Assign specific, measurable objectives, schedules, and completion dates to individuals, by name.
• Establish regular decision gate reviews to determine whether to advance the opportunity to the next phase or end the pursuit.
• Schedule reviews to improve the capture plan.
• Use the capture plan to jump-start the proposal planning process.

Relying on the capture plan to quickly prepare the initial proposal management plan both saves time and presents a consistent message to the customer.Want to better apply capture planning in your organization? Try Capturing New Business OnDemand!