Problem/Solution—Opportunity Qualification

Problem: We’re wasting too many resources bidding on every opportunity and losing many of them.If your company is looking to win more business, it might make sense to start bidding on every opportunity in your wheelhouse. But an effective way to win more business is to actually bid on less opportunities overall—keeping your focus only on those that align with your company’s strategic goals and have a high Probability of Winning (Pwin).‍

Solution: Perform a careful and unbiased analysis of a given opportunity to ensure that you invest only in opportunities with a reasonable chance of winning.In the bid and proposal market, one of the best ways to win more business is to know what you can win and what you can’t. Performing opportunity assessments raises your win rate because it forces you to carefully qualify opportunities you have a higher chance of winning, ending pursuit of those with a low chance of winning.

‍Qualify Early and OftenQualification is an iterative process, so you must assess each opportunity on a regular basis. Don’t be afraid to drop an opportunity if the Pwin is too low to justify pursuit.You should only advance an opportunity if you have a high Pwin and adequate resources to fulfill the contract if awarded. If Pwin is low for an opportunity, save resources and time by ending the pursuit and redirecting capture efforts on other opportunities.

‍Consistently Analyze OpportunitiesOpportunities change frequently. Consistently check your competitive intelligence and customer analysis to see if any recent changes affect your calculated Pwin. If there are significant changes to an opportunity that lower the Pwin, consider dropping the opportunity from your pipeline.

‍Use Rigorous Decision Gates to Advance Each OpportunityEach key decision gate milestone should be used as a chance for opportunity qualification. Decision gates allow you to allocate resources to the opportunity with the highest Pwin and prevent you from wasting resources on opportunities you likely cannot win.During the decision gate, review the perceived customer assessment, competitive intelligence, and your capability to perform.