Workshop Description:

In this 2-day in-person course, you will develop your skill leading business pursuits prior to release of requests for proposals, when your competitive potential and flexibility are highest. Through lecture, presentations, and simulation of a competitive opportunity, you will learn to improve your position with your customers before submitting offers.

Discover how companies that invest in business development before writing proposals bid on fewer opportunities, spend less, but win more often.

You will learn about:

• Understanding the reasons companies pursue business opportunities
• Assessing opportunities and selecting appropriate opportunities for pursuit
• Preparing a capture plan
• Understanding customer buying behavior
• Collecting and analyzing business intelligence
• Assessing competitors
• Developing a capture strategy
• Influencing customers
• Supporting proposal development and reviews
• Supporting responses to customer questions and negotiations

Discover how companies that invest in business development before writing proposals bid on fewer opportunities, spend less, but win more often.

Who Should Attend

• Senior Executives
• Program Managers
• Capture Managers
• Proposal Managers
• Campaign Manager

Materials

• Workshop Manual
• Capture Management Tools
• Shipley Capture Guide

Workshop Description:

This two-day training course teaches skills for proposal or volume management. The training begins by simulating a real opportunity through a case study. It continues by practicing all steps necessary to plan a successful proposal effort. It wraps up with comprehensive guidance on effective leadership techniques for the fast-paced proposal environment.

You will learn to:

• Assess your own proposals like evaluators do
• Create effective proposal strategies
• Develop compliance checklists
• Outline proposals to match RFP instructions
• Assign requirements to appropriate authors for coverage in the proposal
• Prepare for and conduct an effective kickoff meeting
• Lead high-performing proposal teams on fast-paced schedules
• Prepare for effective reviews
• Exploit knowledge of the selection process to guide interactions with your customer after proposal submittal

Who Should Attend

• Anyone who manages government proposal efforts

Materials

• Workshop Manual
• Shipley Proposal Guide

Workshop Description

This two-day training course equips you to be a productive contributor on proposal teams. Taught from the perspective of a section author, the training replicates the experience of planning and writing a proposal section, from receiving instructions at a kickoff meeting to incorporating feedback from reviewers.

You will learn to:

• Think like evaluators of your proposal
• Plan content and layout of proposal sections
• Incorporate effective graphics and captions
• Organize, write, and revise proposal text
• Collaborate with other team members

In the training, you will be assigned to plan and write a proposal section for a proposal scenario in collaboration with other team members, gaining insights into processes, tools, and sources of necessary information.

Who Should Attend

• Proposal Contributors
• Proposal Writers
• Proposal Managers
• Business Developers
• Proposal Coordinators

Materials

• Workshop Manual
• Shipley Proposal Guide

Workshop Description:

This hands-on workshop will have you analyzing competitive bids from a customer’s perspective to gain understanding of how buyers in structured markets make purchasing decisions. Then, via a case study based on a real-world competitive acquisition, you’ll learn about and follow a process for development and exploitation of competitive intelligence to target a price to win.

You will learn to:

• Understand customer buying behavior
• Estimate customer’s budgets and price expectations
• Predict competitor’s likely solutions and prices
• Determine a price to win and use it enhance your competitive posture throughout the business development lifecycle

During the workshop, you will work with realistic examples of market research, historical contract information, and data about competitors. These will illustrate the kind of information you should seek and use for your own organization’s business pursuits.

Please note, this workshop does not cover cost estimation techniques, which will be unique to your organization. It focuses on determining a combination of price and capability that will appeal to your customer’s buying style—the price to win.

Who Should Attend

• Business Development Professionals & Managers
• Financial/Technical Professionals
• Pricing Managers
• Capture Managers

Materials

• Workshop Manual
• Shipley Capture Guide

Workshop Description:

This 1-day workshop covers the pre-capture phase of the business development cycle and is specifically designed for professionals who have business development and sales responsibilities. This workshop not only delivers concepts that give a strong theoretical foundation for capture and sales activities, it also provides the critical communication skills required in real life.

Learn to:

• Understand the customers decision-making or source selection process, personnel, and evaluation criteria
• Create value by helping customers think through the business impact of key issues and drivers
• Gain insight into how your attitudes and behaviors affect the development of trust in the customer relationship

Learn to strengthen customer relationships for short- and long-term success

Who Should Attend

• Capture Managers
• Business Developers
• Program Managers
• Solution Managers
• Account Executives

Materials

• Workshop Manuals

Workshop Description:

This one-day workshop begins by exploring the concept of customer focus and how it can be achieved. It continues with information on the many uses of customer-focused executive summaries in business development documents, especially proposals. A process for creating effective summaries is then introduced and practiced, step by step.

You will learn to:

• Understand the nature of customer focus and how to infuse it into your documents
• Create executive summaries focused on your customer’s most important issues
• Use customized planning and organizing tools to quickly craft effective executive summaries

By the end of the workshop, you will have a completed executive summary you can use as a model or share with a customer. At your discretion, this can be an executive summary related to an historical business opportunity (won or lost), a live opportunity you are currently pursuing, or a case study furnished by Shipley.

Who Should Attend

• Account Managers
• Sales Professionals
• Proposal Managers
• Capture Managers

Materials

• Workshop Manual
• Shipley Proposal Guide

Workshop Description:

In the workshop, you will learn about more than 12 useful tools that support proposal development milestone reviews and how to adapt new skills and approaches to your organization’s needs and markets.

You will learn to:

• Understand the various color team reviews and their objectives
• Identify key deliverables that result from winning color team reviews
• Use formal color team reviews to ensure compliance, responsiveness, and customer focus
• Prepare assigned reviewers with necessary tools and guidelines

Examples of reviews we address during the workshop include:

• Blue Team #1: Reviews initial capture strategy and capture plan
• Black Hat Team: Predicts competitors’ solutions
• Blue Team #2: Reviews updated capture plan and solution set
• Pink Team: Reviews storyboards and mockups to confirm solution set and to validate proposal strategy
• Green Team: Reviews cost/price solution
• Red Team: Reviews final proposal draft—including price—to predict how the customer will score the proposal
• Gold Team: Approves final proposal and price
• White Team: Compiles lessons learned from capture planning through proposal development to contract award

Who Should Attend

• Capture Managers
• Program Managers
• Proposal Managers
• Volume Leads
• Proposal Coordinators
• Business Development Professionals

Materials

• Checklists
• User-Friendly Templates
• Supporting Tools
• Shipley Proposal Guide

Workshop Description:

In the course of a rapid fire day, you will learn why some companies consistently win and others do not—the paradox will be exposed.

You will leave the workshop with a practical blueprint for improving your organization’s performance and results.

You will Learn To:

• Understand the paradox
• Assess your current business development process
• Develop leadership strategies
• Tailor a business development process for your organization
• Assess the capability of your staff to execute the process
• Apply the best practices used by winners
• Finalize your immediate, short-term, and long-term plans
• Identify gaps and enlisting professional support

Do you want, or need, to win more business? Do you appreciate straight talk about your company and yourself? Can you fully commit one day during which improving business development is your sole focus? Are you willing to learn from the secrets of companies that are beating you today? Are you prepared to apply what you learn during the seminar?

This is not an academic exercise or skill building course. It is a call to action.

Who Should Attend

• Business Development Leaders and Executives
• Sales Directors and Vice PResidents
• Capture Managers
• Small Business Owners
• Program Management Professionals

Materials

• Shipley Proposal Guide
• Shipley Capture Guide
• Shipley Business Development Lifecycle Guide

Workshop Description:

Gain a strategic advantage by enhancing the skills of your proposal professionals who manage and prepare cost volumes by providing techniques and tools that support your claim to offer best value.

This interactive workshop builds practical skills through lecture, discussion, and skill-building exercises. The training addresses critical issues needed to gain a strategic advantage by enhancing the skills of the people who manage and prepare cost volumes:

• Understand how cost volumes are evaluated and what increases cost in evaluation
• Learn acceptable, allocable, and allowable costs
• Learn why and how to develop the RFP requirements checklist, CLIN, CDRL, WBS, and Program Control Matrix
• Learn to develop a WBS and WBS dictionary
• Develop appropriate and acceptable estimates
• Develop good task descriptions
• Develop defendable BOEs
• Learn the impact of and how to prepare for DCAA Fact Finding

Who Should Attend

• Section Writers
• Cost Account Managers
• Proposal and Volume Leader
  

Workshop Description:

Through lecture, discussion, and exercises, workshop participants will learn what federal evaluators expect and how those inputs are evaluated. This interactive workshop focuses on the importance of Past Performance as a proposal evaluation factor and how it contributes to a winning proposal.

This one-day, online/in-person course will help you write past performance narratives that win by including the right information with a focus on the customer’s needs.

Participants will also be introduced to best-practice methods that can be applied throughout the business development process to enhance Past Performance submittals.

You will learn about:

• What Past Performance is
• Why Past Performance is increasing in importance as an evaluation factor
• How Past Performance is evaluated in federal acquisitions
• What to do to maintain up-to-date Past Performance information
• What to include in Past Performance questionnaires/surveys
• How to tailor Past Performance submittals
• How to overcome Past Performance deficiencies

Who Should Attend

• Capture Managers
• Proposal Managers
• Proposal Coordinators
• Program Managers
• Volume Leads
• Business Development Professionals
  

Workshop Description:

Through lecture, discussion, and exercises, workshop participants will learn important distinctions between task order proposals and other proposal forms, and their similarities—enabling participants to make better bid/no-bid decisions, create customer-focused proposal strategies, and create more efficient task order proposal response processes. This interactive workshop introduces key principles and practices for winning task order proposals and how they are applied throughout the business development process.

This one-day, online/in-person course will instruct participants on the challenges of task orders and how to overcome them to better navigate the work that will be performed on the contract vehicle.

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You will learn about:

• The nature of task order proposals and challenges to winning them
• Increasing your batting average—how to make smart task order bid decisions
• How capture planning works in a task order world
• Quick response task orders—essential elements of preparation
• How to tailor your business development process to fit task order bids
• How to best leverage work performed on the contract vehicle proposal and previous task order proposals

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Who should attend:

• Proposal Managers
• Capture Managers
• Proposal Coordinators
• Program Managers
• Volume Leads
• Business Development Professionals
  

Winning Through Oral Proposals is an interactive workshop designed to build practical skills through 20 percent lecture, 30 percent discussion, and 50 percent skill-building exercises.

The overall focus is divided between developing content and improving delivery skills. Participants receive a comprehensive workshop manual and planning templates, are videotaped, and improve their delivery skills and confidence through constructive coaching.

Through instruction, exercises, and one-on-one coaching, workshop participants will learn the processes, skills, and techniques to:

• Develop a Winning Strategy
• Design a Persuasive Message Using the Oral Proposal Planner
• Develop a Winning Delivery Style
• Prepare to Answer Critical Questions

Who Should Attend:

• Solutions Managers
• Key Program Personnel
• Sales and Marketing Prof.
• Proposal Managers
• Those who develop, present, or critique oral proposals