An Introduction to Capture Planning
February 22, 2023
Decision Gate Reviews
February 22, 2023
Capture planning is the process of identifying opportunities, assessing the environment, and devising and implementing winning strategies oriented toward capturing a specific business opportunity. Consistently successful capture planning requires documented, action-oriented capture plans.
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 competitors, or to at least prefer to do business with your organization prior to proposals being submitted.
The phrase capture planning originated in the 1980s in organizations that were primarily focused on large U.S. Department of Defense opportunities.
Concurrently, commercial organizations pursuing large, complex opportunities were developing detailed account or sales planning disciplines. Both were pursuing complex opportunities with the following characteristics:
- High value
- Buying committees (multiple people influencing the purchase decision)
- Long sales cycles (months or years)
Some organizations use the terms capture plan and account 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.
