An Introduction to Capture Planning
February 22, 2023Decision 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.
Capture Planning, An Overview
1
Implement a capture planning discipline to capture new business more efficiently.
2
Enhance capture planning effectiveness by aligning activities.
3
Select a compatible medium—whether text, presentation, or web-based—to develop, review, share, and update capture plans.
4
Keep the process dynamic, flexible, interactive, and current.
5
Maintain a balance between planning and execution.
6
Complete the Integrated Customer Solution Worksheet and the Bidder Comparison Chart—even when time is short.
7
Gain and maintain senior management approval and support.
8
Commit the right people to the capture team.
9
Assign specific, measurable objectives, schedules, and completion dates to individuals, by name.
10
Establish regular decision gate reviews to determine whether to advance the opportunity to the next phase or end the pursuit.
11
Schedule color team reviews to improve the capture plan.
12
Use the capture plan to jump-start the proposal planning process.