Opportunity Qualification
Decision Gate Reviews
February 22, 2023
Pricing To Win
February 22, 2023
Opportunity qualification involves a careful and unbiased analysis of a given opportunity to ensure that you invest only in opportunities with a reasonable chance of winning. Execution of pursuit decision gates is part of the opportunity qualification process.
Business development teams that apply consistent standards when qualifying business opportunities see the greatest Return on Investment (ROI) of their marketing, bid, and proposal budgets. The qualification process is often compared to a funnel that only allows opportunities that meet certain criteria through to the next business development phase.
Many effective organizations also refer to opportunity qualification as “pipeline management,” which involves careful oversight of each sales opportunity as it progresses through the sales cycle. Often, a Probability of Winning (Pwin) is assigned to opportunities as they advance toward the proposal phase or presentation to the customer.
As opportunities are qualified, there should be a decision to advance, defer, or end the pursuit, as shown in figure 1.
Figure 1. Use Decision Gates to Qualify Opportunities. No matter what the final decision is, all decision gates require action once they are finalized. 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.
