Sales Communication
February 22, 2023
Solution Development
February 22, 2023
Schedule and action plan development are essential to visualize, implement, and monitor progress of the capture plan. Unscheduled tasks are rarely completed.
Common scheduling and action plan principles apply to capture plans. Preparing a realistic schedule requires a clear understanding of each task, the situation, capability of assigned talent, and adequate support resources. Just developing the schedule clarifies your understanding of the task.
Adapt the complexity of the capture schedule to the market sector, value, and importance of the opportunity to your organization, time frame, and available resources. For example, a geographically distant and unfamiliar customer will require more time, expense, and visits to position than a proximate, prior customer.
Scheduling capture efforts is more difficult than scheduling proposals. Capture activities might be limited by customer procurement requirements and shifting end points. In addition, the earlier you discover the opportunity, the less you and your customer are likely to know about the procurement schedule.
Customers often modify critical procurement milestones, meaning you cannot reliably schedule capture activities. You will not know when customer-centric capture activities must end.
Apply a disciplined yet adaptive approach to scheduling capture and action plan activities. Your challenge is to complete positioning.
Guided by your action plan, act and react as your knowledge of the customer, opportunity, competition, and potential solution evolves. Managing a capture schedule or action plan will never be precise.
Figure 1 summarizes some of the similarities and differences between capture and proposal schedules.
