During the six-month fight over the federal appropriations, it has been obvious that uncertainty reigns supreme in the federal spending that drives the proposal business. As recently as 10 days ago, only 3 of the 12 major appropriations bills were signed. And most agencies were working under a Continuing Resolution (CR) providing temporary funding.
Once or twice a year, we attempt to answer the magic question, how much proposal activity will we see during the next year? In other words, how much business will proposal shops and proposal professionals be having? According to our estimates, the volume of proposal business during the first six months of 2011 was maybe 10% slower than previous year. This was not primarily because of the cuts in DoD spending, but it was mostly because of the toxic political environment in Washington, DC.
Recently, a small business asked us to provide a quick definition of business development. Our answer is shown below:
It's not the flow chart that makes a process successful. It's not even the process manual (that sits on a shelf) that makes a process successful. What makes a process successful are the tools that people use to execute the process.
The biggest problem with the transition from business development to proposal is that there is any "transition" at all. A proposal is nothing more than the closing of the sales process. It is not a separate process, but the completion of a single process.
Business development may be more of an art than a science, and we don't know how to measure art. However, bidders still need a means to validate readiness to pursue a bid and their progress toward being ready to submit a winning proposal response.
Teaming arrangements is one of the four uses of competitive analysis in business development. On a large procurement, achieving that goal -- creating the winning proposal that results in a profitable contract execution -- is a multi-faceted activity, stretching over at least months if not years.