Developing an Opportunity/Capture Management Strategy

An opportunity/capture strategy is a plan for achieving a goal. Strategy and tactics are often confused. In the purest sense, the opportunity/capture strategy is your pre-engagement position; tactics are the actions you take to implement your strategy and to convey it persuasively. Both are required to win.

Organisations that are most effective at winning business have aligned their strategies and processes throughout, including their approach to business development. Their business, market, opportunity/capture, sales, and proposal strategies and tactics are aligned, coordinated, and consistent. Misaligned strategies result in inconsistent, confusing, and off-putting Client messages. This dissonance prompts Clients to doubt your message.

Best Practices

1. Distinguish strategy at different phases of the business development process

To craft and present an aligned message, all members of the selling team must agree to use a common process and common definitions:

• Business strategy is an organisation’s plan to achieve overall business objectives.

• Market strategy is an organisation’s plan to achieve specific market objectives, typically involving multiple sales.

• Opportunity/ strategy is the plan to win a specific defined opportunity.

• Sales strategy should be identical to an opportunity/capture strategy—that is, it should be opportunity specific.

• Proposal strategy is a plan to write a persuasive, winning proposal. The proposal strategy is a subset of the opportunity/capture strategy. The message is the same; only the tactical aspects of the implementation differ.

• Win strategy is often used to describe the overarching actions required to win an opportunity. In reality, opportunity/capture strategy and win strategy are identical.

In opportunity/capture planning, you plan and take actions to convey information that persuades each customer to prefer—or, at a minimum, to favorably regard—your organisation and solution. You might convey that information in white papers, presentations, meetings, site visits, demonstrations, or media buy-ins or events. In the proposal, you should include identical, aligned information in words, text, and graphics.