What are the best tools and methods for opportunity qualification and prioritization?

There are so many opportunities out there - and success depends on finding opportunities where you have the highest chance of winning. I’ve always called this “opportunity triage” - ie a quick evaluation to assess if an opportunity is viable and warrants additional capture resources. These are the 4 questions I start with: 1. Do we have experience doing this work? 2. Does the customer know us? 3. Are there 2+ months before RFP release? 4. Would winning this be low risk? (Ie what are the downsides of winning?) The goal is to focus on opportunities where you are able to answer “yes” to at least 3/4 questions. You will further qualify the opportunity and refine your pipeline through capture - but start here! It’s worth it!

I've seen a lot of scoring matrixes to help companies make smart bidding decisions. They are useful in helping you understand your overall weaknesses and strengths in a particular RFP. However, they can be 'gamed' very easily by any salesperson who wants to bid, regardless of their chances of winning. So it is best to have clear bid and no-bid requirements that are separate from any scoring matrix.

The Shipley Proposal Guide does a through job of outlining how you should determine a pursuit decision: - Is the lead within our business area? - Does the lead fit within our strategic plan? - To what extent are we known to the customer? - Do we understand who has the decision power and influence? - Do we have any current or potential coaches or sponsors in the customers organization? - Is there an incumbent? Are the incumbent or others already favored? - Do we have any competitive advantage, discriminators, or value-added aspects? - What are the risks of bidding? Or not bidding? - Do we have resources available for capture?

It's curious opportunity qualification and prioritization questions are under proposal management versus business development, capture, or strategy. If these considerations are being deferred to proposal experts, then a systemic issue exists in how an organization is managing the entire business development life cycle. Qualification and prioritization of leads should begin before and no later than the interest decision. By the time an artifact becomes an opportunity and the pursuit decision is rendered, the focus should be effective capture that results in an informed bid/no-bid decision.

One of the most common and effective methods for opportunity qualification and prioritization is to use a set of criteria and a scoring system. This involves defining specific criteria such as strategic alignment, profitability, competitive advantage, resource availability, and risk level. Each opportunity is scored against these criteria, with higher scores indicating better alignment with organizational goals and higher potential for success. This quantitative approach helps in objectively evaluating and comparing opportunities, ensuring that resources are focused on the most promising and strategically important projects, thereby enhancing decision-making and optimizing outcomes.

Some tools that can be used: 1. CRM Systems (Customer Relationship Management): a) Salesforce: Widely used CRM platform with robust tools for tracking and managing opportunities. b) HubSpot: Offers a comprehensive suite of sales and marketing tools, including opportunity tracking and prioritization features. c) Zoho CRM: Provides tools for opportunity scoring, pipeline management, and detailed analytics. 2. Opportunity Scoring Tools a) Marketo: Helps in scoring opportunities based on demographic and behavioral data. b) Pardot: B2B marketing automation by Salesforce, offering opportunity scoring and grading. c) LeadSquared: Provides customizable opportunity scoring models to prioritize leads.

Using a tool like Awarded.AI allows you to: Automate Research: Quickly gather and analyze data on potential opportunities. Prioritize Opportunities: Use AI to rank opportunities based on criteria like fit, value, and likelihood of success. Match Past Performances: Identify opportunities that align with your past successes. Analyze Incumbent Data: Gain insights on current contract incumbents to understand competitive landscapes. Identify Competitors: Spot potential competitors and analyze their strengths and weaknesses. Evaluate Key Questions: Assess "Can we win?", "Should we win?", and "Why do we want to win?" to ensure strategic alignment.

A RACI matrix is a highly effective tool for opportunity qualification and prioritization. It clarifies roles and responsibilities across different activities, ensuring that each team member knows their specific duties concerning decision-making and task execution. By defining who is Responsible, Accountable, Consulted, and Informed for each task, the RACI matrix helps streamline decision processes and enhance accountability. This clarity enables the team to systematically evaluate and prioritize opportunities based on clear criteria and input from the right stakeholders. Implementing a RACI matrix fosters efficient collaboration and ensures that opportunities are assessed and acted upon in an organized and strategic manner.

Do folks seriously just ChatGPT these answers? This is how we get crummy reinforcement learning. As for RACI, not a bad framework for putting stakeholder in a proper place. But don't overfit frameworks or rituals and beware of activity masquerading as action. If your org isn't that big, you may not need it.

Another useful tool for opportunity qualification and prioritization is the RACI matrix. The RACI matrix helps clarify roles and responsibilities across a project or opportunity by identifying who is Responsible, Accountable, Consulted, and Informed. This framework ensures all team members understand their specific contributions, which enhances coordination and efficiency. By mapping out these roles, organizations can streamline decision-making processes, ensure accountability, and improve communication. Using the RACI matrix can help prioritize opportunities by clearly defining task ownership and aligning resources effectively to maximize the chances of success.

Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats related to a specific project or business venture. By systematically evaluating these four dimensions, you can identify and prioritize opportunities that align with your organization's strengths and strategic goals while mitigating potential risks. Strengths and opportunities highlight areas where you can capitalize on competitive advantages and market potential, whereas weaknesses and threats help identify challenges that need to be addressed. Using SWOT analysis facilitates informed decision-making, ensuring that resources are allocated to the most promising and strategically valuable opportunities.

Conducting a SWOT (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats) analysis provides a comprehensive view of each opportunity's potential. Specialized AI tools can significantly enhance this process by automating data collection and analysis. - Identify internal and external factors. - Use specialized AI tools to analyze market trends and competitive landscape. - Leverage AI to gather real-time data on industry conditions and competitor activities. - Prioritize opportunities with the best strategic fit by using AI to highlight key strengths and opportunities while mitigating weaknesses and threats.

A SWOT analysis (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats) is a strategic tool that helps evaluate internal and external factors affecting the potential success of pursuing a specific opportunity. Strengths: Internal Capabilities, Resource Availability, Reputation and Brand, Solutions Weaknesses: Resource Gaps, Skill Deficiencies, Operational Challenges, and Market Perception Opportunities: Market Trends, Client Needs, Strategic Partnerships, and Geographical Expansion. Threats: Competition, Regulatory Changes, Economic Factors, and Technical Disruption.

Red flags are a big factor in supporting the bid/no-bid decision. These are very company-dependent, but they include specifications too similar to your competitors' offering, abusive terms and conditions, budget thresholds, etc. Screening RFPs for these first can save you a lot of time of reviewing RFPs that end in the no-bid bucket. The latest AI capabilities help a lot with this because you can have like a virtual assistant that looks for these without relying on keywords but understanding the meaning and context (more like an intern than just software).

This tool involves evaluating potential projects against predefined criteria such as alignment with strategic goals, resource availability, profitability, risk level, and the likelihood of winning the bid. By scoring each opportunity against these criteria, you can objectively assess whether to pursue or decline a bid. The process ensures that your organization focuses on opportunities that best match its strengths and capabilities, optimizing resource allocation and increasing the chances of success. Regularly reviewing and refining the criteria based on past experiences and market conditions further enhances the effectiveness of the Bid/No-Bid decision tool

When my co-founders and I were building samsearch, we had the process of bid/no bid as one of the top goals for our users. We offered small features such as summarising attachments, generating smart summaries of the entire opportunity, etc to speed up the process of any bidder. After looking at the data, these features sped up the process by a lot, we noted how long every user is staying on the opportunity before there next action, either to return to the search results, or purse the contract further. Meaning, the decision of bid/no bid should not take long, but the decision should be made right.

The Bid/No Bid decision process involves evaluating mandatory requirements to ensure minimum bid criteria are met, followed by assessing commercial, strategic, and practical factors on a scale of 1 to 5. Each factor, including current workload, resourcing, previous track record, financial ability, technical know-how, strategic alignment, future opportunities, profitability, and contract conditions, is assigned 5 points. The total score is then divided by 9, and if the result is 4 or above, the bid proceeds. This evaluation ensures the bid aligns with the organization’s capacity, experience, financial health, strategic goals, and profitability expectations.

It's actually pretty simple: - Do you actually know the customer? (by name, spoken to them in-person) - Does the customer know you? (would they call you by-name if they saw you at a conference) - Do they like you enough to have an honest conversation with you? (not the fluffy formulaic script that they use to respond to emails) If 2/3 of the above are not a "Yes", then lean towards a no-bid, if all of them are a "no" then hard pass.

Implementing a structured bid/no-bid decision process is crucial. Use AI to analyze historical data, predict success probabilities, and match new opportunities with past performances. AI-driven analytics assess ROI and identify resource constraints. Highlight gaps in capabilities and provide actionable recommendations. Continuously update the decision framework with AI insights to ensure relevance and effectiveness. Optimize resource allocation and increase success rates.

Bid go/no go decisions need to be made in a time sensitive fashion as every hour that passes by, the proposal management team is losing time. I typically recommend that a bid go/no go decision be made in no more than 48 hours, particularly if we only have 2 weeks to complete the response.

Evaluate each opportunity by analyzing internal strengths and weaknesses, and external opportunities and threats. 1. ICE Scoring (Impact, Confidence, Ease): Impact: How much will the opportunity impact the business if successful? Confidence: How confident are you in the success of the opportunity? Ease: How easy is it to execute the opportunity? 2. RICE Scoring (Reach, Impact, Confidence, Effort): Reach: How many customers will the opportunity reach? Impact: What will be the effect on customers or business? Confidence: How confident are you in the estimates? Effort: How much effort will it take to implement? 3. Weighted Scoring Model: Assign weights to different criteria (e.g., potential revenue, strategic fit, resource requirements)

Qualifying and prioritizing opportunities effectively often involves a mix of methods and tools. Here are some popular ones: SWOT Analysis: Assessing strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats helps in understanding the viability of opportunities. Market Research: Gathering data on market trends, customer needs, and competitor analysis to identify potential opportunities. Value Proposition Canvas: Helps in understanding customer needs and crafting compelling value propositions. Pipeline Management Software: Tools like Salesforce, HubSpot, or Pipedrive help in managing and prioritizing sales opportunities.

AI is reinventing the opportunity qualification and prioritization process. Here’s some things to keep in mind: 1. Rapid Scoring: AI provides quick scoring to give a strong first draft and direction. 2. Instant Insights: It offers immediate insights and follow-up advisory on whether to pursue an opportunity. 3. Advisory Support: While it shouldn't be blindly trusted, AI can guide you on the best strategies and potential next steps. Leveraging AI can significantly streamline and enhance your decision-making process.

Whatever the analysis type you use, there are AI-powered tools that can shred your RFPs and highlight whatever it is you're looking for: requirements, bid/no-bid factors, risks, red flags, etc. For example, you can save a lot of time by automatically reviewing RFPs against your no-bid criteria, then checking just the results. Since AI can read and understand the RFP, it's no longer about keyword matching. It is much more powerful to uncover that hidden requirement on page 127 that is a no-bid for you!

The final decision on whether an opportunity is pursued will differ from industry to industry and from company to company. At the end of the day, remain committed to the same goal of making the decision promptly and collaborate with your stakeholders to arrive at the decision quickly. Don’t be afraid to escalate if more than 48 hours pass.

Make sure to align your opportunities with your overall business strategy. What is your opportunity cost if you are making a poor decision, for instance by exhausting your resources for a modest financial result?