Most proposal teams think they’re better than they are

Webinar Introduction and Housekeeping Hello, and welcome to today’s webinar. My name is Micheál McGrath, and I’m joined here with Kyle Peterson, my colleague in customer success and our account our account strategist. We’re delighted to have so many people here on this webinar. It’s gonna be fast and furious. It’s gonna be really interactive, which we’re very excited about, and I just wanna thank everybody for taking their time out of your day today. Before I begin, I just wanna highlight a few things on screen. We have an attendee chat that there’s already some great stuff coming through. There’s some people asking about the recordings and letting us know where they’re coming from. I’m based here in Cork in Ireland, so it’s great to see people internationally joining us today. We also have a q and a box. If you have any direct questions throughout the webinar, it is live. If you want to ask me and Kyle a question, we’d be delighted to take them. So… And also on the bottom of the screen, you have our console of content. There’s lots of great webinars and and free resources available there too. So feel free to take a look at that as well. So without further ado, I’ll ask Kyle. Kyle is my colleague here joining me today. Kyle, would you like to introduce yourself? Sure. Thanks, Michal. Hi, everyone. Thanks really for taking the time. Really looking forward to the discussion. I’m Kyle Peterson. I lead our account strategy and customer success team. So my team ultimately works with Visible Thread users, and we work with everything from Fortune 500 aerospace defense contractors all the way down to eight a IT services firm… Firms. And so we have a really, deep bench and kind of awareness of how our customer base is going out and winning business, whether you’re a bid proposal team, a contracts management team, a program management team delivering against that one business. That’s the perspective I bring. Really looking forward to sharing kinda what I’ve been hearing and learning lately. And then great stuff in the chat in terms of where people are at. I’m Chicago, Illinois based. Fabulous. And today’s webinar is a little bit different to, what you might have been on Visible Thread webinars before. It’s gonna be less conversation and more interaction with the audience. Chapter Maturity Model and Benchmarking Overview And this webinar is all about benchmarking and modeling where your business is at, where your RFP process is at. Kyle has put a lot of research and time into what he calls his maturity model. And today, Kyle is going to explain that model, and I’m gonna show you some of the data that we have already seen because many of our customers have already interacted with this, and we’ve gotten some really nice benchmarks to to show everybody. So today’s webinar is gonna run a little bit differently. There’s actually 10 live polls we want to do as we go through the the forty five minutes. So we want you to interact with those polls. What I will say is it is anonymous on your end. So if you select option a, b, or c, nobody else will see what you’re selecting. So feel free to have this honestly. We have 10 polls to get through, so it’s gonna be fast, but it’s gonna allow you to see where your benchmark… So if you say we’re not up to speed in this capacity, you’re gonna see, okay, many others out there aren’t in the… Are in the same boat or they’re doing better or worse than you. So you you can really kinda benchmark yourself. After the webinar is over, we’re gonna package up all this together, and we’re gonna try and give all this information back to you to see, okay. Okay. These are the steps that you can take next. At this point, maybe, Kyle, do wanna speak a little bit about the model? We’re gonna go into deep… Into depth in a minute, but wanna give a light overview. Chapter Genesis of the Maturity Model Sure thing. So the genesis of the model came from a question I get all the time from customers. One of the most common questions I get is, Kyle, how are my peers? How are other people doing this? And I would always answer, but the more I got the question, the more I thought there’s clearly a need and an appetite out there for benchmarking for peer to peer comparisons and, frankly, just a little bit of guidance as growth teams take a look at their people, their processes, their systems, their data, etcetera. So what I did was I sat down and decided for any kind of business out there, government contracting focus in this case, that’s going out looking to win and deliver profitable business, how do we break those functions out, along a maturity spectrum? And and then the… It’s it’s a layered spectrum too. So it’s not just one team going out and winning business. It’s not just one software tool to rule them all. Just one more systems and procedures document will solve this problem for us. It’s a layered approach. It’s a layered system. And so this model will break out maturity levels. And then within that, you’re gonna see various, various variables that kind of reflect your score. And so there’s gonna be a degree of specialization here, and then ultimately to, you know, purposely using the word maturity model, depending on where you score, not saying any kind of organization is bad or worse. It just gives people benchmarks and targets to drive to. So that’s really the onus and the motivation behind it, and hoping the group finds it valuable and elucidating. Yeah. Well said, Kyle. And no matter where you are in your career or how developed your proposal team or capture team are, it’s always a question. Every organization is, okay. How do we compare against the next organization that we’re competing against? Or when things are changing so rapidly. So there’s new technology and new processes or, there’s new government regulations, and we have to adhere to this and we have to adhere to that. Things do change, so where do I stand up to in our process? It’s it’s great to kind of have this benchmarking. And when we have gone out initially to our customer base and our initial audience with this maturity model, a lot of people come back and say, okay. We… Pretty much the same answer. We’re pretty good. We’re we’re… We could be better in certain areas, but we’re pretty good. We’re bang in the middle. And the benefit of this webinar and what we hope to bring you today and the value is, okay. Let’s break down that pretty good into a bigger kind of facets and understand, okay. Being slightly better in this in this re… In this rationale will… Is actually, you know, is actually very, very good or let you see exactly where you are. So knowing that you’re 6.2 or 6.3 will make a big difference here. So, yeah, I really hope that people find this beneficial and they enjoy kind of the the data you’re gonna get back here. So without further ado then, we’re gonna break into the maturity model itself, and Kyle’s gonna give a bit of a deeper reflection of it. So this is the types of questions we’re gonna ask today, but I’ll pass over to Kyle to kinda… To break it down. Chapter Six Dimensions of Maturity Sure. And then this is where at the end, you know, welcome some feedback here in terms of are we using the right variables? Are we missing anything? So, ultimately, whether you’re at a level one or a level five degree of maturity, the model is based on these six dimensions. So opportunity readiness, whenever I hear organizations say, Kyle, we’re trying to get left. We’re trying to get left. We’re trying to get left. You know, if you’re responding once an rfp drops, you’re already behind. So opportunity readiness is looking at pre rfp kind of opportunity requirement shaping, customer relationship building, black hat type, work. We’re looking at how do we see organizations getting left? What does that look like? How mature are they before they put pen to paper? And then process and workflow. How does the actual work gets done? Whether I’m authoring trip reports, I’m going through a bid no bid assessment, I’m a proposal writer who’s cranking out a basis of estimate, how is the work being done? We’re looking for consistency there. We’re looking for standardization, and we’re looking for scale. At a large organization, do we see pockets of excellence, or do we see relatively standardized policies, procedures? And then the tech and the tools. How are we empowering our team to do said work? There’s, and especially lately, there’s been a huge degree of emphasis, rightfully so, on tech and tools and the AI kind of boom. How are we using tools? Where are we using them? How are they being governed? Are they actually even being used? That’s an important component of this. People in roles, maybe the most important variable here. Who is doing which work? Do we see clear ownership? I think because winning a massive kind of competitive RFP is inherently a cross functional endeavor, Roles can blend. Responsibilities can merge. Do we see clear ownership? Do people know what’s expected of them? Do we know which SMEs we need to pull on, and does that SME even know they’re going to be pulled And then that kind of dovetails quite nicely into visibility and metrics. Do I understand where most organizations are pursuing more than one opportunity at once? So within my constellation of in flight opportunities, where do they sit? How are we doing kind of pre award if we’ve won it? Do we know kind of where and why if we’ve lost it? And then are we kind of bringing those metrics and that scoring back to honor and to influence future work? And then finally as a former contracts manager myself, risk and compliance near and dear to my heart. How are we avoiding those back breaking misses? Either it’s you know a section l miss and we get knocked for compliance, or a far clause kind of slips through the cracks that we didn’t flow down that can impact ultimate kind of delivery scope schedule margin. That’s really important too. How are organizations making sure that risk is identified, mitigated, and compliance is assured throughout the process? So that’s how we break this model down. And so all of your scores, like I said, whether you’re a one through a five, will be a composite of these variables, and this will give an organization some guidance. Some organizations are gonna score really highly on process and tech. Maybe they have some work to do, on visibility and metrics. So it just is gonna frame and focus potential attention as opposed to just saying, great. You guys are a three… A level three. You know, good luck. Win more. This is gonna give you that guidance. And this is where we want your feedback. So, like, I think Kyle has done an excellent job there kind of explaining how thorough this model is and the different facets, but we’d love your feedback in the chat or in the in the q and a box. So what do you think? Is there something missing out of this? Are we not getting this right? Should we structure it in a different way? We’d love to have your thoughts. So, yeah, this is super interactive. We wanna get people involved. When you complete the maturity model, we’re gonna do a bit of a lightweight maturity model today on the webinar. There is a link on the console to the full survey. When you complete that, you’re gonna get an asset that Kyle has put together. And those… And the asset is based on the results of your of your of your answers in your survey. So you’ll get one of five of these assets. Kyle, I’ll let you break down here exactly what these mean. Chapter Defining Maturity Levels One Through Five Sure. So kind of from one to five, going from least mature to most assure… Mature, we’d say an ad hoc would be a level one. That’s ultimately… You know, these efforts are a bit of a lift. How do we get this out the door without missing kind of a major compliance section l type requirement? These organizations might be customized by a bit of scrambling, you might say. And, ultimately, if we can at least get to an ad hoc standpoint, we’re gonna be scrambling a little bit less, and we’re at least gonna win on the merits of the case, not losing on some technicalities. Moving into emerging, that’s where we have a decent starting point, but we’re relying on heroics. We have maybe one or two power users, maybe one or two tech adopters, maybe one or two guys or gals that have been around here for years, and they kind of have everything up in their head. They’re excellent, and they deliver great work, but a lot of that kind of guidance, knowledge, etc. Hasn’t scaled deeper throughout the organization. This then becomes a bit of a bottleneck if you’re looking to increase volume and going after more efforts. Moving into standardized, that’s gonna be kind of level three. That’s your kind of run of the mill average shop. What we’re looking for here is more repeatability. We wanna drive, shorter, faster… Or cycle times. Excuse me. And so that’s where we’re doing the work. We’re happy with it. We’re compliant. We’re getting strong bids out there. But now we really wanna start to iterate and improve on the margins. How can we give our estimating team more time to put together kind of a basis of estimate, a cost roll up? How can I give my writers more time to really polish, to really drive differentiators and discriminators into the content? That’s… That level three is where you’re ready for that kind of deeper level type work. Level four there, we’d call that a managed kind of maturity level. That’s where we’re really getting into strong visibility. We know ultimately kind of which opportunities are gonna drive margin pipeline goals. Every kind of dollar and cents spent on the bid and proposal budget, we know where it goes. We know where we might optimize it. We’re getting things out the door on time with time to review. I’m never gonna say with plenty of time. I’ve yet to see an organization that said, Kyle, I don’t need any more time, for an opportunity. But there, we’re really starting to get into some iterative kind of data driven frameworks as opposed to just volume, volume, volume, do more. And then finally, level five would be a strategic kind of maturity level. That’s where we have standardized, scalable, repeatable processes driven by visibility, driven by governed tech. I’m gonna say AI enabled and not not all AI, but AI enabled as well. And so there’s just a lot of thought guidance and kind of feedback loops there. So five is ultimately where we’d want organizations to feel like they’ve gotten to. And we can certainly… We’re gonna go into detail here in terms of how you get these scores to these stages. But ultimately, and I’ll I’ll pause here, Mihal, is what my team works with customers to do is to say, hey, when you come on board, maybe you’re at a level two or a three. We wanna work together to move you up to level four to level five, and we can break that down into specific objectives, goals, etc. Based on the more in-depth scores, that composite score that we’re gonna go through here to see where do I need to focus. So just keep in mind those stages are a composite of all those variables that we saw earlier. So hopefully that kind of breaks it down in terms of how we measure it, what the maturity levels are, and now the polls we’re gonna get into, really excited to get people’s feedback here. You’re gonna see the types of questions that organizations should be asking themselves. And there’s no right or wrong answer. It’s just where we at today. That then gives you the visibility to decide what we need to focus on moving forward. Mihael, I’ll pause there. No. That’s great. And and this is the fun part. So this webinar is a little bit different to what we would normally do. If you’re in another tab or you have us put to another screen, let’s get involved here today. So you can click directly on screen today. So on the slides itself, you can select your option here. Let’s get involved. Have a coffee. Sit back. Relax. We’re gonna have a chat with Kyle. He’s gonna explain everything that’s right and wrong in the world right here. Chapter Win Strategy Development Poll Results But it’s gonna be, yeah. I can see loads of people filling in this question already. I’ll read it out just for the sake of of moving through. When does your team typically build its win strategy? After the RFP drops, sometimes early, we have a capture plan for bigger pursuits. We have p win scoring, capture plans that are standard for every qualified pursuit. We’re shaping requirements pre RFP through RFIs, industry days, etcetera. Like, where do you fall in that, in that kind of mix? All the maturity model questions follow the same pattern. You you select one of five. On the screen. You might need to scroll down to see number five just to… Just in case that’s not appearing directly on the screen. But, Kyle, what do you normally see here when when you you hear people? Yeah. So this question in particular depends on the size of the organization in general. And and so, you know, attendees feel free to just obviously honor that context. So here’s what I see in general. For smaller organizations where a lot of people are wearing a lot of hats, You know, you’re… I meet with a BD manager who he does kinda industry days, white papers. He’s on, you know, pounding the pavement, meeting with customers, as well as responding to RFPs. So he would say, well, yeah, Kyle. I’m always thinking about that win strategy. I’m shaping requirements, but, ultimately, he has ownership of kind of that full life cycle. Where I see opportunity here for organizations is as organizations get larger, more complex, and dare I say more siloed, oftentimes here the issue isn’t that we’re not thinking about win themes, discriminators, differentiators early on. Generally, that work is being done. Where I see organizations fall down is we’re not weaving it. We’re not kind of sharing it with our proposal, with our SMEs, with our writing teams. So we can see this information siloed, either not being shared or not consistently being reiterated throughout the writing process. That also really dovetails with kind of depending on who’s running the pursuit. That’s very common, is we see some organizations where we have teams that maybe it’s by product line, maybe it’s by sector, maybe it’s just based on personalities. We see a little bit more collaboration and data sharing there, but ultimately that’s where there would be a need for more standardization. We wanna move off of just relying on kind of one or two BD or capture leads driving this. So for our attendees, let’s see kinda where we where we fell here. So about a quarter or saying after the RFP drops, so fairly late into the process, that’s about right. In my experience, that that tracks. And, yeah, sometimes early depending on who’s running the pursuit at just under 50%. That’s why I was harping on that just a moment ago. That’s really a big opportunity for organizations. And what I think is is… Should be optimistic here is that’s great. You’re already doing it. We just need to scale this and share it kind of across larger teams, across sectors, etcetera. So what I’d encourage the the audience to think about is who is doing it, and what makes them different? Why are they doing it versus others? And I don’t have a great answer for you right now, but that can lead to maybe reworking processes, etcetera. Let’s scroll down just to touch, Mihal. So… And then kind of the last two options here, or I can scroll. Forgive me, Mihal. We use a capture plan template for our bigger pursuits. Yep. That’s also very common too. We might have best practices, Kyle, but we reserve them for only our most strategic opportunities. That’s generally a bit of a resourcing constraint. That’s an opportunity maybe for some tech and tooling to help share the load there. And then finally, p win scoring capture plans are standard for every qualified pursuit, and then we’re shaping requirements pre RFP through RFP. Yeah. And those would be best practice, and that’s about right. We do see cohorts of customers that are doing that. Great processes, standardization where appropriate, tech enabled. That’s where I’d want all organizations to be. And then ultimately, there’s a lot we can do. I think once again from a tech standpoint to say, couldn’t we at least start shaping RFPs to start? And it might not be for every single one, but we could do more maybe via the judicious use of some AI for the sake of argument. So that tracks with what I’m seeing. Great start. Well done. So and then… Yeah. Go ahead, Neil. I’m on a roll. No. And I just… Just to double on that, Kyle, like, that even in the pre model kind of stuff when we were getting some feedback from customers, that’s what people are saying. And I can see it there with Megan in the chat as well. You know, it’s when BD comes in after the RFP drops and then starts getting to positioning and messaging, that causes frustration. It feels like we’re not ready. It feels like the proposal team now are under heightened pressure. It doesn’t seem like it’s, kind of a collaborative process anymore. It feels like, okay. We’re… It’s just we’re in a war kind of scenario, to get this thing done, which never leaves the best work. So… Yeah. Absolutely. I I think… It is great to see a third of the audience kind of being in that kind of over the 50% mark there and moving towards kind of a better practice. I would be interested in the chatter in any way possible. Are you surprised by these results? Are you surprised where you land? And if you’re if you’re willing to share that information in the chat or in the in the the kind of private q and a box, we… I’d love to know. But, Shu, Kyle, any further reaction? Mostly, that’s that’s a great call out for Megan. And, ultimately, too, that’s where I think there’s real opportunity for process improvements. And I’d say that part of the goal of this model is not just to say, great. You know, here’s your level today. It’s to drive some of these conversations internally with some objective scoring to say, hey. You know, can we do this differently? You know, why couldn’t we commit some degree of effort or resources before an RFP drops? You know, if we know we’re gonna did it, let’s not wait. So I have some other thoughts there, but that very much tracks. It’s a great start. I’m actually… I’m excited, Mihal, to get into the next one. And the audience will see kinda has this builds. For sure. And and the next… We’re we’re actually actually gonna gonna do three together here. So we’re gonna do three and then show the results of all three in a row then. So we’re gonna do three in a row. So the first one that we wanna try and get answered here… Chapter Competitive Intelligence and Research Analysis And that they’re all connecting. It’s kind of moving our way up the BD cycle here. So how do you research competitors before deciding to pursue? We don’t at all. We focus only on our solution. We have informal guessing based on maybe who we’ve competed against before. We research known competitors once we’ve already decided we’re gonna bid. We have a formal review, such as Blackhat, or we have competitive intelligence, so informs our capture, no go strategy, etcetera. So, Shuka, do you have any thoughts on this question? Yeah. And and as always, for the audience, obviously, this is gonna depend… You know, if your organization’s manufacturing stealth stealth fighters, your idea of who your competition is is gonna be very different than if you’re doing IT services for HHS. So just kind of, once again, think about your own context here. And if it’s not quite as all… If it’s not… If the right question isn’t kinda who, then the better question could also be how. I know my competitors. How do I think they’re going to attack and pursue this? Maybe one story to inspire the group as we’re filling it out here. I worked with a really interesting user group in the health care space, and they would look at Medicare RFPs and contracts. And they’d actually be looking for trademarked solutions as a kind of a clue in terms of what kind of competitors might offer or not. So just kinda think about it that way. That’s a good tech visibility example here. And and, ultimately, kind of one more thing on competition, then we’ll get to this con… Compliance question. Think competition’s always funny. When I was back in the space pre visible thread, I think I maybe sat in two formal black hat reviews, like, my entire career. So I think part of the inspiration for this model is, you know, if you’re using a Shipley shop or Shipley process, I think there’s a lot of stages that organizations know they should do, or they’re they’re theoretically asked to do. But the way that they’re delivered, actioned against, if at all, can really vary, and that’s why I’m I’m… I focus a lot on consistency and process too. So that’s kind of the thrust to that. So I’ll I’ll make sure we get into the next one here, though, Michal. I’ll pause for a moment. No problem. And it actually kinda connects with what Courtney said in the chat around having basic win themes all year because it is a it is a fast and furious market. If you are going after a lot of bids at once and you’re under pressure resource wise, you’re trying to adhere to a certain process. And maybe that process, you know, should be more advanced or you feel like you could customize a bit more, but, like, you’re trying to kind of adhere to a bit of a standardized process. Chapter Compliance Review Process Standardization But I think based on what we’ve discussed previously, it is possible to kind of advance those theories. And Kyle is working with his teams to, show show good ideas and show good modern practices to to maybe problems that we couldn’t solve before. The second question is now about how to standardize, how standardized is your compliance review process across pursuits. We have no standard process whatsoever. A few people have their own checklists. We have a documented playbook, SOPs. Compliance review is embedded end to end in the in the pursuit cycle. The process is governed, measured, and consents… Continuously improved using review findings and lessons. And I think that continuously improved is the key point there. It’s like, okay. We actually go back in and we adjust. Kinda connects with Courtney’s logic as well, which is good. Okay. That would be the most leading, question partially on purpose. And I’d say if I were a betting man, Neil, I’ve been curious to see the scores. Generally, this question, we see pretty mature responses, and I think that’s because compliance is… I need to be careful. I don’t sound too cavalier. Like, compliance is kinda table stakes. We just need to issue and submit compliant responses. Where I think there’s real opportunity is throughout the writing, the editing, kind of the gate review process. Are we verifying compliance over time? How are we doing it? I’m getting lots of questions lately from customers. Hey, Kyle. I’ve got my compliance matrix. At a baseline, I’m compliant. What I’m really focused on is if I’m making a claim in a proposal, whether Kyle’s making it or AI’s making it, how can I vary? Verify and substantiate that claim? I would put that into the compliance bucket. And if you’re an organization that’s kinda continuously checking that, I’d put that kind of in the level five bucket, but let me pause there. So I’m curious. I would imagine those are gonna be more three, four, and five in the last question. I’ll pause now again, Nehal. Chapter Proposal Review and Learning Cycles Very good. I I missed it make kind of stuff coming into into the the scenario here. But, so the last question in this section is how does your team review a proposal before it goes out the door? Whoever has time skins us. One informal read through, a structure compliance check happens before every submission, multiple structure review stages, such as pink teams, red teams, Shipley process, etcetera. Governed review cadence with defined gates measured and improved over time. Again, that were approved over time. It’s a critical bit in becoming that kind of strategic player and getting that final document that Kyle is leading all his customers to. So… And I’m loving the little love hearts and, like, thumbs ups and stuff. I feel like we’re asking the right questions when you’re doing that, so keep the reactions coming in if you feel like these questions are valuable. So we have… We’ve gotten a similar amount of people, answering all the questions the whole way through. I’ll leave this for another second because I can see a few more questions… Few more answers coming in. It’s great. It’s great to have a webinar that is in pure slides. Or I like the way people are interacting. That’s a positive note. We structure webinars that we’d want to receive. And so I… Oh, yeah. Absolutely. Okay. So what we’re gonna do, we’re gonna frame up those last three questions and show the answers. So, again, you might need to scroll down to see the… All the the different percentages, but we’re very much coming out on top here in terms of having a formal competitive review such as Black Hat is standard is standard for qualified pursuits. But it’s actually pretty even. It’s it’s it’s fairly divided. Yeah. And that’s, I’d say the opportunity here for organizations on kind of that front half, you know, either we don’t, it’s informal, to, I think, you know, Courtney’s point, we might do this work kind of once we decide. I’d say kinda getting left, that’s gonna fall into that opportunity kind of assessment variable. And so this tracks, and I would generally say, yeah, more formal competitive reviews, That makes sense, especially for large organizations going after strategic bids. You got it. It’s it’s a key deliverable. I think the question is, how do we do this today? Can we do it a little bit better? And maybe most importantly, how do we make sure all that good competitive analysis that that we’re doing is shared and is visible to the broader team once you get beyond that bid, no bid review? That’s the area of opportunity that I really see. I’ll say it. An an area for improvement or an opportunity for improvement as a good euphemism there. Mehul. And this is your… This is the one, Kyle, that you predicted that would be a little bit further down the line. It is somewhat there, I think. Very… No one no one at all coming in at the bottom there. Yeah. No. I… I’d actually… I’d say forty forty, 41% that a few have their own checklist, nothing shared. That’s a little higher than I was expecting. But as you move down, you know, over, over 50% there, and we have a documented playbook in SOP, compliance review is embedded. That’s surprising. Or sorry. That that tracks. So I’d say a few people have their checklist. Nothing shared. Once again, that’s relatively common, in my travels. We have pockets of excellence. We have pockets of this. It’s more how do we scale this and drive more repeatability across the business just to kind of reduce variance in quality and outcomes, etc. So interesting. Very good. And our final question. Again, no one at the top end or bottom end here. How does your team review a proposal before it goes out the door? So 60% have a have structured stages such as pink team, red team, etcetera. Yeah. So this is… And I… That, once again, lines up. I think over the years, there’s been, rightfully so, you know, a huge degree of emphasis on compliance, the way that government evaluators kind of review vet and award contracts kind of force that. So I’d say the real opportunity here, and this is where I think a lot of the tech advancements lately presents a real opportunity for businesses is, yeah, we’re doing our pink teams. We’re doing our red teams. There’s no doubt about it. But are we taking learnings, and are we weaving them back into new, pursuits that then lead to better pink and red teams over time? Do we have a process to say, you know what? This this proposal was killer. It was really good content. Ultimately, we didn’t get the award. Does all that content just fall into a loss bucket and disappear into the ether, or do we have a process to kinda pick and grab really strong content for reuse possibly even if it’s a loss? So that’s where that governed review cadence kind of learning cycles come into play. So that’s an an an aspirational answer. So no surprise, in my opinion, no one was really at that last… That fifth answer. Yeah. Like, to improve over time five, six years ago, that that was a very, very difficult, if not impossible, thing to achieve in terms of how manual it would be. Would you have resources to apply to that when you’re running into your next opportunity or your next pursuit. But there is opportunity there now for organizations with AI and and software and different process op… Opportunities there to kinda creep into that scenario, which is the dream, really. And a lot of leaders here, I’m sure, are looking at that and going, okay. We’re… We we do have defined processes. Operationally, we’re very good. But… And that actually ties into before. We’re pretty good, but we have room to improve is is probably where it lands. When we did this prior, it did land like that in terms of, people kind of says, Joe, we’re right in the middle, nearly half track win rates, and it was a clear… A government process you cannot measure and is just the described one. Like… So it’s like it… A lot of people did land in that kind of middle ground on their on their kind of process workflow side. I don’t know, Kyle, if you have any final roundup on this side. Yeah. I just finished with… And and and as a as a leader myself, I think process is naturally one where organizations are more mature. I think most organizations know kinda what needs to be done, how, and why. I should say maybe not necessarily how. What should be done and why. The question is adoption training consistency over time is hard. I’m not gonna sit here and say that’s easy. So from… If you’re looking at those variables, no surprise, processes generally where orgs say, yeah, we’re doing a pretty good job. Where we see that opportunity is on visibility, on metrics, on tech, on kind of getting left, because it requires that endurance. It requires kinda learning cycles and all that good stuff. So interesting. It’s tracking so far, and and kind of the next cohort of questions here, should be even more more enlightening. Yeah. For sure. And feel free… Like, as I said, this is live. Feel free to drop questions if you want any more detail, if you’re surprised by where you’re landing, if you have any other thoughts there, it’s… Feel free. Chapter Contract Terms and Compliance Management So we have two questions in a row here. So the next one kinda gets into compliance review, etcetera. So what does your team use to check compliance and review contract terms? So is it a manual read through control f kind of scenario? A few informal templates, no dedicated software, dedicated software for at least one part of the process, connected workflows, consistent data across teams, whether it’s one for… One platform or governed integrations, or to find one connected, governed to us to support the full life cycle, AI and automation everywhere, which is which is a great question. Everywhere. And I’d say too, especially as as a former contracts guy, this might be one of my favorite questions. So what I’d encourage the audience is just to put some color around this. When we’re talking about contracts terms compliance, this is kind of thrusting more at FAR, slowdowns, data rights, ownership, NDAs, confidentiality, security, service contract act type obligations. So beyond my proposal needs to be 50 pages, one inch margins, three volumes, and am I compliant against the statement of work? This is really focused on how our organization’s making sure that whether we can deliver the raw material or service, can we do so compliantly? And we’re flagging some of these obligations that might drive schedule risk, scope creep, compliance kind of risk. How are we finding these today? How are we reviewing them? Here’s a good example. Does an organization have a contract playbook for the sake of argument? You know, if we come across a service contract act flow down, what do we do? Do we understand what data rights we’re asserting and why? Is there guidance? Is someone doing that check? If we don’t know, I would probably lean on answers A or B, And if we do, then obviously that’s where you can kind of make a more targeted decision. Just wanted to kind of frame that one up because these are big ideas, but they’re important, when we think about not only winning, but delivering business. And this is also very topical right now. Lots of changes, you know, revolutionary FAR overhaul, CMMC, kind of back and forth, I’ll say. So then kind of a natural segue into another contractually focused question. Yeah. So, like, moving moving on, then we’ll we’ll recap the results in a second. How do you manage contact terms, red lines during negotiation? Again, is it tracked in MERD? Is it a shared folder? Have you defined process for tracking changes? Contract review software flags risk calls and and tracks changes automatically. Connected tools link contract terms back to the original proposal commitments automatically. So we’re getting we’re getting really good, percentages of completions on these forms. So this is fantastic, guys. Thanks so much for getting involved and and following along here. I hope you’re finding a value. And I would say here, and and none of the questions are, you know, this is good or bad. Once again, it’s where we at in the process and even, you know, track changes in word, email back and forth. I do that myself. That’s not necessarily immature or wrong. I think what organizations should be thinking about and where there’s areas for improvement is, if we have multiple in flight negotiations going on, do we understand where they sit, How long we’ve been volleying back and forth? So this is a real visibility opportunity, composite variable to think about. And then, as always, this is kind of right for tech improvement as well. This can be a manual time consuming process because we don’t want to be wrong. Kind of the risk of error is high here. So that’s where, you know, I’ve lived this kind of my myself. So as always, you know, do we know who’s doing this? And if they are, do we know kind of how it’s going? Where it’s at? And if you do, great. By all means, there’s lots of interesting kind of updates lately in the tech space that have been speaking to these very challenges. And it also gets into governance and integrations, to, you know, to Michal’s point. Do our systems talk to each other? And it put contracts to the side. Does does SharePoint talk to, you know, my CRM, talk to my CLM, talk to my proposal writing suite. Maybe, maybe not. Yeah. Very well said, Kyle. And I think, like, this is generally… If you’re in a more leadership role, operation focused role, this is your bread and butter in terms of you don’t wanna make mistakes here, and this could be the reason why you’re not spending further time getting to those always improving strategic kind of elements where you want your team to grow into. So let’s take a look at the results here. So… Oh, so we’re looking at 37% of the people doing manual read throughs, control f word, and then working our way down then to almost 15% for the connected cover… Government to… Government tools support the full life cycle. So… Yeah. So you got a real a real divide there. And this… I would say this tracks, with what we’ve seen, what I hear, also what I what I lived in the space. And and I’d caution too. I think a big part of this is I wouldn’t kinda farm this out to AI, frankly Yeah. In terms of if I need to see every single, you know, classified data handling regulation in one or more docs, I wouldn’t AI that. So I think there’s been rightful reticence to kind of toolify this kind of challenge. I think there’s opportunity to bring tech in, but the other thing that I lived that I’m sure is is relevant to a lot of the audience here is too often contracts, subcontracts, dare I say, quote unquote, supporting functions, they can be isolated from the go to market, the business winning, the growth teams, your BD captures proposals, and so sometimes they can… I don’t want to say get left behind, but there’s less emphasis on this parts of the process, until it kinda leads to the brakes being tapped. And I… I’ve lived that before as well and had some fun conversations with our sales team. If I kinda catch something before something goes out the door, real opportunity on the first question, and we saw that in the scores. Lots of room for for growth and improvement there. Very good. And and this this tells a similar story, albeit maybe not on the connected tools side. Very much so, 30% of the audience or 29% tracking changes in words, manual processes, and 4043% the defined process for tracking changes with one source of truth. Okay. Interesting. Yeah. And this is where, yeah, we see a lot of our respondents are in that kind of level two to three range, and this is a great encapsulation of that. And this is great. This is really low hanging fruit. Yeah. We have some degree of governance here, but we need to drive consistency, version control, and you know what? We can maybe connect systems. We’re doing the work. Once again, how can we democratize it and share it? So this is very encouraging. Your baseline is strong. We want to take the next step and make sure that there’s some degree of automation, and there is connectivity where appropriate to kind of bring this important part of the equation to the forefront, or at least reviewed in tandem with, you know, cost volume for the sake of argument. Chapter Post-Webinar Resources and Closing Remarks Very good. Well, just… We’ll give the audience a little break here for a second just to… Because they’ve they’ve been running this webinar, which is a lovely change of pace for me and Colin. With just sitting back and watching and reacting, which is good. I have got a lot of kind of messages in the q and a box around, will we get the presentation and scores? We’re actually gonna put a a good bit of effort into how we package this up for each individual attendee, Cause this is a part to us. You’ve taken the time to come here and fill out these questions. We will be giving you back your answers versus the room, etcetera. So… Yeah. Absolutely. And the recording, everything will be packaged up. The recording and the deck and everything will be ready tomorrow, and we’ll be reaching out throughout the rest of the week with with your results and all and all that kind of stuff. And maybe some recommendations where we can support or where we’ve seen other customers develop some of these ideas as well. We’re actually quite lucky to have Kyle here, because Kyle is on the road a lot. Kyle was in Huntsville not so long ago in LA last week doing customer workshops in persons, going into customer off sites. We do that with a lot of our customers. Actually, any customers who really ask and want us to get hands on, we’re more than happy to to support them. But, Kyle, you’ve been you’ve been in a lot of GovCon rooms lately. Do you have, like, overall themes that keep cropping up? Is there is there something… What was the conversation like in in LA and Huntsville recently? Yeah. It’s it’s fascinating. There’s a lot of interest. Like, I keep coming back to how are other people doing it, and I’m getting that question constantly, and so kind of bringing these rooms and these leaders together has been great to help them answer that question and and learn. I’d say we’re in an interesting time where organizations have and are deep in the process of looking at these processes with a finer tooth comb because of all these advancements in tech and the way that the government is tweaking and adjusting the way it buys goods and services. So it’s forced conversation, but I’d say we’re still in conversation phase kind of stages, and we see organizations, I will say tripped up. They’re getting tripped up on kind of the finer points of the process, and we see that here. Where does the time go? So, yeah, I have content. I can find it. I can probably even start to rewrite it. But how am I weaving and working my SMEs into the equation thoughtfully? I have one of our largest customers. They said, Kyle, you know, we’re good on writing content right now. Where we need help is our SMEs ultimately, the main core objective is them delivering profitable work that we’ve already won, but obviously we need their contributions in the writing phase to win more business. Chapter Prioritizing SME Writing Assignments How do we just ruthlessly target and prioritize their writing assignments to make sure that we can get them back into delivery work as soon as possible. And so we’re kind of taking that next step going deeper into the process, and that’s where SME reviews what content to use, how to rewrite it is linked, and then traceability, traceability, traceability, that comes up all the time. I know I can use content to help write content. How can I trust the output, and how can I continuously trace claim against source citation? How can I do that, Kyle? How are other people doing it? That’s really coming up, constantly in my in my conversation since… Right. Well, if you do agree or disagree or if that connects with you, feel free to let us know in the chat and and get involved. It’s obviously something we’d love to talk about with customers and and people in our community afterwards as well. So if that’s a… We’re happy to answer any questions on that too. But we have roughly… We’re gonna try and move kinda quickly through the the remaining questions. So we have three questions again in a row that do connect. So how clearly defined is your capture proposal and review roles on your team? So how clearly is your structure? No clear ownership whatsoever. An informal go no go person, but no official role. We have clearly defined accountabilities. We have defined governance models, centralized, federalized set sets, etcetera. And then we have capture intelligence as a seat in the pursuit strategy at the leadership table, etcetera, leadership level. Yeah. Go. Go. Yeah. Simple way to frame it. If an RFI and RFP, what a draft final, whatever, when it kinda enters an organization, do I know who’s doing what? And do they know that? Is a great kind of sync… Succinct way to think about this question. And, of course, if you’re a one man band, then I would think, yep. Your role is defined. But as you get further down the maturity level there, kind of think about, hey, if I am a one man band, do I have the time and bandwidth to think about capture intelligence, or am I just I just have to get text on the page and make sure it’s compliant? So that’s how you can think about it if you’re in a smaller kind of wearing many hats organization. Of course, if you’re in a more complex siloed org, there’s a clear breakdown here in terms of ownership, visibility, accountability. Chapter Tracking Win Rates and Pursuit Health Very good. And then moving on to the next question then, how do you track win rates and pursuit health today? We don’t track this formally, anecdotally. We manually comply… Compiled reports on turnaround time and compliance pass rates. We have real time dashboards, tying capture investment to win rates. We have historical data systematically informing decisions, predictive analytics, and use where it’s supported. That would be great. I’ll pontificate again. All all the the, you know, the election coming up has me kind of like being like a pollster. I would argue these answers are gonna be more in the top half a, b, and c if I were a betting man. I don’t wanna lead the the audience. And so, really, ultimately, what I want the audience to think about here too is when we’re talking about trade, it’s not just, hey, if we won or lost. Hey, are our pursuits in flight or not? And the question is, do I know… You know, is my win rate different for firm fixed price contracts versus cost type? Maybe it’s by platform. Maybe it’s by customer. Can I segment win and loss rates? Pursuit health. Do I understand kind of where my pursuits are at in flight? How are we doing from gate review to color team review, etc? Do we see improvement? Do we see stagnation? Do we see anything at all? Naturally, what we’re getting at here, and then when you get to the final stage, once we submit whether we win or lose, do we have a way to take learnings, lessons, content, etcetera, and work it back into future work, which is then a natural… It’s almost like we wrote this presentation into this question…. Chapter Integrating Win Loss Outcomes Prepared this before. That’s right. Yeah. So this question then is how do you use win loss outcomes after a decision is made? We don’t… It’s infer… Informal conversation, a basic debrief, debriefs with a standard practice and reviewed by leadership regularly, win loss data systematically fed back into your capture and no go criteria. This is great. I’m I’m really enjoying this. So this is fun. This is a huge opportunity for for growth, I think. A lot of organizations I talk to, they’ll do debriefs. They’ll do lessons learned. But I think very often, they do it. They think, oh, man. That was really helpful. That was really enlightening. And then it stops there. It’s kind of that follow through, and turning that more into kind of a learning flywheel is where there’s opportunity, I think. This gets into a data question, a governance question. I think a lot of organizations miss opportunities with debriefs with the customer. Push for verbal, push for oral debriefs to the greatest extent possible. For some people on the line, that might be an obvious statement, but for others, man, to the extent you can hear your customer, quite literally hear them and maybe see them, that’s always gonna be better than an email debrief in my opinion. And then once again, if we hear it, what are we doing to memorialize it, outside of those who are on the call? Very good, Carl. Well, look. We’re gonna go through the answers of these three questions, and then we have one more question for for the audience. So, this has been great. We’re we’re moving through it very quickly, which is fabulous. So the first, recap. So how clearly defined our capture proposal and redeemer ones on your team? And the kind of overwhelming two thirds, we have defined capture and proposal accountabilities even if one person holds both, as you said, Kyle. But there is a little bit before and after, for sure. Yeah. No no major surprise there. Yeah. I think we know who does it. The question is how can we do it better? How can we weave in learnings? Fabulous. How do we track win win rates and pursue health today? So this is positive, actually. I’m delighted to kinda see people are are definitely in this kind of real time dashboards kinda scenario. So that’s quite quite interesting. Yeah. I’d say, you know, first…… Faces there. There’s some shocked faces after appearing on their apologies. I would suggest. You know, 50% at kind of, one through three there. And I would say, what I’m really gonna lock in there is that manually compiled reports on turnaround time compliance pass rates. Manual is the operative word there. We’re doing it. Great. That’s an opportunity. How can we maybe do it less manually, to free up some time and bandwidth to get into data kinda systematically informing future work and conversations, but kudos to to group four there. Great. And then the the final question in that segment, how do you use win loss outcomes after the decision is made? So, again, a nice, like, 40% of the audience, between a basic debrief and debriefs that are standardized and are reviewed regularly, which is good. I think that’s quite positive. Agreed. And I would say for those informal, kinda nothing documented group, chunky kind of quarter of the group, I’d say, especially, you know, the stakes are higher. We’re seeing consolidation on vehicles. That’s a big area I’d target, personally. Chapter Identifying Compliance and Contract Risks Okay. So our final question, and to sum sum up this entire survey maturity model, when do you typically catch compliance and contract risks? Is this after submission or signature? Is this sometimes depending on who reviewed this? Is it before submission and signature? Proactively, it’s in… Institutionalized and used as a competitive strength, not only as a control, which is a… It’s another great question, Kyle. What’s your thought process around this question, especially moving towards, like, it being more institutionalized? Yeah. So I’d say there’s a couple things I I lock in on here. When we think about getting left from a from a BD, a capture, kind of a competitive standpoint, I think a lot of organizations understand that and are pushing for that rightfully so. On the compliance contractual, like, governance side, I think too often organizations get caught. It’s the very opposite of gift left is we’re ready to submit and, oops, we kinda catch something at the tail end, which is quite brutal. So if you’re an organization, I’ve never thought about this at all, Kyle. I don’t know if we’ve caught it or not. I’d probably answer a. But ultimately, this is very important from a timing standpoint and from a margin and risk standpoint. Even if we win the work, have we kind of caught, kind of a falling sword for the sake of argument? So that’s important, and ultimately, contracts management, contractual structure can and should be a differentiator that we weave into the process earlier on, earlier on, earlier on, especially with the way the government’s restructuring. We have all kinds of opportunities for nontraditional contracting structures. This is an opportunity to think about that. Okay. So we have about 45% before submission or signature. Okay. And then moving towards about 40% of the audience proactively all the way up to institutionalize, which is good. And that’s about right. And I would say, yeah, for that 45%, is just before submission good enough? I would attack that pretty violently. I am, though, of course, biased as my former contracts management self. But to those 30 kinda 10% there at the bottom, really, really well done. Perfect. Good. So what we’re gonna do… So you’ve spent a lot of time with us this afternoon or this morning. We… You’ve you’ve really worked with us here to to produce. We’ve had about 80 organizations work with us today to produce these answers, which is fabulous. So thank you for supporting this. We’re gonna kinda get towards this scoring model. So this is what Kyle on the front end explained. You’re all gonna receive a kind of a scoring in terms of where you answered versus this and kind of benchmarks in terms of where you landed versus others, which I think is is the beauty of this webinar. So we’re gonna package up all this for you. Where we would like to talk about a little bit is where did this model go wrong or if there was any kind of cute… New… Confusing elements or if you feel like, you know, what would make it even stronger? We would love that feedback. And we actually have a survey on screen to rate this webinar, give us feedback. That would be a great place to put that content. So if you do, while we’re kinda summarizing the webinar, maybe answering a question or two, feel free to be filling that out. We’d love your feedback. But, Kyle, just while we’ve answered all the questions now, do you want to kind of summarize maybe what businesses should do next, you know, your overall reaction to the scores, etcetera? Chapter Actionable Next Steps for Organizations Yeah. For sure. So when you receive your score, like we said, you’ll get that kind of stage one through five, and then within that, you’ll get the composite. So it’ll allow you to focus on maybe we score really highly on people and process. We have opportunities to improve in visibility and tech and tools. So take a look at that score. I’d say sit with it. Look for those areas of opportunity. Celebrate where you’re very mature, and then focus on pick one variable that we can improve, in the next thirty, sixty, ninety days. Think about who owns this. Who should be driving this? I think a big challenge that organizations face is they know that there’s things we can improve. We always want to drive higher degrees of excellence within a business winning and delivery organization, but who does it? Who has the time? So part of the goal is this should, and I don’t always have that answer for organization. I have opinions. But take this and use this. Bring it to a team meeting. Bring it to a quarterly off-site, and use it to really have a thoughtful, candid discussion about where we’re at and what we can improve, and then assign responsibilities. Great kind of opportunity for talent development. So team leaders on the line. If you have ambitious go getter members of your team, let them own a part of this in terms of build out a a policy, build out a play, a playbook, what have you. Great opportunity to build up your own team’s talent profile while also solving some problems. So I would say that’s kind of next step what I would be focusing on when you get your scores. To Mihal’s point, really excited to hear, you know, you’ll you’ll settle a bet to Mihal and I. I’m pretty proud of kind of these composite variables that we’re looking at. But, man, if I’m missing something, you guys do this every single day. Would love to hear about it, just to make this model even better, even more relevant, and, you know, get Mihal a a well deserved beer paid for by me. Oh, absolutely. Which I’m say, happy. So I am… Chapter Upcoming Webinars and Events So look. I’d like to thank everybody. There is a… There is… Obviously, fill out that survey. We’d love your feedback. There’s a few things coming up. Visible thread has a lot coming up actually in November and December. Obviously, it would be a little bit of a break there at thanksgiving. But tomorrow, I’m on a webinar actually with Bremington Housing Association. They’re actually gonna talk about their usage of Visible thread, so that webinar link is in the console below and available on our website. They’re gonna talk about a lot on the BD side actually, which is what we discussed. They’re gonna talk about doing more competitive analysis, doing shredding in the front end of BD, using technology on that side, which is really interesting. We have Alison Ritz on Thursday doing an office hours speaking about more of the AI functionality within a physical thread, how we verify it, and how we can trust the output that’s coming from us, how we source every piece of data that comes from the the software, shows you exactly where that information is coming from, etcetera. So that’s that’s a great webinar if you’re looking for AI, but visibility, and and how teams are tackling that. But I also wanna highlight two sessions in Vienna in Tysons Corner. We did one earlier this month and was very successful where we did a proposal over two hours, kind of a working session. It was very hands on. We got to tackle a lot of questions with our customers face to face. There was pizza afterwards, which I heard was very good. So if you want to get in front of the Visible Thread employees in your… In the DC area, there’s a session in November and the the session in December that you’d be very welcome to join. So that… Again, those links are available on our events page on the website and in the console below. So… But without adding any more adding any more context to this, Kyle, do you have any final thoughts? Any any… Yeah. There’s a good question I wanna get to. So for people that can hang around, thanks for going three minutes over. Appreciate the time so far, but let… Chapter Demonstrating Value to Sales Leadership Let’s dive in for those who can hang around. It’s a great question. So the question is, how do you convince a chief sales officer that this process is important when it sounds like there’s maybe a degree of doubt or a question around the value of a bid and proposal organization in terms of what they do, how they’re spending their time? And, you know, forgive me to the questioner if I’m paraphrasing incorrectly, but I think that’s the gist of it. So ultimately, I view this model as helping drive… Kind of answering the second part of that question is if we can show that, hey. Within our organization compared to peers, we would have a a slightly less or more mature revenue winning operation, and here’s why. And we can pinpoint process people, tech, etc. That’s driving that. That can help stimulate some of these good conversations about what do we do? Why do we do it? How do we do it? Is it driving revenue into the business? And if not, why not? So that’s a bit of… That’s a tricky conversation, but I think assets like this, collateral like this, analysis and data like this, can help teams say, hey, we’re a key part of the revenue engine for an org. If we can do better, if we can make incremental improvements, that drives top and bottom line growth. I think this helps position you, as thinking about process, thinking more strategically, about your contribution to the business beyond, man, I just gotta get more of these out the door faster. That’s important, but I think this can help drive those conversations. So really hoping that this asset can help you make that case. And then as always, anytime I’m talking to a chief sales officer, if you can lead with numbers, you know, dollars won this year, maybe dollars lost, that can always be a little bit more sensitive. But, you know, if you can justify kind of the where and the why, that’s important. Pipeline influenced. Even if you’re getting, you know, white papers and RFI responses that don’t have direct revenue impacts yet, that volume is important. So that’s an area to say, hey, beyond just we’ve done 12 RFI responses this year. You might say, you know, I’ve done two to the US army, two to space force, two to primes for the sake of argument. Kind of showing that spread, I think, is important too. So that’s a big question. I’m hoping that was a helpful kind of way to break it down and really, really appreciate it. I think it’s a good one, and you’re you’re not alone. I’ve heard similar questions as well. So to the extent that helps, I wanted to throw it out there. Very good. Well, I don’t see any other questions that don’t kinda connect with that one. So with that, I will wish everybody a thank you for for joining us today. The… We will be packaging this up, as we said prior, and we’re gonna put a little bit of thought in terms of putting your results beside the benchmarks, etcetera. But the recording and deck, etcetera, will be will be available to you tomorrow. So if you have any other further questions for us, feel free to reach out to Kyle and myself on LinkedIn or to contact us directly. But thank you so much for your for your support. We’ll see you soon.