When you manage your opportunity pipeline, you want to maintain a healthy balance across the various stages of discovery and pursuit.
So what makes a healthy pipeline? At GovCon Bids, we like to think of it as the “rule of 10x.”
The rule of 10x starts with the notion that you’ll need to submit 10 times as many proposals as you hope to win. So, if you want 10 wins for the year, you’ll need 100 submissions.
From there, the math remains simple but slightly different backing up from each stage:
To submit 100 proposals, count on capturing twice as many, or 200. This accounts for opportunities that may appear enticing at first, but change status over time; shifts in organizational priorities or focus areas; or just internal calculation as to which opportunities have better prospects of turning into wins than others.
Continuing on, to capture 200 bids, you’ll typically need to review, or “qualify,” 3 times that amount, or 600 opportunities. These 600 aren’t deep-dive, vigorous reviews – rather, they’re more centered on macro-level filtering against basic parameters that map to your organization’s priorities.
Lastly, to get 600 opportunities qualified, you’ll need to start with about 2 times that amount, so 1200 opportunities need to be “ingested” into the very top of your BD funnel. Typically, you can do this with a software application that scans and filters opportunities, then allows for quick sorting to cut down to the 600 you’ll actually take a closer look at.
Check out this quick summary of the above approach, which I discussed in this Government Contracting Credential (GCC) Series Webinar back in March:
If you ever have any questions or concerns regarding your organization’s pipeline health, or anything else related to bid and proposal management, contact us on our website at https://govconbids.com/contact-us/ or you can reach me directly at 256-274-1393.
