Chet’s Blog

Military Sales Campaign Management – Features of a Good Campaign
A Campaign is a carefully orchestrated series of events led by a master facilitator that result in relationships that will yield ongoing future opportunities.  A good campaign gives your company the advantage over your competitors.  In DoD business there is always a winner and loser.  The tips in this primer will help your company end up as the winner every time.
Campaigns for military contracts take patience and persistence.  Unlike commercial campaigns that can hinge on a single quick sale, military sales by the necessity of competitive solicitations last years.  Among the differences are: Contacts are Civil Servants and the military for DoD components; budgets have been set for one or more years in advance; it takes from two to five years to follow a campaign and win a competition for the final contract, and; the Government runs on ethics and principals that are very stringent and are backed by law; requirements and evaluation criteria are set in stone once the final RFP is issued.  Campaign management works to shape the requirements through to the draft RFP release.  The steps that allow this shaping are the most critical to the campaign’s success.  They include the introduction of the technical lead to the customer, the forming of relationships and the homework to present a credible, low risk technical solution. These are all elements of the Campaign Plan.
The following Plan features are addressed in this primer:
•    Growing Customer Relationships
•    Developing the Call Plan
•    Opportunity Assessment Activities
•    Parallel Advertising Campaign
•    Maintaining the Common Database
•    Risk Analysis Theme
•    Graphics that Define Your Solution and CONOPS
•    Solution Processes (templates or spiral development)
Growing Customer Relationships
Relationships, relationships, relationships- At every step of the Campaign Plan there exists the opportunity to further your relationship with the customer.  Each contact is precious and must be handled individually and captured in your database for the best results.  People don’t like thinking of themselves as part of the Government’s blank face.  They each see your opportunity in a different way and they must always be approached on that basis.  This is also the most satisfying part of the job.  When you bring things down to personal relationships, the work is much more satisfying and allows you to have that optimism that is necessary to win a contract with any command.
Like BRANDING, keep the same faces to your customer during the campaign.  Form a team that will make visits and correspond with the customer.  The more that you are recognized, the closer the relationship becomes.
Coax the client along – always respond to issues based on the clients concerns and objectives.  Persistence and aggressiveness must be balanced with common sense.  No one likes to be exercised every other day without a good reason.  Find a pace and stay substantive.  Measure the frequency of your call plan between email, calls and visits.  There is an art to this.  It takes a feel based on individual relationships.  It is a recurrent theme for each of the steps.  To a certain extent it can be learned, but a little talent doesn’t hurt either.

Developing the Call Plan- know who you are calling and why. A strategic approach to follow-up is all important when forming a trusted relationship with your customer. Use metrics to plot the course of future calls.  Be sure to match command budgets with your company’s revenue goals and growth targets.  The customer will recognize your vigilance when it comes to keeping your solution within budget.
Use calls to meet more contacts in the command.  Ensure technical personnel are well versed on the ideas and level of design disclosure that you wish to divulge at each meeting. Set performance levels to your design to influence the final specification.  Carefully explain with white papers and graphics how this performance level will meet the needs of the customer’s with CONOPS.
Always relate these design sessions to low risk design and production standards.  Also relate success you’ve had on past and present contracts with that or other commands in developing products or systems similar to the one you are pitching. Past Performance is a lead evaluation factor.  Ensure that you have run all of the traps with your your past and current programs to the Contractor Performance Assessment Report System (CPARS).
As you weave this campaign on the way to a draft RFP release, keep building your relationships with the command’s management and technical team.  Once they begin to rely on you and recognize that your past performance is up to snuff, you will have built a trust that is your responsibility to maintain.  During your calls, always clearly state capabilities based on scientific facts and back up approaches with the same substantiating data that you will use in your Proposal!
The transition of the campaign to a written proposal must be seamless.  All too often the customer will pick up a proposal and it will not reflect what they had expected to see given campaign meetings with industry.  Evaluators should be able to see the thrust of your campaign in all levels of strategy within the proposal.
Opportunity Assessment Activities:
During the campaign you must punctuate your schedule with two equally important activities.  These are ongoing activities necessary before the release of the RFP.  They are:
1-    Rolling Strategy Development and Strategy Reviews, and
2-    Rolling Competitive analyses
Strategy development is accomplished in teams of like disciplines.  Requirements are matched to approaches that have well defined solutions and offer measurable benefits to the customer.  These strategies are always considered in light of known competitive capabilities.
Your competitive analysis will start with your teams understanding of competitor capabilities and past performance.  As time goes on you will gather more information.  This will come from contacts and even their advertising campaigns.
Using your core Campaign Team begin a rigorous ongoing opportunity Assessment.
Do not wait for the draft RFP to be released to hold a Black Hat Review and see if you can compete – make that decision early on.  Are there variables?  Sure there are.  The government could remove a potential money making component from the bid.  Part of your relationship with the command will be to know about these problems and to negotiate them down or away before the final RFP is released.
Parallel Advertising Campaign
Maintain capabilities and customer interest through escalating strategic advertising in appropriate media.  Use high level graphics drawn from your ultimate solution to keep new customer interest.
Maintaining the Common Database:
All notes and discussions put into the Campaign Data Base.  No call or email reply from the customer should be wasted.  They are all learning experiences that will help to piece together the command’s needs. The perfect way to communicate all client data to the entire team is through a common database.  Having separate static spreadsheets cannot compete with a Siebel-like campaign management capability which works for all tiers of campaign involvement. See Siebel Campaign Management.
Risk Analysis Theme
The customer should be aware of your Risk Analysis Board and their activities regarding your approach.  This is an excellent way to ghost possible weaknesses in a competitor’s approach early in the game.
Graphics that Define Your Solution and CONOPS
Visualizing your solution and how the end product will integrate and perform with other components is the most effective way to sell your solution.  Begin by conceptualizing a single high level drawing that captures all of the highlights of your approach.  This is often called a “win diagram, a why us diagram or an elevator drawing.”  Include a “Focus Box” containing your lead features and benefits.  The drawing should also capture the Concept of Operations (CONOPS).  This drawing will become invaluable as the campaign grows.  In its final refined rendition it can be used at the beginning of your Executive Summary and Technical Volume.  It should be proprietary and not released to advertising.
Other individual graphics can be captured to examine detailed capabilities of your approach.  If convincing, these diagrams could appear in your customer’s Industry Day package in one form or the other.
All of these early graphics will iterate over the campaign period.  They become a lynch pin of your proposal effort and ensure that everyone has the same idea of what you are proposing.  They will also spark reviews and new ideas from within your team.  Communications and relationships go hand in glove for a winning team.
Approach that Includes a Process (templates, spiral development, and more)
Back in the eighties I had the pleasure of visiting Mr. Willis J. Willoughby Jr. at his office in Crystal City.  After using his templates as a guide for proposal responses I decided to meet with the man for whom they were named and try to learn if they would be applied to other bid types such as services and task order contracts.
I was led into his office just after lunch.  It was all done in dark wood and leather chairs like the lair of Sherlock Holmes.  Mr. Willoughby was a straight shooter and very open to innovation using the process that was named after him.  The templates weren’t meant to stifle creativity but to set a pattern of events that if adhered to would lower the risk inherent in weapons system and especially airframe development. They are a matrix of the most critical events in design, test and production of the industrial processes. The templates are used by program managers to identify critical engineering processes and how to control them.
By using these templates as the basis for the risk analysis needed in the proposal effort, you had an authoritative metric for the proposal evaluators to gauge your solution.  They are still very useful along with Total Quality Management, Acquisition Streamlining and others.

In Summary
Creating a campaign and managing it takes a master facilitator and a company with the vision to foresee the government’s future needs. Solutions are developed and presented to the customer in a way that fosters good relationships and allow the shaping of the solution.  The final RFP favors the results of a good campaign.

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