Capture planning is a term from the US that encompasses the strategy required to win a piece of work. It’s more than the strategy of creating or writing business proposals, it’s the technique of managing an opportunity from the very beginning to the very end of the business development lifecycle…and then over again. Why over again? Because capture planning is often used in reference to mining accounts for work. In fact in Europe a lot of sales people are more likely to be familiar with the terminology account planning – though proposal writers will often use capture planning.Why do you need it? After all, you built a better mousetrap, so won’t people come running to your door asking for it?We all know that it’s not quite that easy. In fact you may have been in the situation where you know about an opportunity within an organis Abbotsford homes ation; maybe an RFP or tender has been issued. Yet when the documentation arrives, you feel frustrated because the specification seems as if it was written for your competitor’s product. And maybe it was. They could be the incumbent or the preferred bidder (even if the client organisation would never admit that!) so whatever bid or sales document you submit, you may feel not overly confident about its success.Alternatively, they may have had a longer term strategy and plan to capture work from that account. They may have seen the organisation as a suitable target for their product and service and built up a relationship over time in order to position themselves. Statistics show that organisations with an existing relationship with a client are far more likely to win the work (don’t give up hope though, it’s not always the case).