Effective government marketplace business development requires mastery and continuous improvement of a complex, multi-disciplinary set of activities. Most firms have developed and documented major pieces of their overall business development approach. It is, however, a rare contractor that makes the investment to unify all of the major pieces into an information-centric suite of modern guides to business development that all but guarantee improved performance in terms of successful capture activities.

Collectively, the Roadmap To BD Success series of easy-to-use and understand instructional texts provides a modular, how to guide to government business development. Each volume provides a comprehensive foundation for one of the major activities that contractors can either use as is or adapt to their particular needs and circumstances. The overarching mantra of the series is Spend Less, Do More and Win More. The series supports this ideal by simplifying and standardizing capture processes across multiple pursuits to help reduce recurring and non-recurring expenses.

The graphic shown above presents the scope of the series. It is followed by a high-level volume-by-volume overview of the series that describes the interfaces (not there yet) between and among the interlocking members of the constituent elements of the Roadmap To BD Success. Books in the series have each been developed by professionals for professionals. They are designed to convey time-tested processes, common sense strategies and practical, yet effective, implementation approaches to educate and reinforce best practices in a specific and an overall sense. Book 1 in the series provides an overarching guide for the entire series. Books 2 through 3 represent the foundation activities for business development that maintain the corporate information repository within which the information assets that feed the capture processes described in books 5 through 9 are forged and remembered for possible reuse. As shown in the graphic, the volumes that make up the series are briefly described and discussed below:

• The Business Development Journey, by John C. Lauderdale III, was published in June of 2013. It is the keystone book of the series and provides a top down view of the soup to nuts essentials of business development. It describes the interfaces and dependencies inherent in the texts that make up the series. This is a must read volume for all BD practitioners. The book is available on Amazon where the cover price is $250.00. Volume discounts are available from CAI/SISCo - see below for details.
• Business Development Information Management is devoted to benefits of implementing unified information management repository as the underpinning of all business development activity to provide the essential pre-positioned business development information of all sorts from proposal boilerplate, to competitor intelligence to pursuit post-mortems that builds with every capture and avoids having to pay to learn the same things over and over again.
• Acquiring Competitive Intelligence examines the tools and techniques that can feed a successful capture activity with information that can help capture teams develop winning solutions that can be bid at winning prices.
• Strategic Planning, Pipeline Development & Maintenance deals with the development and maintenance of an overarching Strategic Plan and the dynamics of the pipeline of business opportunities (task orders, contracts, etc.) that need to be pursued. This will cameo the Prologue approach to Strategic Planning and Pipeline Development.
• Capture Planning & Management deals with how to organize and manage around the essential elements of capture by concentrating on the 4 Cs: customer, competition, capabilities and cost.
• The Recompete Guide focuses on the ideas and approaches needed to retain existing contracts. From the start of the contract through to the final presentation it is full of tools, processes and techniques that will help incumbents prepare for and deliver a successful recompete. This volume became available in July 2013. The book is available on Amazon where the cover price is $250.00. Volume discounts are available from CAI/SISCo - see below for details.
• Price To Win provides practical guide to developing situational awareness and bid price targets based upon a detailed study of your competition, the opportunity at hand, and the price that the Home Team is most likely to have to come up with to prevail overall.
• Team & Solution Development explains how the target prices developed by PTW should be used to develop teams and solutions that can meet and beat competitors.
• Pricing Strategies & Strategic Pricing explains how the target price- driven teams and solutions can be, through an effective and thoughtful pricing strategy, developed into a winning yet profitable bid price.
• Practical Proposal Development is a practical guide to the development of a proposal that demonstrates acceptability in terms of understanding, solution, team and management approach within an affordable price.
• Winning Out Loud, by Jack and Barbara Harris, was published in June of 2013. Written by seasoned professionals, it is a practical guide to the development and delivery of oral proposal presentations. The volume covers issues related to problem understanding, proposed solution, proposed team, and implementation approach. Getting the subject matter right and rehearsing the delivery of the materials by those charged with delivering the proposed solution is often the key to Winning billion dollar opportunities. The book is available on Amazon where the cover price is $250.00. Volume discounts are available from CAI/SISCo - see below for details.

The books in this series will have special interest to at least these three groups of readers:

• Individuals and companies already doing a significant amount of government business, and wishing to improve performance (however defined!!) through knowledge of industry best practices;
• Government employees, such as program managers, contracting officers, subject matter experts, wishing to know what is happening on the contractors' side, the OTHER side of the fence.
• Students of public administration wishing to know more about the practices of government contracting.

Additional books in this series are to be published incrementally and, eventually, they will all be available for purchase from Amazon. Alternatively, any of the books in the series can be ordered in bulk directly from CAI/SISCo at discounted prices (see below for details) + applicable sales taxes, packaging and postage by emailing a completed version of the following Bulk Order Form to Jennifer Weinberg.

Since these books should be required reading for every business development operative and every capture manager and team member. CAI/SISCo (not Amazon) offers bulk purchase prices according to the following schedule:

• 20 copies, or more... 50% off of each volume's cover price; or
• 10 to 19 copies........ 35% off of each volume's cover price; or
• 5 to 9 copies.............25% off of each volume's cover price.

Download The CAI/SISCo Bulk Book Order Form (102kB, Word Format)

To request more information about books in this series and their availability, please e-mail Jennifer Weinberg or call her in the United States at (301) 840-5959. Major credit cards are cheerfully accepted.

SPECIAL OFFER: Individuals who have attended one of CAI/SISCo's professional development seminars / workshops are entitled to a $100 discount off the price of the related book. This offer is only available directly from CAI/SISCo and should be claimed using the above Order Form.

Download CAI/SISCo's Corporate Capabilites (362kB, PDF Format)

CAI/SISCo is a leading provider of Competitive Analysis, Price To Win (PTW), Strategic Pricing and other business development support services to companies that vie for all types of large-scale government procurements. To request a proposal or more information about any of our services or products please e-mail Tony Constable or call him in the United States at (301) 807 8171.