There are a ton of great resources out there on how to execute capture in the defense and federal markets. These include detailed approaches to evaluating specific funding opportunities, assigning a numeric 'probability of win,' and presenting this to leadership and teams in a way that makes sense for your company. While this content is useful, there are two snags for smaller businesses and nontraditional partners: 

First, many companies are a step removed from the capture process. They’re trying to figure out, holistically, where to approach. They don’t know the opportunity space, and aren’t privy to internal happenings of the relevant mission owners as many incumbents are. There needs to be a “where do I start” step ahead of this.

Second, for most nontraditional partners, an opportunity-based approach to the defense market won’t yield much. Their solution isn’t known or understood and is unlikely to perform well against a government solicitation.  For most companies, a direct approach to organizations with aligned missions is necessary in order to generate enough interest to shift priorities, approach, and spending.

In the highly competitive and nuanced defense market, identifying and seizing the right opportunities requires a blend of strategic relationship building, data-driven decision-making, and a nuanced understanding of stakeholder dynamics.

There’s no perfect process to do this. You’ll never fully remove the scrappy nature of federal business development. You can take a more informed approach, reduce the waste of trying to talk to everyone at once, and make the decision to pivot away from bad opportunities swiftly.  

Ideally, you should be able to go into the capture phase with a prioritized list of opportunities, programs, and initiatives. Your goal is to draft a dynamic list that shifts as you engage and learn more about the individuals, approach to solution, acquisition phase, and other key details. 

Pre-work: Do your Research

Take the time to review the data that is available. This can take time but is a worthwhile exercise, especially if you are new to the market.

• Clarity: Make sure you understand your goals are in the federal market. For more detail on how to clarify your federal market objectives, check out this article: Why Clarity is the Key to Federal Market Success 
• Trend Analysis: Figure out who is ACTUALLY spending money on your technology or the capabilities you enable. For more details on how to do this, check out this article: Trend Analysis Leveraging Contract Data
• Mission Analysis: Review what organizations have a relevant mission set to your widget or tool.  If you don’t have an employee or partner with strong experience in your space, review published mission gaps or technology focus areas provided by the services. You may also leverage tools like Steve Blank’s PEO Directory. 
• Budget Analysis: Figure out what spending has been allocated to your mission set, and to whom. For details on how to perform this process, check out this article: Leveraging Budget Resources to Understand Defense Market Opportunities.  

Step 1: Start with Relationships

The first and most critical step is to assess your existing relationships. If you already have leads that seem to be going somewhere, don’t dismiss them because the data says someone else is spending more. This is always true, but especially so if you lack past performance and are working to get your first deal.

It is important, however, to assess those relationships and ensure you’re not prioritizing a dead end. 

• Validate Alignment with Your Goals: Be critical and ensure that the opportunity is in alignment with your company’s long term goals. If not, is there a near-term value proposition that warrants some distraction?  What’s the level or resource drain or distraction?  Sometimes you need to take what you can to stay afloat, but don’t get caught in this trap if it’s avoidable.
• Map Stakeholders and their Influence: Identify key connections associated with each opportunity you’re already working. Are they decision-makers or influencers? How long will they be in the role they’re in? Do they have buying power or influence over the teams that do? It’s easy to find a very enthusiastic partner who isn’t in a position to execute on their promises.
• Align Against Empirical Data: Are they consistent spenders in this space? How much do they typically spend based on historical data? Do they have relevant spending allocated in the coming fiscal year and/or over the Future Years Defense Program(FYDP) spend plan? 
• Evaluate Relationship Traction: Analyze the success and challenges within these relationships. For example, if your company has historically collaborated with Navy procurement offices and has strong performance records, this could signify higher capture potential.
• Assess Their Interest: Is your contact very interested or lukewarm in their engagement with you? A very enthusiastic partner with moderate influence may still be worth the effort. In kind, a very low level of interest with a highly relevant, well funded program, may be worth the capture effort to win over.  Be sure to check yourself before pursuing this strategy: Why is their interest level low? Do you believe your solution will make a major impact? 

Apply a scoring or ranking to your leads based on these questions.  Those that present some real promise should be at the top of your list.  If you have some whose influence or interest isn’t high, you may decide to list them lower than other opportunities, as driven by the data. 

Step 2: Zoom Out to Strategic Segments

Once you’ve racked and stacked your existing relationships, you’re going to shuffle back to the public spend data available, use it to fill in the gaps, and add in opportunity space that is valuable enough to be worth a cold push. You will start with macro spending trends, then zoom into specific program details in Step 3.

NOTE: The data you’re now reviewing should already be aligned with your business goals, so I won’t continue to list “alignment” as step one, but that should ALWAYS be on your mind when considering opportunities. 

• Understand Major Initiatives: Look at DoD-wide initiatives like the emphasis on Indo-Pacific deterrence under the Pacific Deterrence Initiative ($9.9B) and other major spending programs that are relevant to you and compare the program goals against capabilities your company can provide​.
• Consider Macro Trends: Consider who is spending in relevant tech or capabilities consistently. Be sure to break it out by appropriation. If you are in R&D, you’ll want to look at dominant spenders of R&D in your tech area. If you’re ready for O&M or Procurement dollars, you’ll want to look at relevant trends for these dollars. It’s common to find a specific service dominates R&D spending, even if they are not the dominant buyer.  
• Assess Program Relevance by Segment: Identify key investment areas, such as infrastructure upgrades or defense health initiatives, that align with your offerings. These segments often feature multiple customers and require minimal adjustments to products or messaging.

This process will give you a starting point. You will have to pick up your shovel. 

Step 3: Dig Into the Details

Once you’ve got the trends down, you will have a sense of where to dig deeper. Go into those spaces and begin to align programs, organizations, and initiatives more specifically against your goals.  

You may be able to pull some of this information from published data–both spending data and documents published by different organizations, and the more detailed budget documents like justification books. With that, there will be gaps in information. It's wise to validate through conversation with stakeholders.

1. Consider Mission Alignment: Look for the organizations with missions you believe you can support or influence. The connection between your solution and their mission should be clear and easy to communicate.  The harder this is to do, the harder it will be to convince them to give you their time.
2. Focus on Consistent Spenders: Past behavior is a strong predictor of future trends. Leaps in spending may represent the push of a passionate individual, a congressional insert, or another very individually charged effort.  The consistent spenders also typically have an aligned mission.
3. Target Budgeted Programs: Programs with allocated funding moving forward represent opportunities. 

Again, you will have to come up with a scoring system to determine where you want these to land within your list of existing relationships. 

Using and Iterating Your Stakeholder-Opportunity Priority List

By now, you should have a 1-N list of target priorities–I like to include  a run down of the purpose and goal of each, and what you believe your value proposition is to each opportunity to have on hand.  

Once this is built, the real work begins. You’ll need to begin identifying people and relationships, and conducting outreach. As you learn more about programs, you may decide to double down on an opportunity that is coming to fruition and put other efforts on pause. 

Some ways to use this list include: 

Organizing Execution: 

• Map Organizations: Identify key program offices, budgets, and spending patterns of your top 3-5 priority teams.
• Networking Events: Leverage list to identify and target relevant stakeholders at events.
• Communication Alignment: Tailor engagement and communication products to influential relevant organizations.
• Team Alignment: Share internally to guide collaboration efforts.

Iterate and Update

• Address Saboteurs: Remove or adjust ranking for high-influence blockers.
• Pause Stalled Deals: Deprioritize late-stage opportunities without room for your solution.
• Promote Emerging Options: Elevate opportunities with new champions or pre-releases.
• Stay Dynamic: Regularly update with budget changes, stakeholder shifts, and feedback.

By refining your map and strategy, you’ll focus resources on high-potential opportunities while staying agile in a competitive market.

Success in the defense market depends on strategic discipline. By starting with your strongest relationships, aligning efforts with data on spending and funding allocations, and gradually expanding to broader strategic segments, you can position your organization to maximize its impact and return on investment.

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