Jennifer Namvar Archives - GCG Contracting Group

Jennifer Namvar: The Billion Dollar Capture Manager

Posted on October 1, 2020 by Eric Coffie

With her background as a capture manager, Jennifer Namvar details her work and process and shares her advice for small businesses.

BACKGROUND

Jennifer Namvar has over 15 years of experience in all phases of the federal government business development life cycle.

She built her reputation in the industry through her previous employment with consistent DOD Top 100 list companies including Engility, NCI Information Systems Inc., and CSRA wherein she successfully closed more than $1B in new and re-compete business.

Currently, she is a Capture Director at the IT, engineering, and science solutions and services company, Leidos, and an Advisor at Patri, a software and consulting firm.

Namvar is also providing free content about government contracting on LinkedIn and on her self-named website.

DIFFICULTIES AS A CAPTURE MANAGER

While Namvar is extremely successful in her field, she also experienced difficulties as a capture manager when it comes to team sport. As the manager, she is the leader of the team and she needs to handle everything accordingly as it involves huge amounts of money.

“One of the things is being very clear on the roles and responsibilities. If you’re the capture manager, you need to be the leader, and you have to use different leadership skills. Sometimes you can be collaborative and sometimes you have to be directive.”

Another thing that she has difficulties with was standing up for herself but she soon learned to deal with being firm with her decisions.

“There’s a lot of opinions on how you should do things and you need to take those opinions but you also need to take a stand and be decisive in terms of how you want to go forward with something and be able to back that up.”

Lastly, doing capture takes a very long time and this sometimes requires her to work on evenings and even on weekends. With this, they usually work on a proposal in advance.

PROPOSAL CREATION PROCESS

Namvar recommends that in putting together a proposal, you must outline the requirements and evaluation criteria and then assign each person on your team a responsibility in each part of the proposal.

After that, you can always check up the status of your team. Ensure that they don’t have any questions and if there are some problems, it should be resolved right away.

Then, you can do a review of the draft and the final proposal with key people.

“Get a couple people, either if it’s a startup, sometimes you have a board, sometimes you have business advisors. Get those people to review your proposal. Don’t review your own proposal.”

One crucial thing that you should always consider in this process is the time as the government always assigns a due date to each request.

“You definitely want to give yourself, build in enough time into the schedule so that you don’t have a fail and miss a deadline. Because if you do miss a deadline even by a minute, the government typically will throw you out and you don’t want to waste all that time and money for having a late submission.”

ADVICE FOR SMALL BUSINESSES

1. Have a strategy.

Most small businesses always chase the next shiny object. Rather than doing this, you should have a strategy and build a pipeline to achieve a specific goal.

“It’s interesting because I’ve seen where in particular like 8a firms… If it’s like, say, a metal building, and then, it might be a security job, and then it might be to sell some furniture, but they never really focus on building a business. And so at the end of the day, when the 8a program is over with, they’re left and they don’t have a business and they don’t have relationships and they don’t have customers.”

2. Don’t be afraid.

Everyone has the ability to create art and produce something that is significant to the world. However, if you’re going to be afraid of people’s judgement, how will that benefit you and other people?

“There will be people who don’t like what you put out in the world. They’ll disagree with it, they’ll be jealous, because you’re more successful than the next person. And there’s always going to be… You can’t please everyone all the time. But there are going to be some people out there who really like what you put out there, who really like your company, who have jobs because you created a company. And none of that value would exist if you’re too scared to put it out there.”

3. Nurture your relationship.

Don’t just bid for contracts but focus on nurturing your relationship with decision-makers and clients.

“I think that this is a relationship-based business, and the best thing you can do is number one, nurture a relationship with the decision maker in one of these large businesses and attach yourself at the hip to that person and just constantly, not constantly, but every couple of weeks may be, have lunch with them. Reach out to them. Nurture a relationship with them so that way, you are at the top of their mind when a contractor’s coming out and they need to fulfill a requirement.”

With this, you can find like-minded individuals on networking events or through platforms like LinkedIn.

RESOURCES

If you want to watch the full video of the interview with Jennifer Namvar as she details her work and process as a capture manager and shares her advice for small businesses, then be sure to click the links below:

004: Jennifer Namvar – The Billion Dollar Capture Manager

https://govcongiants1.wpengine.com/podcast/04-2/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=65qD_R0oOYo

Jennifer Namvar- The Billion Dollar Capture Manager – Part 2: Insight

Posted on June 7, 2020 by Linette Genao

By focusing on emerging and next-generation technologies, Jennifer Namvar, Capture Director for Leidos, has become the best of the best at what she does. With 16 years of experience in all phases of the federal government business development life-cycle, she is someone you want to learn from. Jennifer Namvar has worked for some of the DoD’s Top 100 list companies and has closed more than one billion in new and re-compete business.

With so much knowledge to offer, we decided to break this into two parts.

Part 1, focused on proposal writing assistance and how-to effectively execute the process as a small-business. Here on Part 2, Jennifer Namvar will take us a little into a Capture Manager’s World and how small businesses can benefit from this insider knowledge.

CAPTURE MANAGER INSIGHT

According to Namvar, there are key areas that capture managers will always focus on.

Customer engagement
- “The more customer intimacy that you have, the higher your win probability will be on your opportunity that you’re working.” -Jennifer Namvar
Teaming
- “For a particular opportunity, usually one company doesn’t do the whole thing themselves. They bring a team of other companies.” -Jennifer Namvar
Solutions
- “How do you bring a differentiated solution?” -Jennifer Namvar

Some of the questions Capture Managers ask throughout these three stages include, “Who are you going to call in, in a government? What are the requirements this customer’s looking for? Which ones does my company do best? Are there small business requirements? Which small businesses would be a good fit for this contract? How do you put together a differentiated solution that’s not something your competitors are going to put together?”

That’s a lot of information.

Because of this, you’re probably wondering do larger organizations work less with small businesses?

They do!

According to Namvar, “A lot of the RFP’s that come out will have a small business requirement as part of them.”

Through the teaming stage, they have to put together a winning team. “If that includes 40% of my subtracted dollars go to small businesses, I have to figure out which small businesses I need to bring on my team.”

HOW IS THIS DONE?

They look at small businesses that they’ve successfully partnered with in the past.
They look for a specific socioeconomic category
- For example, a woman-owned small business, service-disabled small-business, veteran-owned small business, etc. and how their company meets the areas of the statement of work.
Customer Relationships

HOW CAN YOU DISTINGUISH YOURSELF AS A SMALL BUSINESS?

One word. Relationships. Relationships. Oh yea, relationships! Okay, that was technically three or five, but that one word is key!

“This is the advice I always give to small businesses. I think that this is a relationship-based business, and the best thing you can do is nurture a relationship with the decision maker in one of these large businesses,” states Namvar.

Having lunch with them, reaching out to them and nurturing the relationship, are all ways Namvar advises you begin building and growing your connections. That way, when a contractor is coming out and needs to fulfill a requirement, you are at the top of their mind.

“It could be someone from the contract side, you might want to work that angle, but you might want to consider also working the angle of someone who is dealing with a large volume of proposals that they have to deal with. Whether, it’s a business development person or a capture manager who’s working a few different deals.”

Secondly, Namvar advises bringing your client relationships to the primes.

“So if you can nurture some customer relationships, in the same way of customers you would ideally want to work with, you can say, ‘Hey, I can make an introduction to customer so-and-so and I hear that this opportunity’s coming out. You would be a great fit for a prime and we would love to partner with you on it.’ That’s a slam dunk way to do it, in my opinion. That’s how I would do it if I were a small business.”

How do you get these relationships you might ask?

Word of mouth, networking events and even LinkedIn.

MISTAKES SMALL BUSINESSES MAKE

During the process of building relationships, there are mistakes that can be made. Do not just invite these new connections to have lunch with you.

When you contact them, Jennifer Namvar advises sending a message that is detailed but quick. In the message, articulate your value, bring a customer into the picture, identify an opportunity they may or may not be aware of and ask for a brief 15-minute call.

Another mistake, becoming too tactical. Don’t get so tactical as a small business, that you forget to have a process.

“I think that most small businesses use the excuse that ‘hey, we’re a small business, so we can’t have a process, so we can’t have a strategy.’ Instead of having a strategy of, ‘Okay, this year I want to go… These are the accounts that I want to focus on or these are the customers I want to focus on and these are the opportunities at the beginning of the year, and build a pipeline. I see them more waiting for the… chasing the next shiny object or waiting for the next opportunity and completely overextending themselves and not actually engaging with customers or engaging with those partners that they can work with.”

As she says, “Don’t go wide instead of deep.”

LAST PIECE OF ADVICE

Finally, we leave you with some encouragement from Jennifer Namvar herself.

“If you’re afraid of that and you don’t put your art out into the world, then no one gets the benefit of it…You can’t please everyone all the time. But there are going to be some people out there who really like what you put out there, who really like your company, who have jobs because you created a company. And none of that value would exist if you’re too scared to put it out there.”

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JENNIFER NAMVAR BOOK RECOMMENDATIONS

Jennifer Namvar – The Billion Dollar Capture Manager – Part 1: Proposals

Posted on May 31, 2020 by Linette Genao

With so much knowledge to offer, we have decided to break this into two parts. With part 1, we will focus on proposal writing assistance and how to effectively execute the process as a small-business.

PROPOSAL ADVICE FROM JENNIFER NAMVAR

1) Have a proposal management process

We all know proposals require a lot of time and dedication. As a small business, even if you cannot afford a full out-proposal management team, you should still have a process. For example, even with a small 5-person team, this can be effectively accomplished by beginning with creating a schedule.

“What I would recommend is that you put together for each proposal a schedule and an outline of the requirements and the evaluation criteria. You dedicate or assign a team of people and give each person on your five-person team a responsibility for putting together a part of the proposal.”

Additionally, Namvar recommends holding reviews and getting someone else to review your proposal.

“Get a couple people. Either if it’s a startup, sometimes you have a board, sometimes you have business advisors. Get those people to review your proposal. Don’t review your own proposal.”

2) If you outsource…

Find someone credible to review your proposals.

“I would bring in trusted consultants…There’s several proposal and capture consulting companies that have very senior folks that you can hire to review your proposal,” states Namvar.

If you hire a freelancer, Namvar suggests hiring one that is specific to this industry and to federal proposals.

3) Give yourself time

With all the time and money invested into created proposals, you want to make sure you give yourself enough time to review, edit, and perfect.

In addition, Namvar advises allotting time for a hard copy response in case something goes wrong electronically.

Missing a deadline is not an option.

“If you do miss a deadline, even by a minute, the government typically will throw you out and you don’t want to waste all that time and money for having a late submission.”

4) Have Accountability Check-Ins

Throughout the life of the proposal, you want to have daily accountability check-ins with your team. This way, you know the proposal is going in the right direction. Also, little problems or concerns can be addressed quickly without turning into larger issues.

Following these 4 steps will assist you in having a smoother proposal writing experience. It will also assure you are putting your best foot forward. After all, you want to make sure you are submitting the best proposal you have to offer.

On our next post, Jennifer Namvar will take us a little into a Capture Manager’s World and how small businesses can benefit from this insider knowledge.