Episode 55 - Having a structured BD process, with Jennifer Dougherty

how to build a gym with program office. Let's say that you're not there. It's a new agency. - I've heard this at conferences and webinars and things time and time again. And having been a former Fed, I will totally agree. You need to understand the culture of the agency and component. So, and I've told many people this, the culture of USCIS is different from the culture of ICE, which is different from the culture of TSA. All the components within DHS and then DHS headquarters have different cultures and personalities. And that, I think that's the same in other agencies and their components, like HHS and all of their components. I think understanding that, but also understanding the mission and value of the mission. Don't walk in the door and ask them about any of that. If someone walked in and asked me a question about my mission, I'm like, you need to go home and Google. (gentle music) - Welcome to the best-of-the-day conference. Today, we continue our conversation with Jennifer Dofferti, business development executive at PCI Federal. Here's what she has to say. - Okay, so we talked about your career. I think we didn't talk about your experience in different components. Okay, so you had experience, so you went to TSA, you went to, well, first you went to CWP, then to TSA, then-- - And I had headquarters. - Okay, then headquarters, small companies, large companies, how do you compare the experience? What are your thoughts? - Well, I think the first thing I have to say is that, I almost wish that there was a navigator for a medium-sized company. Because you have, you have a company, like my first company array, or even like Intellibrige, which is a medium-sized company, but has to compete against the Accentures and Deloits and GDITs. So I almost wish there was that third designator of the mid-size company, just because jumping from $25 to $30 million deals, all of a sudden you're having to compete on $100 million deals, is very challenging once you hit that large designator. But personally, so I've been in small mid-size and large. I mean, ICF is a $2 billion company. It's interesting because I found that at a small, you're doing everything. I was doing BD Capture, Proposal Work, I was being bit as KP, and so it was just a lot of things. So you have to be very targeted about the opportunities that you go after, but there are so many small business opportunities. So you just have to be very smart and cognizant about what you go after. And then whenever you're looking, once you're in the full and open market, now you're competing on these $100 million plus dollar deals. And those are a lot fewer, right? And I will say one of the things I really liked about being in a large business is the processes are put into place already. I think one of the things a lot of small businesses don't necessarily have the capacity for is BD and Capture as separate entities. And they really are. BD is a role in and of itself. Capture is a role in and of itself. And I think a lot of companies don't necessarily understand that when you have two captures that you're actively working, but you're also a BD person, BD tends to go in the back burner because you have two major captures. Right, right? Right, so it seems like the larger companies and the bigger and the more dollars you start to split out that BD and Capture, then you have the very focused roles and the processes get more stringent for better or for worse. I mean, I think that there's certainly too much process, but some level of process is really important. And that's one of the things I've come to learn. Is I appreciate process. And whenever I come to a company, I want to know what it is. I want to know who I'm going to at what step. When am I doing this, get reviewer, that get review? I want to know what that process is. And it needs to be there. But I've also been in places where the process is like, oh, it's standard shiply, but we've also added these additional 17 things you need to do. In which it gets too much. Yeah, yeah, yeah, it can be too much. It's a necessary, you know, to something, right? I mean, people, most people don't like it. It's a burden. It feels like a burden, but it guides too. It does. I don't find process a burden. I think too much process certainly is. There is a happy medium there. I like having process because it really allows for accountability. And I think that's important in the growth industry, in the growth market, is that accountability. And also being able to go to leadership and your colleagues and say, hey, I need help with this thing or that thing. And gate reviews are sort of that opportunity to say, this is where we are. This is what we need from all of you to get to the next step. So that process is absolutely necessary. Let's talk about accountability. You feel that sometimes there is no accountability. I feel the same way. Let's see if we feel that if we're talking about the same thing, it's like when somebody's supposed to do something and nobody knows what anyone is doing, it's some sort of chaos. Is that what you're referring for? Yeah, for sure. Well, whenever you're going after a deal, regardless of the size, if you have a beauty or a beauty slash capture person who's just working as an individual contributor, how do you know that they're moving and progressing forward? Gate reviews are like accountability light. There are certainly other ways to track accountability. But you would think leadership wants to know the status of deals. And also want to ask the question, how can we help? What do you need? Because being an individual contributor is challenging. It's even worse when you don't have the people to back you up. Right, right. I feel the same way. About the accountability thing. I call it beauty visibility. There is no beauty. And also, in a way, there's no hard evidence sometimes. Sometimes I feel that leadership needs to trust whatever beauty is telling them. It's asymmetric information. They don't have a way to prove it too much. I guess you need to trust in life, but very interesting topic. In particular, when the beauty cycle is long, because it's short, hey, it's working. I don't care what you're doing. It's working. But when you have a process that is so long, you better-- if not, you're going to end up like, I don't know, six months into the whole thing. I said, you know what? I think this is not working. Well, you should have said that like five months ago. Yes, yeah. Well, and I will also point out too that I recognize that a lot of companies have a hard time saying no to opportunities to making the decision to no bid. I've definitely been at places where I'm like, there's no reason that we should be bidding this deal. And they're like, well, they're trying to make decisions around it. I think that with that process, there's an opportunity at each gate and stage to say, especially from the beauty person and/or capture person, they can go to leadership and be like, I'm not getting anywhere with this. I want to drop it from my pipeline, even if it's a month out from RFP. There has to be some period where it's OK to say, we're going to no bid this. But it's hard, right? It hurts. It's tough, because you work and it is like invested in a stock and the stock goes down, know what to do. I mean, yeah, it's tough. But you have to kill them. You have to kill them. I mean, or you take a shot in the dark. It becomes a fly ball. And you're hoping that you have the right answers. But then you're the chance of winning, and it goes way down. Right, right. Yeah, no, it's no interesting. Well, our job, I love our jobs. The thing is so interesting. I wonder if it is in advance a mature place, or there's a lot to develop in terms of, for example, I feel that the job of a doctor is clear to define. I feel that the job of a dentist is clear to define. I feel that the job of a marketing person is clear to define. And I feel that the job of a guy who sells something, I don't know, I used to be a Wall Street guy. He was up to, you know, smaller items, smaller value, you know, 30,000 types of things. So it was very clear, you know, we need to get out of there and try to sell things to hedge funds and bags. But this, the whole chapter, I guess what we have is sheeply. What else do we have? Yeah, I mean, well, in Shipply is tried and true, right? But I think sheeply does a great job of capturing that capture side of things. I think to your point, the role of a business development and business development prior to like really leaning into capture is a little bit nuanced in exactly. And I think that, you know, I've met a ton of beauty people within the industry and they all have kind of their ways of doing things and their ways of creating contacts and like what conferences you go to and how you go about doing it. I think it's part the company culture in how they expect a beauty person to behave and react and do and be versus the person's natural personality. So it is a little defining what business development is and the activities associated with it. It's, there are certainly things that I could list, but then there's all these other things that are sort of personality driven or company culture driven. But do you think, and you know, and I'm brain a book. So I have my own way of doing things and I have, this is my book. We're going to put this in the podcast, but this is my book. This is just my way of doing it. I have to have a couple of hundred pages because I feel that all we have is, is sheeply. But I wonder if companies have, I've never worked in a large company, do they have really process written down in hundreds of pages or it's just, it's a cultural thing, tradition, what they, like oral tradition, right? You start in college, the oral tradition of this and that and it sounds like something that a teacher wants to have you. It's at the case that it's oral tradition or traditions that are in a company or they do have processes and videos and trainings and how to do things. You tell me because I never work on those companies. - So whenever I was at ICF, they put us through this training and I don't remember a value selling. - Yeah. - Value selling training. It's something that the ServiceNow folks go through this value selling. I found it really interesting. It was like a two day training. I don't know that I fully agree with it, per se. I've used some of the concepts from it. I got value out of the training. I wouldn't necessarily be able to apply it to a services BD thing because that was value selling in the ServiceNow space is product. You're selling a product. When you're at an ICF or an Agile Defense or where I am now a PCI, whenever you're at a services company and a system integrator company, you're not selling a thing. You're selling the company and the quality of our delivery work. And that's just not, that's quantifiable by corporate experience, but it's not quantifiable by a hundred licenses of these this thing. - Oh yeah, no, no, no. - Yeah. - So we're artists, I think. I mean, we're trying to be, - Yes. - We're having an art at this point, I don't know. - I think you're right. I think there are some companies that have sort of a way of doing BD and it is built into the company culture. And I've seen that even with my BD competimates in the way that they are at certain conferences or events or conversations we've had. I can definitely see that there is a specific cultural way of being business development. But like I said, I also think it is very individual personality driven. - Oh yeah, yeah, 100%. - Or something we started on our last call, "The Contracting Office of Relationship and the Program Office Relationship". You can media capture us relationship, right? At the end of the day you have to build a relationship because a better relationship will help you understand the problem better and also people buy from people they know. You need some trust because, again, I don't need trust to buy the guy who's gonna send me a pen. I'm not sure I need not trust. Give me the pen, give me the money, that's it. But what you were saying, if it's not a product, it's a service you need to be dealing with people for some time so that their relationship will help with trust. So, what are your thoughts on developing relationship with contracting offices? How do small business or large business or any type of business? What are your thoughts on that? - Yeah, I think it's important to build that relationship with the contracting officer. And I've seen some companies and individuals do it exceptionally well. One of the things that I've seen in the procurement life cycle is obviously it's a program office who's creating the statement of work and making those technical decisions in what it is they need from vendors to execute on. But a lot of the decisions around what the evaluation criteria is going to be what parameters for a corporate experience or a past performance, what are those parameters going to be? Are conversations between the program office and the contracting officer? So being able to have that conversation with both sides is incredibly important. And when you're building the relationship with the contracting officer, they're an incredibly important part of the evaluation life cycle until it finally gets signed off and awarded. And it's great for them to know who you are as a company and not just the past performance or core facts that you've written on a piece of paper or the words that you put into your technical write-up or your oral presentation or whatever it is, it's fine and you can certainly have a good showing that way. But it's always better for them to already know who the company is and already have an idea about that company because it's all a confidence level. And that's not an official evaluation criteria, but it's something, if I'm going to go by a pair of sunglasses, for example, I wear Oakley sunglasses. I know them, I like them, I've had success with them. And so whenever I have to buy a new pair of sunglasses, my first place to go is Oakley, right? And so why would it be any different for services? If you know you get high quality services. OK, but how about when they say you're let's talk about a situation where you have to go to a new agency, there's a requirement. It's coming, there's months, 10 months. And how do you build that relationship with a contracting officer in an agency that you then don't know you? How do you add value to that? I think when we talked last time, you were talking about advice on something of the RFP. You mentioned something about corporate experience and past performance, something like that. How can a company add value to a contracting officer when they don't know them already? I mean, this is where the BD lifecycle comes in. And if I reach out to a contracting officer and they don't know me, I don't know them. I send them an email or I give them a call. In that very first conversation, I'm not going to say, hey, I know you have an RFP coming out. And let me tell you, you should do corporate experience, not past performance, and here's why. This is going to go across well because they don't know me. I don't know them. I will just come across as a know-it-all and pretentious. So this is where having multiple conversations and building that relationship, understanding that the pain points and the challenges of the program office is important. But contracting, the contracting shop also has their own challenges and pain points that they want to deal with. And starting to understand that, I think they get left out often. Understanding it from their perspective is going to be important. And those are multiple conversations, both speaking questions and understanding them. And it builds rapport. What are the contact enough pain points in your experience? Let me guess. I would say, well, their goal is to get the best company for their internal customer, get a good RFP, get a good competitive process, get a good price. The way I think about it at least is that their pain points are coming up with a good RFP, avoid protests. Yeah. But the thing is, the challenge is how to have those first conversations, right? Because they're so busy, and they don't respond sometimes. It's not a single way, right? But how would you build a relationship with somebody who doesn't know you yet? Persistence is probably key. Not to be annoying, but to be persistent. And also asking intelligent questions. If you send a message, just like, hey, I want to know about this opportunity. You leave it super generic. They don't have time to sit around and just respond to contractors emails all day, or these cold, cold, cold emails all day. Asking very pointed questions, I think attending the industry days and those types of events where contracting officers are present and asking, I mean, I've seen you on USCIS industry day. I've seen you ask questions. And you make a name for yourself just in asking, in having that kind of back and forth with them. So you start to make a name for yourself, and then you certainly be persistent and not rude and not annoying, but persistent and consistent. Yeah, we have no choice. But I love the idea of pointed questions, like you said, not general, but smart questions. They can have some value, and they can show some thought behind it and knowledge. So you become more trusted. I love the idea. OK, how about program office? How to build a relationship with program office? My guess would be that they have their payments are the difficult aspects of their programs. Now, there is this thing that some people say, oh, sometimes they say they want innovation, but in the end, they don't want a university that's a little bit conservative. But what are your thoughts in general of adding value and developing a relationship with the program office? How do you do? It's a new agency. OK, OK. And I've heard this at conferences and webinars and things time and time again. So-- and I've told many people this-- the culture of USCIS is different from the culture of ICE, which is different from the culture of TSA. All the components within DHS and DHS headquarters have different cultures and personalities. And that I think that's the same in other agencies and their components, like HHS and all of their components. They all have different cultures and personalities. And I think understanding that, but also understanding the mission-- like, you should not have to ask a program person about their IT strategy. All of that is public. Like, you should have read that. You should understand their mission and their mission value-- the value of the mission. Like, you need to understand that. Already, don't walk in the door and ask them about any of that. That's like somebody asking a silly question in class, writing a call, and you should be asking that. Yes, just like it's in the syllabus. Yes, read the syllabus first. Yes, so do the research on the agency and/or component. Do the research and understand it. If you go in and ask, hey, what are your pain points? That is a generic question. It's an obnoxious question honestly. I agree with you, 100%. But then I have seen people that are charismatic, and they have their ways. I'm not like that. But some of them are so charismatic, and maybe some people that you and I know in common. And they get away with it. They have such a good heart, and maybe a little bit of charisma. But I agree with you. You should be asking basic questions. There's a way to ask that question in an intelligent way. I mean, if you walk into her and you say, what are your pain points? It's like, well, my kids are being annoying off screen. It's a generic question. Get a little bit more detail. Be like, hey, I was reading your IT strategy, and I saw it talks a lot about innovation. I don't know your program well. I would love to know more about your role and your program, and what innovation means to you. And it's an open-ended question. It shows you've done some research, and it gives them a wide open opportunity to answer what could theoretically be everything you need. But also, as long as you're paying attention, it could give you the opportunity to ask further pointed questions as they talk about those things. So be specific, but leave it with an open-ended question. - Yeah, and I like airports, super sophisticated approach. I love it, I love it. I'm learning a lot. Okay, okay. But look, I would like to ask you about your current company. What are your goals to know about the company? - For sure. - Polities. - PCI Federal. I'm very excited to go down this path because like we've established, I've been at small, medium, and large companies. I've been in the federal government. I have certainly partnered with tribal companies before, ANCs and other tribals, but I've never worked in one. So there is this big learning curve that I'm experiencing now, but I find it really exciting because it sort of adds another checkbox to my own resume in terms of why I understand all these different types of companies because I've been there. So I find it very exciting, like I said, big learning curve. But, and that's why it's a little bit challenging to speak about it now because I understand that we have federal contracts and IT work, but we also have, I know we have a communications company and a construction company and all the media company and all these other things that in the early stages of learning, but what was exciting to me is, whenever I met my boss is Nick and Mark, one of the things that is we're in the federal space and we have smaller contracts, but we behave like a startup. And I'm a move fast kind of person. I like to move fast, I like to figure things out as I go. And so that was very attractive to me and then that learning curve of understanding that tribal kind of world, which is exciting. But we are in the DHS space and we have really great capabilities, a lot of PMO work, and then all of the entities of course, right? So, I mean, but doing things like supporting the Office of Acquisition and OCFO, which helping them with their actual acquisitions and then even doing data analytics work and dashboarding and reporting, that type of stuff. There's some really great work there. We do have some work in DHS today, primarily at ICE and USCIS, which is obviously the space that I'm in. I focus on DHS and I'm going to continue to do that and grow, but I'm sure with, we've made a relatively recent acquisition of a company called SuperTack, which has some good hard-hitting IT work, really be able to grow in that IT space, like that five or one five one S space, which is exciting for me. That's the work I've done pretty much my entire career and I think we'll see some growth. So I'm excited to see what's going to happen and where things will go and so far, all the team that I've met are really great folks. And like I said, the whole mentality of where I start up, I love it. I love to move fast and still be able to focus, though, in my BD capture world. - I love it. - Right. Thank you, Jenny, for-- (upbeat music) - Thanks for listening and thanks to Jenny, for-- See you next time. (upbeat music) [Bell]