Naval Undersea Warfare Center
NUWC is the Navy’s Research and Development Laboratory for Undersea Warfare Systems. Annual Revenue is typically over $1B dollars.
NUWC’s funding comes from large Navy programs for submarines and surface ship’s combat systems. About 30 of the NUWC people are sitting in offices of their government customer in Washington, D.C., representing the laboratory’s support of the customer.
In many cases, NUWC is the unofficial competition for the program manger’s resources with other government laboratories, federally funded research and development centers and government contractors.
In many cases, these other organizations have people highly trained in BD and were losing work to the competition. In many cases, the work really could have been done more competently by NUWC. NUWC asked ASHER to train their 30 people representing their programs in the DC government offices on how to best compete for the available work that was being lost to the competition.
ASHER started by assessing the 30 NUWC people representing their programs in their DC offices of the government customers. As a result of the assessment, half of the DC representatives were replaced with others who had a high talent for BD.
ASHER then trained the 30 people on best practices for BD. In the first year of training, the 30 people brought in $120M dollars in government funding to NUWC.
Large Government Contractor
Raytheon Case Study
Raytheon has several very large programs and many smaller programs. For each of these smaller programs, a program manager manages the program 90% of which are for the Federal Government. Raytheon wanted these program managers to grow their programs with their current programs.
ASHER started by assessing the program managers, deputy program managers, other seven technical people for natural aptitude for BD. The results empowered a number of decisions within one program:
- In some cases, the PM did not have a natural talent for BD, but the deputy PM did have a high aptitude. So the deputy took charge of BD for their program.
- In other cases, neither the PM nor the deputy PM had a high talent for BD. Then, at
the VP level, people were transferred between programs so that each program had a
PM or deputy PM with a talent for BD. - In other cases, a senior technical person was identified with a high natural talent for BD. In many cases, these technical people were given more time for BD and another technical person assumed some of their technical responsibilities.
Secondly, ASHER developed a customized BD training program for the program managers and all other customer-facing people within their programs including technical people.
Third, ASHER developed a compensation program for the program managers that consisted of three parts:
- Up-selling (more of the same products and services) to the customer
- Cross selling (selling new products and services) to the customer
- Obtaining referrals from their customer. These referrals are giving to the company’s corporate BD team that pursues them. If the corporate BD team closes one of these referrals, the PM got part of the first year’s commission.
In the first year after providing these sales advisory services to Raytheon, average revenue for the company’s program’s increases by 17%.
Small Government Contractor
Pivotal-Insight Case Study
Pivotal-Insight was a start-up company struggling to grow to pass $3M in revenue. They hired ASHER to help them grow:
ASHER started by assessing all executives and BD people and project managers for their aptitude for BD. As a result, the company moved some people to better jobs for them and hired an additional BD person.
ASHER then facilitated a strategic marketing plan for the company to develop a strategy for growth. The plan consisted of a goal to grow through acquisitions and a second goal to grow organically.
Third, the ASHER team trained all customer facing people on best practices for business development.
Results: Within six months the company won a $5M new contract with the Department of Veterans Affairs. Several months later, the company acquired a small technology company. In addition, within the first year sold a total of two million dollars through and existing IDIQ contract vehicle. After one year, the revenue of the company had doubled.
