Qualifying the Deal – Risk Assessment

There are many aspects to qualifying a business opportunity. 

Although each company has their own template, my experience is that about 90% of that content across companies is the same with the remaining 10% being specific to each company. 

One that should be in everyone’s template, that I often don't see, is Risk Assessment.

We often look at things like customer needs, solution fit, win probability, compelling event, etc. 

But how many times to we analyze the risk? Can we really do the job successfully? 

As a new sales guy one of the first mantras told to me was to "never confuse selling with implementation." I use it as a joke now but I never bought into it. 

Putting myself in the customer's shoes, I felt that if I want the customer to buy from me again there has to some trust and confidence in me and whatever I am selling. 

As a business development executive it was more important to do a risk assessment as part of the qualification process so that an opportunity was truly qualified and we weren’t just drinking our own bath water in our decision to bid/no bid. 

Here are a few things to consider in the risk assessment column before determining that you are the best choice for the customer:

•   Can you really do what you say you are going to do for them?
•   Can you really deliver it? What are the critical elements of your implementation plan?
•    Are they interdependent upon other things?
•    What could cause you to fail?
•    Can you mitigate that?
•    Can you really staff the program?
•   Have you ever done anything on this scope before?
•   From a cost perspective, will you be able to control costs and stay profitable over the life of the program?
•   Can you work within the contract vehicle type and deliver? (CPAF, FFP, etc.)

There are many other factors to address but the main point here to remember that risk assessment is as much a part of the qualification process as any other element. 

Winning is great, but being unable to deliver is not.

For more information about how The Cobalt Group can help you with the risk assessment of qualifying business opportunities, or any business or leadership challenges you are facing, Contact us.

We want to hear what you think. Leave a comment and let’s start a discussion.

Copyright © 2013 The Cobalt Group, LLC. All rights reserved.