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One of the most effective ways to generate testimonials is to write them first. 

This is a practice, not a tactic. A specific, honest recommendation for a client or collaborator, with no expectation of return. Simply a genuine contribution to someone whose work deserves to be named out loud. 

The reciprocity tends to follow anyway. But that is not the point. 

Why this matters 

We close every engagement thinking about what we can give before we think about what we might ask for. A recommendation or an introduction. It could be a referral to someone we know who could help with what comes next. Sharing something we learned during the project that has value beyond the deliverable. 

This is not altruism. It is a deeply practical orientation toward how relationships compound over time. The firms that grow on trust rather than transactions are the ones that have built a reputation for showing up generously, consistently, over years. That reputation is not earned in a single gesture. It is built through a pattern. 

What generosity looks like at the end of an engagement 

It’s a structured close that centers the client. What did we learn together? What is the client better positioned to do now than they were at the start? What matters next and who can help? 

It’s writing the testimonial or recommendation before asking whether the client would be willing to provide one. Most clients are happy to provide a reference. Very few initiate it. Making it easy is a generous move. 

It’s staying connected after the project closes. Not to sell, but because the relationship has value beyond the transaction. A check-in a few weeks later. A relevant article shared or an introduction made because it was useful. 

Generosity is a growth strategy 

This is not a soft idea. It’s how effective business development works. 

Referrals come from relationships. Relationships deepen when people feel supported without an immediate transaction attached. The firms that generate the most referrals are rarely the most aggressive—they are the most consistent. Cass has made generosity her word of the year for 2026 for a reason. Practiced deliberately, it becomes operational. The question at the end of every engagement—and in the day-to-day—is simple: what can be given here before anything is asked for? 

That orientation, practiced consistently, builds the kind of reputation that grows a firm over time. Quietly, durably, and without a pitch. 

Most pursuits are decided before they are ever released. Capture is not an activity. It is a way of operating. 

The distinction matters because capture strategy is not a tool you deploy for your biggest pursuits and set aside for the rest. It is business as usual. The intelligence-gathering, relationship-building, and proactive positioning are the things that compound over time. Teams that treat capture as a project versus practice keep starting from zero and get progressively better at winning. 

Here is what that transition looks like. 

Where most BD teams start 

Reactive. An RFP lands, the team pivots, the proposal is built in a matter of days or weeks. There is little clarity on why the pursuit is being chased beyond surface-level alignment. The capture work that should have happened months ago did not happen at all. 

This is not a failure of intent. It is a failure of infrastructure. Without a shared vocabulary for capture, a consistent approach to intelligence gathering, and structured pursuit conversations, reactive becomes the default. It is the path of least resistance, and it produces average results at significant cost. 

The leadership conditions that make it possible 

Capture culture does not start with the BD team. It starts with what leadership prioritizes. 

Organizations that do this well keep senior leaders close to the client and grounded in the forward pipeline. They are asking well before a pursuit opens, what is known, what is missing, and where the organization needs to be positioned. RFPs are not a surprise. That posture, curious, proactive, and relationship-forward, sets the tone. Without it, BD teams default to what is urgent: the proposal in front of them. 

The shared vocabulary that accelerates it 

One of the earliest gains in building capture culture is alignment on language. What does capture mean in practice? What counts as a qualified opportunity? What is required for a go/no-go decision? What distinguishes a win theme versus a capability statement? 

Clarity here sharpens pursuit conversations. The debate about whether to pursue shifts from an instinctive reaction to a disciplined assessment. The pursuit workshop becomes standard practice, not a special event. 

This shift is often most visible in organizations where capture was not previously formalized. Introducing a shared vocabulary changes how the pipeline is understood and acted on.  

What it looks like: Early adoption vs. When it sticks 

Within the first number of months, new habits are forming with some friction. The go/no-go process is being applied with some discomfort. Workshops are happening. Internal debriefs are becoming standard. Intelligence gathering is more intentional, even if not yet systematic. 

In time those habits are embedded. Pipeline conversations reference intelligence gathered months earlier. Win themes are clear before pursuit sessions begin. Proposals are more specific, more aligned to the client. The increased win rate reflects it. 

This shift does not come from a one-time effort. It comes from sustained leadership focus, shared language, and consistent application over multiple cycles.  

Capture culture is a long game. It is also the only BD strategy that compounds. 

A compliant proposal is safe. A compelling one sparks recognition that highlights, “this team truly gets it”. Technical compliance is required, yet not sufficient. 

Evaluators read a lot of proposals. The ones that blur together are those that answered the questions and ticked the boxes. The ones that are remembered tell a story, a specific, credible, client-centric story and how the proposed team fits, for this project, right now. 

What compliance looks like 

A compliant proposal addresses every section of the RFP in the order it was requested. It demonstrates qualifications, experience, methodology, and approach. It includes the required forms and certifications, team bios, project descriptions. 

It also, in many instances, looks nearly identical to the many competing proposals submitted alongside it. Same structure. Same language. Same generic win themes about being client-focused, collaborative, and committed to excellence. Same executive summary that opens with a variation of. “We are pleased to submit this proposal for your consideration…”. 

Compliance won’t win the work. It only keeps you from losing it. The evaluation committee already expects it. What moves a score is what lives above the baseline. 

What compelling looks like 

A compelling proposal demonstrates a clear understanding of the client’s specific situation, not the category of client they belong to. It reflects intelligence gathered before the RFP dropped. It names the real challenge beyond the stated scope. The executive summary reads as if the work has already been considered in context, because it has. 

The differentiators are real. Not generic claims of deep technical expertise, but specifics: experience working alongside the client’s operations group on a comparable project in the same region, with a clear understanding of the constraints that will define success. The narrative has a through-line. The client reads the executive summary and knows the story. They read the methodologysection, and it reinforces the same story. They read the team bios and understand why these specific people, in this specific configuration, are the right team to deliver the work. Nothing contradicts anything else. The proposal is clear in what it is arguing. 

Proof in Action 

Where the story comes from 

It does not come from the writing. It comes from the work that happens before the proposal opens. 

In a Toronto infrastructure pursuit, TSD helped a team with strong technical capability and no shared narrative find their story under significant time pressure. When we started asking questions, we found brilliant, disconnected perspectives. Each person could explain their own piece. Nobody had put the pieces together into a coherent argument for why this team, assembled this way, was the right choice for this client. 

Several weeks later, the submission ranked first in technical scoring. The qualifications were strong before we arrived. What changed was the narrative architecture: the through-line that made those qualifications legible, connected, and client-specific. 

A practical test 

Read the last executive summary as an evaluator would. Not as the lead reviewer who has part of every conversation, but as a committee member encountering your organization for the first time. 

Does it clearly convey an understanding of the client’s situation? Does it make a specific case for selection? Does it give the evaluator language they can carry into the room? If it reads like a summary of what follows rather than an argument for selection, the proposal is working too hard.  

Here’s a tip: the executive summary should function as the proposal itself, with everything that follows serving as evidence. 

Compliance gets you to the table. The story gets you the contract.

The fastest path to a major client relationship is often through a small, well-executed piece of work. 

Not because small work leads to big work automatically, but because it gives the client an early experience of how you operate. How you think. How you handle problems. Whether delivery matches what was promised. That experience builds trust, and trust is what generates the next conversation. 

What’s an entry-point engagement? 

It’s a small, well-defined engagement that creates access without the overhead of something larger. 

It might look like a discovery sprint, strategy session, proposal or website audit, or short-term pilot. A clear deliverable and defined end date. This is designed to demonstrate how the work is done, not just what is produced. 

The distinction matters. Most small engagements are treated as contained transactions, efficiently delivered, then closed out. The ones that lead to long-term relationships are approached differently as the beginning of a much longer relationship. 

How to approach them differently 

Be more curious than the scope requires. Ask what this work connects to. What would the client need to be true six months from now for it to have been worth doing? That level of thinking distinguishes a strategic partner from a vendor. 

Deliver exactly what was committed—on time, with clear communication. Scope creep is a fast way to erode a new relationship. Consistency builds more trust than unexpected extras. Leave something behind that makes the next conversation natural. Something that carries the conversation forward. A set of questions or relevant observation. Context that connects to what comes next; not a pitch but something that keeps the relationship active beyond the deliverable. 

The longer game 

Getting in the door is a strategy. What happens next determines whether the relationship continues. 

We have seen this pattern consistently. A firm wins a modest engagement and uses it as an opportunity to demonstrate how they work, not just what they produce. The client experiences the work directly and trust builds. When the larger opportunity surfaces, there is little competition because the relationship is already doing the work. 

The opposite happens just as often. The work is delivered, then closed. No follow through or ongoing connection. The client moves on because there was nothing to anchor the relationship beyond the deliverable. 

An entry-point engagement is not just a project; it is the start of a strategy. The question moves beyond what’s to be delivered, to a greater understanding of what this engagement needs. This demonstrates to the client the intention to continue the relationship. Start there. 

Capture is one of the most misunderstood words in business development. We were on a call recently with someone smart, experienced, and deeply familiar with BD. When the word came up, her first question was: is that just a new name for sales manager? 

It was a fair question. And it is exactly the problem. 

Capture as a concept is not new, and it is not just a title. It is the practice of strategic positioning before an opportunity is formally open. The relationship-building, market intelligence, internal alignment, and win theme development; everything that happens before the RFP drops. In the architecture, engineering, and construction world, it has a name. In most other industries, the same work exists under different language: pre-positioning, pipeline development, account strategy. While the terminology varies, the discipline is the same. And in every industry, it is the difference between responding to opportunities and creating the conditions to win them. 

When every opportunity feels like an emergency 

The RFP arrives and all hands are on deck. The proposal gets written within a tight turnaround time. The client relationship is thin, the timeline is brutal, and the opportunity showed up unannounced because nobody was tracking it. That is not a pursuit. It is a response. 

The team cannot clearly articulate why they are chasing this one beyond the fact that the work looked relevant. 

It’s exhausting and expensive. A path to team burnout. Every proposal submitted without a realistic path to winning costs real time, energy and resources. And the organizations that stay stuck in reactive mode tend to keep submitting the same way, losing at the same rate, and absorbing it as a cost of doing business. At some point that stops being a pipeline problem and starts being a strategic one. 

Positioning is different. It starts with a relationship, a problem worth solving, and enough lead time to do something with that knowledge. By the time the RFP hits, the team is not scrambling. Rather, they have already identified the right subject matter experts and have already had the conversation about win themes. The work for the proposal is well underway; project descriptions and resumes are customized for the work. The team is not flailing about trying to figure out who belongs in the room, because that conversation happened months ago. 

The Strategy Department’s definition 

Strategic positioning for winning opportunities. Not just for RFP-driven work, but for any kind of program, contract, or client relationship worth pursuing intentionally. It includes attending the right conferences and performing market research on a prospect before reaching out. Making a warm connection through a shared network, and showing up with something useful before there is anything to sell. 

This is capture regardless of what vernacular is used. And it applies far beyond firms that respond to formal tenders. Founders, consultants, professional services firms, anyone who wins workthrough relationships rather than transactions is doing some version of this, whether they have named it or not. 

The earliest signal that an organization is ready to build this practice 

They understand the work they do before an opportunity opens determines the outcome. That conviction, starting with leadership, is the foundation. Without it, capture stays a concept. With it, the vocabulary and the process follow. 

The organizations that have made this shift most successfully did not just name the practice. They built the infrastructure: shared language, structured pipeline conversations, consistent intelligence gathering, and the discipline to say no to pursuits where they are not positioned to win. 

That last part is the hardest, and it is where the real advantage lives. 

It’s easy to get excited about using the many social media platforms available to grow a business. Someone might say what has been working for them, and it gets added to the stack. In a recent conversation with a founder, we learned she was using a total of four platforms: Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, TikTok. Then she described what it takes to manage them. Posting, responding, organizing a group, monitoring channel engagement, every week. 

When asked which ones were moving the business forward, she paused. That pause is where the real conversation starts. 

To us, it sounded like managing a schedule instead of implementing a strategy.  

The more-is-better approach to social media is one of the most common mistakes we see. Businesses spread themselves thin across too many platforms and maintain each one out of obligation, and then wonder why the effort is not converting to desired results. Most of that effort is feeding the channels, not the business. 

The question that brings clarity 

Before any conversation about which platforms to use, there is a more important question: where are the people you want to reach? 

Most channel decisions get made based on what feels active or what peers are doing. Market research answers this more reliably than intuition does. Where are your ideal clients spending time online? What are they reading, sharing, responding to? What does your existing client base look like, and where did those relationships start? Those questions have answers, and the answers drive the decision. 

Show up where your ideal clients already are. If they are senior decision-makers, they are on LinkedIn. They are not scrolling Instagram at noon looking for your content. The wrong room, no matter how often you show up, is still the wrong room. 

Busy is easy to mistake as progress. 

Responding to comments on a platforms that have never generated a single inquiry. Repurposing the same content everywhere and calling it a strategy. Tracking engagements while questioningwhy revenue is not moving. That is activity, not strategy. 

We had a conversation with a founder who wanted higher-value clients, corporate contracts, and programs that generate more revenue. We asked her: of the four platforms, which one is the most likely path to those outcomes? She knew the answer. It was not all of them. 

That is not a reason to abandon every channel, but it is a reason to be honest about which ones are driving results and focus there. 

On the ROI and trust-building stage 

Social presence is slow. Organic reach does not convert on a predictable timeline. Some audiences move quickly; others take time. That variation is normal and reflects factors nobody fully controls, including algorithms, audience behavior, and content reach. 

What can be owned and measured is consistency, clarity, and relevance. Those are the inputs. Impressions, engagement patterns, and audience growth are the leading indicators. Revenue conversion follows, with a clear and intentional infrastructure in place. While likes do not pay the bills, the answer is not to push harder on the wrong platforms. It is to build the right channel foundations that are working for you and stay consistent long enough for it to matter. 

What to ask before you hire a social media manager 

Before brining someone in to manage your social presence, start with one question: what should this channel produce, and for whom? 

Not which platforms you want to be on. What outcome matters, and where the right audience is already paying attention. Strategy and execution are both necessary. The mistake is starting with execution before the strategy exists. 

Otherwise, you are handing someone a schedule and hoping it turns into something. 

We work with organizations on both sides of this: building the strategy that determines where to show up, and managing the execution once it’s clear. If either piece is missing for you right now, let’s talk.