Who Owns the Pursuit? Hats Can Stack. Lanes Cannot Blur.

Most firms have a roles and responsibilities document. Most of them are written the same way.

Two columns. What this role owns. What this role does not own.

It looks like clarity. It reads like a contract. And it quietly perpetuates silos and teaches every person on your growth team where to stop.

That's how you end up with a BD lead who green-lights their own opportunity because nobody else has authority (or a chance) to say no. A proposal manager who finds out about a bid four days after the RFP dropped. A delivery lead sitting on the best customer intelligence in the building and no path to hand it over. Everyone did their job exactly as written, and the pursuit still came out worse than the sum of the people who worked it.

Bad handoffs create fire drills. And most bad handoffs trace back to a roles document that defined ownership once and never accounted for the fact that ownership moves.

Three states instead of two columns

The fix is small on paper and significant in practice. Replace *Owns / Does Not Own* with three states:

• Leads. One function is accountable. If it doesn't happen, it's on them.

• Partners. You share the work. You're in the room, your input shapes the outcome, and you can raise a hand.

• Supports. You supply what's needed when asked, and you don't drive it.

Every activity in a pursuit gets exactly one leader and at least one partner. Never a leader working alone.

That single rule kills the two failure modes that cost firms the most work: the pursuit nobody owns, and the pursuit one person owns in isolation.

Proposal roles and responsibilities: five functions, five questions

Growth is a cross-functional sport. Five functions play it, and each one answers a question the others can't.

Business development owns relationships and intelligence. Should we pursue this, and why? Account targeting, buyer and partner relationships, pipeline development, opportunity shaping, and the intel that arrives before the RFP does. Key accountability: opportunity creation and strategic direction.

Capture owns the win strategy. Can we win this, and how? Win strategy and themes built on customer and competitor insight, the solution and its differentiation, teaming and price-to-win, pre-RFP positioning, and an honest analysis of the chance of winning. Key accountability: turning an account relationship into a winnable pursuit.

Marketing owns messaging and visibility. Are we known and credible before we're needed? Brand presence, thought leadership aimed at target accounts, pre-RFP content, positioning assets, and translating technical value into something a buyer remembers. Key accountability: early-stage positioning. Marketing that isn't tied to the account plan isn't contributing to growth.

Proposals owns compliance and persuasion. Can we clearly prove we should win? The proposal process, the translation of win strategy into written proof, color reviews, production, and alignment to the evaluation criteria. Key accountability: converting opportunities into compliant, compelling, winning bids.

Delivery owns credibility and feasibility. Can we actually do this, and what does the customer already think of us? Past performance and resumes, feasibility validation on the solution, orals support, and the daily customer relationship that becomes the recompete foundation. Key accountability: trusted execution and future growth.

Where the hats stack

Most firms reading this don't have five people. They have a BD lead who also runs capture, a marketing manager who also builds proposal graphics, and a proposal manager who also writes.

That's fine. Hats can stack. Lanes cannot blur.

The problem was never one person doing two jobs. The problem is one person doing two jobs without ever changing which job they're doing. When your BD lead runs capture, they still have to put on the capture hat and answer the capture question honestly... including the times the answer is that this pursuit isn't winnable.

That's much harder when nobody defines the two roles separately. Write the lanes down even if the same person occupies three of them. The document exists so the work gets done in the right order, not so headcount matches boxes.

The ownership shifts. Nobody exits.

Here's what most roles documents miss. They assign ownership once, as if a pursuit has a single owner from identification through award.

It doesn't. The center of gravity moves. Map it across the five peaks of the Summit Win System™ and the shifts are obvious.

The pursuit roles and responsibilities matrix

One leader per activity. At least one partner. Nobody works alone, and nobody exits after the handoff.

Leads = accountable.    

Partners = shares the work.    

Supports = supplies input when asked.    

Informed = kept in the loop.

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Read down the columns and the pattern shows up. Leadership moves from BD to capture to proposals, then splits back out to marketing and delivery after award. Four shifts before the next pursuit starts.

Now read across the rows. Nobody is ever absent. Capture doesn't vanish when the RFP drops, because the win strategy has to survive contact with a page limit and somebody has to defend it. BD doesn't vanish during production, because positioning claims in the executive summary have to match what the customer has actually been told. Proposals doesn't wait for the RFP, because bandwidth and content risk are real inputs to a go/no-go decision. And delivery shows up in 11 of those rows, which is roughly 11 more than most firms give them.

A handoff is a shift in who leads. It's never an exit.

What actually has to move at each handoff

Execution runs on handoffs, and a handoff is only real if something specific changes hands. Five elements, every time:

• Opportunity brief. What this is, why it matters, and why we're pursuing it.

• Customer hot buttons. The buyer's real problems, risks, and priorities.

• Win strategy summary. How we plan to win and what we want evaluators to remember.

• Differentiators. Why we're the better choice for this customer and this need.

• Proof points. The evidence that backs the claims.

If a proposal kickoff starts with a verbal download from one person's memory, that handoff didn't happen. It got improvised, and the intelligence that would have differentiated the bid stayed in somebody's head.

The bid/no-bid gate: nobody green-lights their own pursuit

The most common structural failure in a growth function is a go/no-go decision made by the person whose numbers improve when the answer is yes.

Fix it by making the gate a place where four voices have to speak.

BD makes the business call. Is this the right work, at the right time, for this portfolio? They own the decision and they cannot make it alone.

Capture owns the evidence. Can we win? They bring the competitive landscape, the relationship strength, the discriminators, and an honest chance-of-winning number. Their job includes recommending no-go when the strategy is thin, and a capture lead who never recommends no-go isn't doing the job.

Proposals confirms we can produce it. Do we have the bandwidth, the content, and the schedule to submit something compliant and compelling? Bandwidth risk raised at the gate is planning. Raised two weeks out, it's a fire.

Delivery confirms we can do it. Can we staff this, and does it match what we've actually performed? Delivery is the check on the solution nobody wants to run until after award.

One recorded decision, with the rationale saved. When the same opportunity resurfaces in 18 months, you want the reasoning, not a memory of a hallway conversation.

Alignment is decisions, not meetings.

Not every pursuit gets the full machine

The reason most gate processes collapse is that firms build one process for a small task order and a major recompete, then abandon it within a quarter because the overhead is absurd.

Tier the work.

Light. Small task orders and quick-turn responses. BD leads, proposals produces, capture is consulted as needed. A 15-minute gate.

Standard. The full team. Capture leads win strategy, proposals runs color reviews, every gate gets documented.

Major. Formal capture before proposal work starts. Executive sponsor, full gate discipline, price-to-win, orals prep.

Set the thresholds on total contract value rather than first-year fee, so IDIQ and qualification-only work lands in the right tier instead of getting under-resourced by accident.

Then build in the override. Dollar value is one input. A small pursuit that opens a new client, a new market, or a first piece of past performance in a target area can move up a tier. BD makes that call at the gate and documents why, which keeps the exception a decision rather than a favor.

Measure each lane on its own terms

If you measure all five functions on win rate, you'll get five people optimizing for the same number in ways that damage the firm. Capture will inflate the chance of winning. BD will bid only the safe work. Proposals will get blamed for losses that were decided months before they saw the file.

Give each lane its own scoreboard:

• BD. Win rate, margin, pre-RFP engagement rate, and pipeline discipline. Measure the quality of the pipeline, never just the volume of it.

• Capture. Accuracy of the chance-of-winning call, positioning completed before RFP release, and gate evidence completeness. Measure capture on rigor rather than outcomes, which is what makes an honest no-go recommendation safe to give.

• Marketing. Visibility inside target accounts, content tied to priority pursuits, and BD's actual use of what marketing produces.

• Proposals. Compliance rate, on-time submission, review scores, and content library reuse.

• Delivery. CPARS and customer satisfaction, recompete win rate, and intelligence contributed back to the pipeline.

Review quarterly. Trends tell you more than any single pursuit.

Close the loop or repeat the year

The last shift is the one firms skip. What you learn in a win, a loss, and in delivery has to reach the next pursuit.

Run both debriefs. The internal one covers your client knowledge, teaming, pursuit process, proposal package, and presentation. The external one covers the selection process, the proposed team, the technical and commercial approach, and general impression. When the customer won't give you a debrief, work the back channels: subcontractors, vendors, industry peers, and customer contacts not tied to the decision. Ask to learn, not to sell.

Then update the system, not just the story you tell about the loss. Templates, processes, tools, criteria, and the proof library.

Without that loop, every pursuit starts from zero and your team gets tired instead of better.

The real test

Pull your roles and responsibilities document. Find any activity that lists one owner and no partner.

That's where your next pursuit will break.

Then ask the three questions that tell you whether the system is real:

1. Can a new pursuit start without improvising?  

2. Can someone step in without institutional knowledge?  

3. Would this still work if one key person is out?

Growth functions fail because the document told everyone where their job ends, and nobody wrote down where the work is shared.

One pursuit. One team. Leadership that moves, and nobody who leaves the room.