Aerospace and defense pursuits move through capture, proposal, award, and sustainment over multiple budget cycles – and most CRMs were built for a sales motion that does not exist in this market. We rebuild your lifecycle and CRM around how programs actually get won and renewed.
The Problem
Off-the-shelf CRM cannot model a program lifecycle
A typical CRM tracks a lead to a close date in a single fiscal quarter. Aerospace and defense pursuits run through capture planning, RFI and RFP response, source selection, award, and decades of sustainment. When your pipeline tool forces a multi-year program into a single opportunity stage, your forecast is fiction. Capture managers stop updating it because it does not reflect the work, and leadership loses visibility into where the real revenue sits.
Prime and sub relationships are invisible to your data model
On any given program you might be the prime on one pursuit and a tier-2 sub on the next, with the same companies appearing as customer, competitor, and teammate depending on the contract. A flat account record cannot hold that. Without modeling teaming agreements, work-share, and prime-sub roles, your business development team rediscovers the same relationships every cycle. Pursuit decisions get made on memory instead of on a record of who you have teamed with and how it went.
Procurement cycles and budget signals never reach the pipeline
Defense revenue is governed by appropriations, continuing resolutions, program-of-record milestones, and recompete timelines that are public and predictable – but they almost never live inside the CRM. So capture timing runs on instinct. Teams chase pursuits that are years from funding and miss recompetes they should have started shaping 18 months out. The pipeline reflects hope, not the actual procurement calendar driving the money.
Sustainment and recompete revenue falls through the cracks
The award is the beginning, not the end. Most of the lifetime value of a defense program lives in sustainment, ECPs, spares, and the eventual recompete. When the CRM marks an opportunity closed-won and goes quiet, nobody owns the relationship through the program-of-record years. The recompete arrives as a surprise, an incumbent advantage gets squandered, and revenue that should have been defensible walks out the door.
How We Help
We start by mapping your actual revenue lifecycle, not the one your CRM vendor assumed. In the first 30 days we sit with capture managers, BD leads, and program managers to document how a pursuit really moves – from market intelligence and capture planning through proposal, award, sustainment, and recompete. We pull your last several wins and losses and trace them stage by stage. The output is a lifecycle model that matches how aerospace and defense programs are actually won, including the multi-year gaps where a pursuit goes quiet but is not dead.
Strategy development translates that lifecycle into a CRM architecture your team will actually use. We define program and pursuit objects that sit above the standard opportunity, so a single program can hold multiple recompetes and task orders over its life. We model prime-sub roles, teaming agreements, and work-share so the same company can be customer, competitor, and teammate without breaking the record. We build the procurement-calendar layer – appropriations timing, program-of-record milestones, recompete dates – so capture timing is driven by when money actually moves.
Execution embeds the new model into your tools and your team's daily rhythm. We configure the CRM, migrate and clean legacy pursuit data, and wire in the procurement and budget signals that should trigger capture activity. We build the lifecycle marketing handoffs so a long-dormant pursuit gets nurtured instead of forgotten, and we connect sustainment touchpoints so incumbent programs feed recompete capture early. Capture managers get dashboards built around gate reviews and bid decisions, not generic sales stages.
Measurement tracks the metrics that matter in a program-driven business. We watch pursuit progression through capture gates, win rate by pursuit type and teaming role, recompete capture rate, and the share of sustainment revenue that converts into follow-on awards. We tie CRM hygiene to forecast accuracy so leadership can finally trust the multi-year pipeline. Lifecycle and CRM work in aerospace and defense succeeds when the forecast reflects the procurement calendar, every program has an owner through sustainment, and no recompete ever arrives as a surprise.
What we deliver
- Program lifecycle model mapped to capture, proposal, award, and sustainment
- CRM architecture with program and pursuit objects above standard opportunities
- Prime-sub, teaming, and work-share data model
- Procurement-calendar layer driving capture timing and gate reviews
- Recompete and sustainment ownership workflows with lifecycle marketing handoffs
In aerospace and defense, the deal does not close at award – that is when the real lifecycle starts. A CRM that goes quiet after closed-won is the reason your recompetes keep arriving as surprises.
Our Methodology
Our lifecycle and CRM build for aerospace and defense runs as a 90-day sprint. Phase one is lifecycle mapping: we interview capture, BD, and program leadership, trace recent wins and losses through every gate, and document the multi-year procurement realities your current CRM ignores. The output is a lifecycle model and a gap analysis against your existing tool.
Phase two designs and builds the CRM architecture – program and pursuit objects, prime-sub and teaming data model, and the procurement-calendar layer. We migrate and clean legacy data and configure capture-gate dashboards so the pipeline reflects bid decisions, not generic sales stages.
Phase three installs the operating rhythm and recompete and sustainment ownership. We wire in budget and procurement signals, build the lifecycle marketing handoffs for dormant pursuits, and train capture and BD teams on the new model. Unlike a CRM systems integrator that ships a configuration and leaves, we stay embedded through the first capture cycle so the model survives contact with a real pursuit.
How We Work
Initial engagements run 3 to 4 months. The first 30 days are lifecycle mapping – interviews with capture, BD, and program management, plus a trace through recent wins and losses. The CRM architecture, data model, and procurement-calendar layer get built in days 31 to 75. Days 76 to 120 cover data migration, team training, and the first capture-cycle test of the new model.
Our team includes a BD operations strategist with defense and government contracting experience and a revenue-operations lead who handles CRM architecture and data. From your side we need capture and BD leadership for lifecycle validation, a CRM administrator for configuration access, and program managers to define sustainment touchpoints. We handle modeling, configuration, data cleanup, and enablement.
Weekly working sessions track configuration and migration progress. Monthly reviews after launch measure pursuit progression through gates, forecast accuracy, and recompete capture coverage. Most aerospace and defense firms see cleaner forecasts and capture-gate visibility within 60 to 90 days, with recompete and sustainment pipeline impact compounding over the following budget cycles.
- More accurate multi-year forecasts tied to the procurement calendar
- Higher recompete capture rate from earlier incumbent program ownership
- Better teaming decisions from a real record of prime-sub history
- Less revenue lost to sustainment relationships that went unowned
If your aerospace & defense company needs lifecycle & crm leadership, we should talk.
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Frequently asked questions
How much does a lifecycle and CRM engagement cost for aerospace and defense companies?
Most engagements run between $45K and $95K for the initial 3 to 4 month build, with optional operating retainers at $8K to $18K per month once the model is live. That is well below the cost of a full-time revenue operations director at $180K plus benefits, and faster than a generic CRM systems integrator who will not understand program lifecycles. Cost scales with the complexity of your data migration and the number of pursuit types and teaming structures we have to model.
How long before we see results from a lifecycle and CRM engagement?
Forecast accuracy and capture-gate visibility usually improve within 60 to 90 days as the new model goes live and capture managers start using it. Recompete and sustainment pipeline coverage compounds over the next one to two budget cycles because that revenue moves on multi-year timelines. The fastest win is leadership finally trusting the multi-year forecast, which typically lands within the first quarter.
How does the lifecycle and CRM team integrate with our existing capture and BD staff?
We embed with capture, BD, and program management to map your real lifecycle, then work through your CRM administrator for configuration. After launch we run training sessions so capture managers operate the gate-based pipeline daily. We do not require IT to build anything custom unless your environment has security or compliance constraints, in which case we work inside them.
What makes Winston Francois different from a traditional CRM consultant or systems integrator?
A typical integrator configures the CRM your vendor sold you and leaves. We model the actual aerospace and defense revenue lifecycle – multi-year programs, prime-sub roles, procurement calendars, and recompetes – before touching the tool. We stay embedded through the first capture cycle and tie the build to revenue outcomes like recompete capture rate, not just CRM adoption.
How do you measure ROI from a lifecycle and CRM engagement?
We track pursuit progression through capture gates, forecast accuracy, win rate by pursuit type and teaming role, and recompete capture rate. The headline metric is how much sustainment and recompete revenue gets owned and converted into follow-on awards versus walking out the door. We baseline these before the build so the improvement is measurable against your own history.
What type of aerospace and defense company is the right fit for this service?
Firms running multiple concurrent pursuits with a mix of prime and sub roles, where capture timing and recompete coverage actually drive revenue. That usually means established subs and mid-tier primes with a real BD organization, not a single-program shop. The first step is a CRM and lifecycle audit to find the gap between how your tool models pursuits and how your programs actually get won.
