Many businesses bid on contracts every day, offering their services and products to prospective clients. In some situations, it can be a cold call, where you introduce the business and leave a brochure that describes your business in more detail and how it might help your potential customers.
Companies issue requests for information (RFI) whenever they are looking for information that will help them formulate their strategy, potentially leading to an RFQ. Requests for quotes (RFQ) are also issued when companies are looking for detailed quotations on equipment, sometimes including installation, support, and warranty services.
Regardless of the situation, many businesses find they need a capability statement to describe their business and what they have to offer. It is much like a resume!
What Is a Capability Statement?
A capability statement is like a resume for your business. It should summarize your company’s capabilities, whether it is products, services, or both. It should address your company’s strengths and how they will support your customers providing solutions and helping them be successful. Both large companies and small one-person companies use capability statements to help them attract business opportunities.
The capability statement should impress reviewers and help your team stand out compared to the competition. Capability statements can be sent as a standalone document to support a conversation you may have had with a prospect or be included in an RFI or RFQ response. It tells your potential customers who you are as a company, the strengths you bring to the project, and identifies key projects you have experience with.
The statement presents who you are as a company and what your company can do for them.
What Is a Capability Statement Template?
Since you will be submitting your capability statement to many companies as you respond to RFI’s and RFQ’s as well as market your company, having a capability statement template makes a lot of sense. Like a resume, each time you submit the statement, it should be customized to the customer that it is being sent to. The statement should highlight your company’s strengths, services, and products that a particular customer would be interested in.
Creating a template may take some initial effort; however, it can save a great deal of time. Depending on your products and services, there will be a large amount of material that stays the same for each submission. For example, if you only need to modify 20% of the document each time you include the capability statement with submission and the remaining 80% is unchanged, that’s a lot of time saved.
Areas of your statement that may change each time a submission is made include:
- Customer name and address
- Information about the project
- Details associated with the project
- References to past contracts with the customer
- The specific experience, skills, services, products that may be interesting to the customer.
These items are not mandatory, nor would they be included in each submission. Your capability statement should be customized to the customer.
Capability Statement Templates & Examples
Why Write a Capability Statement?
A capability statement is like a resume. It illustrates your company’s strengths, products, and services and focuses on how your company can help your potential client. Otherwise, how is a client even going to know what you provide?
Many clients, including government groups, request a capability statement during the bidding process. It is also a method used to introduce your company to new prospective clients and gain the attention of decision-makers. It shows that you have the professionalism of a larger company and can place you ahead of the pack over unprepared competitors.
Essential Elements of a Capability Statement
A capability statement should range from one to four pages in length when completed and tailored to the customer it is being sent to. Your template may be several pages long. The template includes many more details which are used to customize a capability statement for a specific customer.
Your statement should include the following basic items and focus on the requirements specified in an RFI or RFQ.
- Identify your company and provide a profile of your company
- Describe the core competencies of the business
- Describe the areas of expertise and experience that relate to your customer’s projects
- High light any competencies that set your business above the competition
- Products
- Equipment
- Experience
- Expertise
- Facilities
- Include names of your major customers and projects completed recently
- Include management profiles and personnel that would be assigned to the project
- Include contact information
It is important to be concise and well organized in no more than four pages. Customers do not have the time to read extensive documents, and they won’t. Make your document easy to read and well organized so that the information they need leaps out to them without needing to be searched for.
How to Write a Capability Statement?
The very first step is doing your research. Learn as much as you can about your customer and the specific project you are bidding on. This information will assist later on in tailoring your capability statement to the customer and their needs.
If you don’t have a template for your capability statement, take the time to create one now. If this is going to be your first submission, use this statement as your first version of your template. It will undergo many changes as you improve the document and add more material specific to each customer’s needs.
If you already have a template, select the information that will be relevant to this customer based on the research you have completed or based on specific information the customer has requested in their request for information or request for quotation. This may include information about previous projects, references, and capabilities you offer.
If the customer has requested information not already in your template, this is the time to add it for future use with other customer submissions.
Updating Your Capability Statement Template
Review the section headlines for the data that should be included. Add any new sections that will be required for this particular customer. Fill the new sections in, and use headlines to keep organized. And avoid fitting everything into one section.
Your template and capability statement sent to your customers should have the following basic headlines; however, you may want to add others depending on your industry and specific customer needs.
Corporate Summary – provides an overview of your company. This is a concise summary and overview of what your company is about. Focus on what your intended audience is interested in based on your research.
Core Competencies – focus on the things you do well that that are of main interest to your customer. This is your company’s elevator pitch.
Competitiveness – part of the research conducted by many companies is how competitive they are relative to other companies that may be bidding on the RFI, RFQ. or talking to customers about potential projects. Include those areas, competencies, project history, and skills that set you above the competition.
Certification and Training – add all of the licenses and certifications that your team has trained in and been certified relevant to this contract proposal and area of project focus.
This section of your proposal, if it is attached to an RFI or RFQ, should be titled clearly as “Capability Statement.” The same is true if submitting this document as a separate information document to acquaint a new customer with your capabilities with the intent of opening a discussion with them regarding a new project.
Craft Capability Statement Template to be Readable
Consider the reader and attempt to craft a capability statement that retains the reader’s attention and makes it easy to read and pick out the details of interest to your reader. Long, complicated data-heavy paragraphs are difficult to read and understand. Consider using bullet points to illustrate core competencies, for example. A blend of well-written sentences and bullet points can significantly improve readability.
Visual Aids Help You Stand out Professionally
High-quality site photos or graphics can help to break up a page of boring text yet communicate important information about your company. Readers will recall important visual cues more often than complicated text in long paragraphs. Avoid letting your pages become too busy since they can distract the reader and risk missing the fundamental messages you are attempting to communicate. Ask yourself, have you hit the right balance?
Save Your Capability Statement as a Word Document and as a PDF
Edit your capability statement using good document creation software such as MS Word. Always save your document using a date and version number so that you can keep track of your latest modifications. SET your document creation software to save the document every ten minutes automatically to avoid losing important modifications.
Never send your capability statement as a word document. Always send it as a PDF document with a date and version number so you can keep track of what is being sent and when. PDF files have a universal display format, so you can be sure that your customer will observe the same information you do in the same format.
Test your PDF files by sending to multiple close contacts using a variety of different operating systems and display devices, including Microsoft, Apple, Android, and IOS. Make sure there are no anomalies that would jeopardize your submission.
Online Capability Statements
You may want to create a general capability statement that is added to your website for the general public to review. This can be a great tool to gain customers and spark further conversations about more detailed discussions.
There is a fine line between a general capability statement that summarizes your strengths and one that provides too much competitive information for your competitors to learn about your strengths and weaknesses. Often a one-page summary is sufficient, with a call to action to readers to contact your company for more detailed information.
Tips for writing a capability statement
The capability statement is becoming more and more popular with government and large businesses letting contracts regularly. Your document must set you apart from the competition, emphasize your business strengths, and identifies the qualities and skills that set your company above the competition.
Always consider these factors while creating your capability statement:
- What is the Objective – your objective is to match your capabilities to the requirements of large companies and governments.
- Who is your Audience – your audience will change with each submission. While project primes will read and evaluate every detail of your proposal and compare it to other submissions, senior management may only read your capability statement. You need to make a positive impression with both audiences.
- Managing Expectations – many companies over promise and under deliver. Soon they have a negative impression of whatever industry they operate in. Take the time to understand your weaknesses and strengths. As you improve your weaknesses, be sure to reflect these capabilities in your capability statement. Your credibility in the industry is worth a great deal. Protect your reliability and credibility carefully.
Key-points
A capability statement is like a resume. It covers your company’s core competencies and strengths. It includes past projects and focuses on each customer’s needs.
Create a template and upgrade the template as your company’s experience and knowledge improve. Customize the capability statement using the template for every customer, focusing your strengths on their needs. Include a capability statement with every RFI or RFQ response.
A generalized capability statement can be included on your website for the general public. However, avoid including private competitive information that your competitors may use against you. Use the online capability statement as a tool to attract potential customers for further detailed conversations.
