Red Teaming Your Proposal

A red team review is an exercise which involves reading and scoring the final draft of the proposal as if the customer were looking at it. It's a dry run that gives you the chance to improve your proposal before you send it into the fray.

Your red team should consist of people who did not write the proposal, so they will look at it without any preconceived notions. Ideally, they should be individuals who can play the role of customer in terms of expertise, personality type, and priorities.

Prepare your reviewers so they understand their role. Make it clear that they are not expected to edit or proofread. Their job is to score the proposal as though they were buyers. Provide them with a copy of the RFP and with the scoring system the customer will use in evaluating submissions. Make sure that the red team reviewers have no contact with the proposal team while they review it.

The job of the red team reviewers is to be as objective, factual, fair, and specific as possible. The responsibilities of your red team reviewers, in order of priority, include:

1. Checking for compliance with the RFP requirements

2. Checking for clear, compelling win themes

3. Reviewing the proof statements and evidence: Are they relevant and convincing?

As they evaluate the overall proposal, they should examine other issues, too:

1. Is the proposal client focused? Does it show that your company understands the customer's problems, goals, and values?

2. Are there any words or phrases that catch your attention or stand out in any way, either good or bad?

3. Are the themes consistent throughout the proposal and well integrated into the total proposal?

4. Does the executive summary use the persuasive paradigm effectively? Does it make a convincing business case?

5. On the basis of the opening, what impression does the proposal create? Are you more "with'' or "against'' the writer?

6. Does the proposal persuade throughout or are parts of it merely informative?

7. Are there parts of this proposal that are dull or confusing?

8. Does the proposal present clear differentiators and tie them to value statements that will appeal to this customer?

9. After reading the proposal, are you convinced that your company offers the best solution and highest value?

10. What is the key message of this proposal? Can you summarize the recommendation and value proposition in thirty seconds?

11. What else do you wish you knew or had available that's not in the proposal you just read?

As your reviewers make observations, they should try to offer constructive, specific feedback, such as the following:

• Transportation planning experience is not highlighted enough in the resumes. Add a separate heading just for that category.

• So what? You mention these features, but how will they help? Why should a customer care? Am I paying extra for them?

Simply saying that a section is "weak'' doesn't help anybody.

How Your Customer Reads and Evaluates Your Proposal

You and any team members who help you edit your proposals will do a better job if you know how your customers interact with the documents they get. In general, evaluators try to be fair and objective. They also try to look at each proposal on its own merits, but in reality that's impossible. Evaluators are only human, and they quickly become subjective in reviewing proposals.

The basic process for evaluating proposals is as follows:

1. A responsible person—for example, the project manager, contracting officer, RFP manager, or an outside consultant—does an initial read-through of each submission. His or her job at this point is to identify any submissions that fail to comply with the mandatory terms and conditions of the bid. Proposals that fail to comply may be eliminated at this point. Evaluators are not required to read or score the entire proposal if they have identified a major weakness.

2. If cost is handled as a separate issue, the cost volume will be separated from the rest of the proposal and delivered to the individual or team responsible for financial analysis.

3. Once those proposals that are clearly noncompliant have been eliminated, the survivors are often evaluated against a set of criteria. Even when these criteria are very specific, with numeric values or weights, the process rapidly becomes subjective. Evaluating proposals can be fatiguing work, and after the first few documents, evaluators get tired. When they are tired, they're more likely to be critical and to make snap judgments.

4. Some tips for getting a better score:

   Submit the briefest proposal possible. Short proposals are read first and then become the unconscious standard by which all subsequent proposals are judged.

   If your proposal is easy to read, your recommendations will seem to make more sense.

   Link your deliverables to the benefits your customer seeks and then to your differentiators. This will help separate you from competitors and will make your recommendations read more like a solution, one that the customer can get only from you.

   Avoid promising benefits without substantiating how you will deliver on those promises:

   • Provide proof statements for each material feature, function, or requirement

   • Provide relevant references, testimonials, case studies, and statistics

What Evaluators Like and What They Hate

A few years ago, we conducted a survey of people who make their living evaluating proposals for the federal government. We wanted to know the things they like to see in proposals and the things that they hate. Here are some findings from that survey:

What They Like:

1. They like proposals that follow the directions in the RFP.

2. They like compliance matrices. A compliance matrix saves them time and indicates you've been thorough.

3. They like proposals that clearly identify the vendor's differentiators and indicate why those differentiators matter.

4. They like section summaries.

5. They like well-organized and consistent proposals. They believe a professional-looking document shows good project management and thoroughness.

What They Hate:

1. They hate proposals that are wordy.

2. They hate poor-quality proposals—unreadable graphics, spelling mistakes, typos, poor photocopying, and so forth.

3. They hate proposals that are weak or vague in responding to the RFP requirements.

4. They hate proposals that take a poor or unproven approach to solving the problem.

5. They hate proposals that have inherent deficiencies—missed requirements, inaccurate data.