Red Team Proposal Reviews and Proposal Quality Validation

Solutions to Unsolvable Problems: Reviews that aren’t helpful Does this sound familiar? The quality of your proposal reviews varies widely. Review comments are based on the reviewer’s personal opinions. Reviewers even contradict each other. Comments come too little, too late to do any good and you end up ignoring some of them. Considering the disruption and lost time, you may find yourself wondering if you would have been better off if you had just skipped the review…
Our solution:
Your process should guide you through defining the scope of reviews so that you specifically validate the things that are necessary to win. This means that you start by preparing a list of everything (decisions, drafts, attributes, criteria, standards, themes, solution components, outcomes, etc.) that needs to be validated. Then for each item on your list, consider:
How it will be reviewed (face-to-face meeting, teleconference, email, approval/sign-off, scoring sheets, document mark-up, etc.) Who will lead and who will participate When it should start and when it must be completed Write this down so that it becomes your Proposal Validation Plan. Then review the plan to make sure it is sufficient to achieve the level of quality required. Hint: It’s easy to produce a written Proposal Validation Plan if you turn it into a checklist. This makes it adaptable to both:
The size and importance of the bid. While the things you need validated will be nearly the same from proposal-to-proposal, what is required to achieve sufficient quality may change. For example, while it might be acceptable for a single person to validate certain items for a small task order, you might require a team to do it for a large strategic proposal. Changes to what you need to validate. The list of items to validate for a systems integration project might be different from those for an administrative services bid. What you need to validate may also change based on the evaluation criteria and other factors. Traditional review processes tend to break down instead of adapting to changes like these.
Under our approach, reviewers receive more guidance and are also more accountable. It also can be used to produce measurable results. You can measure the progress of your proposal by how many items have been validated. Finally, it brings both planning and reviewing into alignment with what it is going to take to win.

50 Reasons Why Your Red Team is Broken It was a tremendous step in the evolution of proposals when people began to recognize that every proposal should have a formal review by people other than those who wrote it. This review is almost universally called a "Red Team" review. The only problem is that I can't think of a single instance in several hundred proposals where a Red Team review has made a difference whether a proposal won or lost. This is probably because most Red Team reviews are flawed to the point of being nearly worthless. Your's probably is too. Here are some signs that your Red Team is broken:
If you asked all of the participants to define a "Red Team," you'd get a different answer from each The goals for the Red Team are not explicitly defined Participants are not given specific directions regarding what to look for The Red Team does not have any checklists or written guidance to remind them of what to look for The burden of managing Red Team administration and logistics is left to the proposal team instead of being taken off of their hands The Red Team is scheduled too early and the document is not ready The Red Team is scheduled too late and there is not enough time to act on any suggestions The Red Team gives you the guidance you should have had at the start It is not clear who is driving: the Red Team or the proposal team The Red Team shows up without having actually read the proposal, cover to cover The Red Team is allowed to do their reading at their desks The Red Team shows up without having read the RFP Red Team participants have no assignment other than to read the entire proposal, cover to cover The Red Team is the only form of review planned for the proposal You limit the number and types of reviews you do to the number of colors you can name (red team, pink team, green team, blue team, purple team, gold team) You expect the red team to review compliance, accuracy, your approach, the persuasiveness of the writing, the completeness of the document, how you stack up against the evaluation criteria, implementation of win strategies, and incorporation of customer/solution/competitive awareness all at the same time… The same people who wrote the proposal are on the Red Team The Red Team is scheduled for only a couple of hours Participants have to leave early because they have other commitments The Red Team doesn't have an appointed leader, other than the proposal manager The Red Team identifies problems without offering solutions The Red Team does little more than what amounts to proof reading The Red Team wastes valuable time proof reading copy that is going to significantly change or tells you about formatting problems on a document that has yet to go through final production There is no guidance regarding how comments should be made The Red Team examines your strategies instead of the effectiveness of their implementation The Red Team wants to change the outline of the proposal The Red Team is effectively a review by the executive sponsor The Red Team looks at the proposal from their own perspective, instead of the customer's perspective Red Team participants think they need to read every comment they've written on the document while everyone is at the table The Red Team does not consolidate its own comments, but leaves that burden to the proposal team There is no discussion regarding how the Red Team's comments relate to or will impact the evaluation criteria Red Team comments fail to take into consideration the page limitation imposed by the RFP The Red Team expects to see the document again after the changes are made Red Team suggestions are expected to be taken as orders (the proposal team is not free to ignore a Red Team recommendation). If there are holes, the Red Team doesn't recommend any resources capable of filling the holes The proposal is so broken at the time of the Red Team that the Red Team can't do anything to help Participants make comments that are not actionable (generalized statements that don't specify a correction or action to take) The Red Team makes comments that contradict the RFP The Red Team does not result in a set of specific action items that can be worked through a process of elimination The Red Team doesn't take any time to meet as a group and discuss their findings before they debrief the proposal team Some people are on the Red Team simply because they want to see the document -- not because they have anything to contribute The Red Team identifies all of the defects, resulting in a proposal that merely answers the mail because they didn't look at what it takes to win They aren't physically present You haven't validated enough because you tried to do too much in a single review. All of the technical expertise available is on the proposal team, leaving none for an independent assessment The debrief consists only of the participants taking turns sharing their thoughts The Red Team doesn't score the proposal according to the evaluation criteria The Red Team doesn't do anything but score the proposal according to the evaluation criteria The Red Team doesn't offer any useful advice or help (as opposed to criticisms) The Red Team doesn't do anything to help the proposal WIN!

7 Ways to Fix Your Red Team Hold an Orientation Session. You need to get everyone on the same page regarding the goals and procedures that the Red Team will follow. This requires a lot more than a five minute discussion before the team starts reading. I like to schedule orientations for an hour the day before the actual Red Team and give reading the RFP as a homework assignment.
Appoint a Leader. A Red Team needs someone to provide instructions, direct activities, and be responsible for results. It is too much work to dump on the Proposal Manager. Take it off the Proposal Managers hands, so that all the Proposal Manager needs to do is deliver a single copy and show up for the debrief. Appoint a leader for the Red Team, and make that person responsible for all review logistics and oversight.
While the Red Team leader should not be the proposal manager, capture manager, or the executive sponsor, it needs to be a strong leader who can control executive level participants. Providing direction to Red Team participants is like herding cats. For the Red Team to make a productive contribution to the proposal the leader must provide oversight and hold the participants accountable for achieving their assigned goals. The Red Team leader must have clout. If the organization does not respect the Red Team leader, then the organization does not believe that the Red Team makes any difference to whether or not you win.
The Red Team leader will need to meet with the Proposal Manager, Capture Manager, and Executive Sponsor ahead of the Red Team in order to set expectations and build a mandate.
Explicitly define your goals. Is this Red Team focused on finding ways to improve, filling holes, identifying non-compliance, second-guessing strategy, proof reading, validating approaches, emulating the customer's evaluation, or something else. If you answered "all of the above" then no wonder your Red Team is broken --- you can't do all of that at once and do it well. On any given proposal, your goals may be different. On one Red Team, you may be focused on enhancement, on another it could be filling holes. If you fail to have goals and see them through execution, then you are at risk of having people pursue the wrong goals or attempt to do it all and deliver only a little bit of each. This results in a Red Team that is a waste of time and has no positive impact on whether the proposal wins. Goals are important.
Don't perform the wrong review at the wrong time. There is no "right" time to schedule the Red Team. If you have it early enough to make a difference, the document will not be complete. If you wait until the document is complete it will be too late to make substantive changes. You must pick between these two "wrong" times and live with the trade-offs. The only way to get around this is to break the "Red Team" up into a series of reviews. See the section on goals. There are too many things that need to be validated to do it all in one review anyway. Here are some possibilities:
Take compliance off of the table by having one or more people review it before the red team. That's all they should be concerned with and they must have sufficient technical expertise to make the assessment. A compliance review can often be performed against an early, fairly rough draft. If compliance has been established, then the Red Team can focus on goals that add more value. Review strategies and approaches very early. Folks who like color team labels might call this a pink team review. Most pink team reviews are handled as if they were early "Red Team" reviews. Instead have a focused review on approaches and strategies. Then have a later review on whether they are reflected in the document. Consider doing both of these reviews outside of the Red Team and having the Red Team focus on emulating the customer's evaluation process and how to improve your score (other than by changing strategy). Provide training and set expectations. Do the Red Team members know what their roles and responsibilities are? Do they know what their goals are? Do they know what procedures are to be followed? After the Red Team, who decides what changes actually get made? What do the Red Team participants expect? What does the proposal team expect? What does the executive sponsor expect? You don't want them to make it up as they go along --- you want them to be effective. To be effective they must all play their role in an intentional and well coordinated manner. Orientation and training is the only way you can get everyone on the same page.
Commit sufficient time. Red Team participants should be prepared to dedicate at least 16 hours or they should not be on the Red Team. I know it sounds like a lot, but consider:
Some of these could be less. But some could be a whole lot more. 16 hours is a good average. Furthermore, if the Red Team actually identifies ways to improve the document, they should be available to the proposal team after the Red Team to help with making the improvements. This could take considerably longer than the Red Team did. If they aren't committed, they can't make a difference. No one should be allowed on the Red Team, regardless of their executive level, if they aren't going to commit the time to read the proposal and just show up for a meeting unprepared to fulfill the goals of the review.
Encourage the right attitude. A Red Team is not about finding problems. It is not even about helping or making improvements, although that is a better attitude. The Red Team is about winning. If a Red Team is to make a positive difference, they must provide suggestions that will help you win. They are part of the solution, not merely inspectors who look for problems.

Evolving Past the Red Team Many organizations have evolved to the point where it is universally accepted that every proposal should have a Red Team. While this was a major step, it's not enough. People have tried to overcome the limitations of the Red Team by inventing a host of other "Color Teams" (red team, pink team, green team, blue team, purple team, gold team). Color team labels mean so many things to different people that they have become meaningless. If people can't consistently answer what a "Red Team" is supposed to be, how on earth are they going to consistently define a "Blue Team." And while I am sure that you, gentle reader, know what a Red Team and a Blue Team is supposed to be, it doesn't do any good unless all of the stakeholders share a common set of expectations. It's time to evolve past the "Red Team."
The purpose of any Color Team is to validate the proposal. The problem is that there are many things that need to be validated:
Capture planning Content planning Review planning Production Planning Compliance Accuracy Effectiveness of the approach Persuasiveness of the writing Completeness of the document How you stack up against the evaluation criteria Implementation of win strategies Incorporation of customer/solution/competitive awareness Pricing, profitability, and return on the cost of sales Contractual issues If you want to take your organization to the next level, instead of dumbing down by using Color Team labels, educate them in what it means to validate a proposal. Add, change, or delete the items on the list above until they make sense. And then create checklists and job aids to encourage people to validate everything during the development of the proposal.
Maybe a sit-around-the-table Color Team-style formal review makes sense for addressing some of what you need to validate. But which ones? And how are you going to handle the others? For example, do you need a team to evaluate compliance? On some proposals you can give a copy of the RFP and the proposal to an engineer and ask them to tell you if you've covered everything. On other proposals that would be the last thing you'd want to do.
So how about instead of accepting it as gospel that every proposal must have a "Red Team," you require that every proposal have a review plan. And every review plan must address a list of validation targets, such as the one above. The plan itself should be reviewed at the beginning of the proposal effort.
Formal reviews are still a good idea and you can even still call it a "Red Team" if it makes you happy. Only now it is clear whether you are assessing the evaluation score, reviewing strategy, assessing accuracy, ensuring compliance, evaluating the persuasiveness, or something else. And if the "Red Team" is focused, the way it should be, on just one or two of these things, you still know that the others have been validated through other means.
Some companies do this now, using their traditional "Color Teams." However, is your goal to have a set number of color-labeled meetings or is it to validate specific aspects of what it takes to have a successful proposal? If you've successfully matured to the point where you routinely have your "Red Team," maybe it's time to evolve further and train your organization to address validation specifically…

How Do You Define Proposal Quality? Do you have a written definition for "proposal quality?" And just to make life difficult for those who want to take the easy way out by answering "anything that wins," let's limit the definition to a pre-submission proposal. How do you define "proposal quality" prior to its submission? If you can't define it, then you can't measure it. And if you can't measure it, you can't manage it.
When you don't have a written definition for proposal quality, or when you define proposal quality as "anything that wins," the result is that you have no standard to judge a proposal against. Deciding "what wins" is usually subjective when the customer does it. When you try to think like the customer, you are really just guessing, and your definition of proposal quality is the whim of the person doing the guessing.
Today most companies manage their proposals by bringing in experienced people who are "supposed to know" what a quality proposal is. This is inevitably a hit or miss proposition. An experienced guess is still just a guess.
It is far better to look at the factors that determine whether or not you will win --- evaluation score, price, offering, presentation, etc. --- then validate that you have made the best decision or response you are capable of making for each factor. If you use them to develop specific criteria that define what a quality proposal is, then instead of a seat of the pants approach to determining whether your proposal is "good enough," you can ensure that each aspect of the proposal intentionally reflects the right decisions.
Defining "proposal quality" is easy: A quality proposal is one that implements all of the things you have decided are needed to persuade the customer to select you.
The difficult part is defining your goals. What does a proposal need to do to win? Start by making a list. It might look like this:
Will it score well against the evaluation criteria? Is the outline/organization correct? Is it compliant with all RFP requirements? Does it reflect your win strategies? Are the proposed approaches cost-effective? Do the proposed approaches offer compelling benefits and value to the customter? Do they reflect the best trade-off between price and other factors? Does the pricing reflect the best trade-off between competitiveness and revenue/profit goals? Does it reflect your full awareness of the customer? Does it demonstrate the relevance of your previous experience at every opportunity? Are the reasons why the customer should select you clear? Does it discriminate you from the competition? Does it have any typographical errors? Is the pricing data compliant, accurate, and properly structured? Does the pricing account for all costs, direct and indirect? Are all assumptions documented? Every one of these attributes can be validated. In fact, each one must be validated for you to know that you have a quality proposal. This is why we advocate scrapping the Color Team model of proposal reviews, and instead using the Proposal Quality Validation method.
Some of the items above have predecessors or components that can be separately validated. When you arrange them in a sequence, you begin to form a process. Only it's a process designed from the beginning to validate that the proposal reflects how you define proposal quality. It enables you to intentionally manage your proposal by enabling you to measure the results of your proposal efforts against specific quality criteria.
The result is a proposal that is exactly what you want it to be. Whether it wins or loses will always be up to the customer. But you stand a better chance of winning when you have intentionally made and validated decisions than when you accept the "best efforts" of people who are "supposed to know."

An Introduction to Proposal Quality Validation The quality of every proposal should be explicitly validated. This means that you should confirm that the key aspects of the proposal are what the company wants them to be. It is nearly impossible to do this in one sitting with everything considered all at once. Proposal Quality Validation explicitly identifies what should be validated, allows for flexibility in how individual items get validated, and provides a mechanism to ensure that the items chosen and methods for validation are sufficient to achieve the quality desired.
Proposal Quality Validation ensures that your company confirms that key aspects of your proposal are what the company wants them to be prior to submission. It is an approach that confirms that what you have in the proposal meets your needs and expectations. It avoids disasters that result from teams that work in isolation, creating a proposal that is not what the company wants to submit and is only discovered too late to do anything about it. 
In developing your proposal, you will:
Make decisions Invent approaches Incorporate information Address requirements Deliver a message Seek a superior score How do you know if you’ve made the right decisions or have the right approaches? Most importantly for a proposal, how do you know if you have done what you need to in order to win?
Each decision and approach, the thoroughness of the information you have incorporated, your compliance with and fulfillment of the requirements, your message, and your score should all be validated.
Validating an item means reviewing it to confirm that it meets your needs and expectations. Proposal Quality Validation does not necessarily ensure that everything in your proposal is “right” or guarantee that the proposal will win. Only the customer can do that. And it is impossible to predict, with certainty, what the customer will do.
What Proposal Quality Validation does is ensure that specific elements of the proposal are considered by someone other than the original author to ensure that the document reflects what your company wants to submit. It does this before the fact, by validating plans, as well as after the fact, by validating drafts against the plans.
It is different from other methods of proposal review:
It is organized around what you need to validate instead of being organized around milestones. As a result, it achieves better traceability and accountability. It accommodates validation of any type giving you the flexibility to adapt to the needs of the opportunity and your organization. It provides a mechanism for ensuring that the planned amount and methods of validation are sufficient to meet the needs of the proposal and your organization. It provides a method for documenting your validation plan to properly set expectations, while streamlining the process to keep it from becoming burdensome. It inherently provides more guidance to participants, helping to ensure that reviews are focused and effective.  
Adding Value Instead of Getting in the Way The biggest reason that people avoid complying with proposal processes is that they require upfront effort for an indirect payoff. Explicit Proposal Quality Validation not only brings focus to reviews; it also more closely links the benefits with the effort. Proposal Quality Validation achieves cooperation by adding value instead of getting in the way.
Proposal Quality Validation adds value to the proposal process Reduces indecision Providing specific opportunities to validate decisions helps teams avoid the paralysis of not being able to make a decision. It also helps avoid repetitive reconsiderations and vacillation by providing a specific point in time to reconsider and then move forward.   Improves efficiency By increasing the reliability of decisions and content, proposal teams experience less backtracking. Offers improved opportunities for oversight and correction By specifically identifying attributes to be confirmed, it is far more difficult for issues to “hide in plain sight.” Furthermore, it is easier to coordinate oversight when specific opportunities and defined points of focus are provided. Provides opportunities to improve General requests for improvement will not achieve reliable results. However, the additional focus that explicit validation provides also delivers opportunities to consider how to improve specific aspects of the proposal. Provides standards to measure the content of the proposal against The process of breaking down what it takes to have a valid proposal into specific items also provides you with a set of standards for what constitutes a valid proposal.  Defines specific desired outcomes that the process can work towards Because the process provides a set of desired outcomes to be achieved in order to arrive at a valid proposal, it makes it clearer for the team to work towards achieving it.

Surviving a proposal review Formal proposal reviews are often called “red team” reviews. Proposal reviews provide fresh eyes that can objectively examine the document and provide validation and sign-off. But there are different types of red teams and different ways to review a proposal.
Reviews can focus on different aspects of a proposal:
Customer emulation. Reviewers score the proposal according to the evaluation criteria, as if they were the customer’s evaluation team. Bid Strategies. Reviewers assess whether the proposal reflects the bid strategies necessary to win, tells the right story, and delivers its message effectively. Compliance. Does the proposal comply with all RFP requirements? Proof reading. Review for typographical errors and grammatical problems. Technical evaluation. Does the solution proposed meet the specifications? Can it be delivered on time? Is there a better way to do the work? Pricing. Is it priced to win? Is it still profitable? Depending on your circumstances, you may wish to focus your reviewer’s attention by emphasizing a particular type of review. You should take advantage of the red team, and not simply treat it as a schedule delay. The red team can be used to identify and solve problems if you can focus their attentions where you need it.
How to handle the review comments
If you have more than a couple of people participating in your proposal reviews, you need a plan for handling their comments. One important element of this plan will be how comments should be delivered. The choices include:
Paper forms. Create a form with a series of questions that focuses the reviewers attention and provides places for comments. Hard copy mark-ups. Let them scribble on the document and then try to make sense of it later. If there are a large number of evaluators you will need to consolidate the comments. Consider dividing the reviewers into teams and making each team responsible for delivering a single set of comments. Version tracking. Microsoft Word, and many other software packages, provide tools that can be used to identify the changes made by a review and even to merge them with changes from other reviewers. There is a slight learning curve to get past if you’ve never used this approach before. Fixing problems found during reviews
You should establish a rule that any review team member who identifies a problem must either solve it, or identify someone to join the proposal team who can solve it. Since red teams usually include senior managers and/or executives, they often know of resources that you should have had working on the proposal from the beginning, but don’t find out about until you have their attention. It may help to provide your review team with instructions up front and in writing – you could even provide them with a form to list solutions and resources to address any problems identified during the review.

Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs Applied to Proposals When most people review a proposal, they try to consider everything all at once. They generally don’t do a good job of it. One reason why they don’t consistently do a good job is that the review does not reflect their priorities. Some issues are more important than others. A good way to understand this is to consider how Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs can be applied to proposals.
First, at the bottom of the pyramid, is compliance. You must achieve compliance to even be considered. If your proposal is thrown out because of non-compliance, nothing else matters.
The next step up is maximizing your evaluation score. Once you have achieved compliance, maximizing your evaluation score is the most important thing you can do to ensure a win.
Next you must achieve in writing what you think is necessary to win. This implies that you’ve developed enough understanding of the client, opportunity, and competitive environment to know what it will take to win. Some of what is necessary to win will be in the RFP, some of it will not be. Once you have an RFP-compliant proposal that is optimized against the evaluation criteria, you need to make sure that the proposal reflects your win strategies.
After that, you can worry about presentation and graphics. Once you have achieved your win strategies in writing, you can think about how well they are presented and whether you have maximized your use of visual communications. Until you have compliance, optimization against the evaluation criteria, and fulfillment of your win strategies, you don’t have anything to communicate --- visually or otherwise!
Next comes proofreading and editing. While some people behave as if a typo is the end of the world, the truth is that you are more likely to survive a typo than a proposal that does not communicate your win strategies. So, as important as they are, proofreading and editing are near the top of the pyramid.
Only after you have achieved compliance, optimized against the evaluation criteria, incorporated your win strategies, perfected the presentation and checked it for accuracy should you devote resources to perfecting the style, making it speak with one voice, etc. This is the very top of the pyramid, and few ever make it to here.
It’s not that editing and style are not important, it’s just that you must focus on the things that most affect your chances of winning first. Your best chances of winning come when you work yourself all the way to the top. But if you are constrained by time and resources, you must focus your efforts. When reviewing your next proposal, make sure that you get the basics right first by starting at the bottom of the pyramid and working your way up.

Why It's Time to Replace Red Teams with Something That Works In October of 2006, I presented on the topic of "Why Your Red Team is Broken and What To Do About It" at a conference in Atlanta, Georgia hosted by the Association of Proposal Management Professionals. I submitted the slides weeks before the presentation. But the more I thought about it, the more I became convinced that new approaches are needed to improve proposal quality. When I gave the presentation, I asked the audience if anyone felt their proposal Red Team reviews were consistently effective. No one raised their hands. I was expecting to get at least a couple.
As I spoke, I realized that the way we review proposals today is not very different from the way we did it 20 years ago when my career was just getting started. If in that time, no one in the entire industry has ever come up with an approach that is consistently effective, then there is something inherently wrong with the way we approach proposal reviews.
When I returned, I published a series of articles and comments in the CapturePlanning.com newsletter, which has a circulation of more than 40,000 people involved in business development and proposal writing. Again, no one stepped up to say that the Red Team approach is successful for them. The feedback I got from the newsletter was a series of emails from people pointing out the problems they have with their Red Teams.
As I've thought more about it, I've come to realize that it's time to throw out the Red Team and come up with something new. It's not something that we can make a little better each time until it works. It was a good first attempt, but if it hasn't been made to work in 20 years, it's not going to work. Little by little, it's going no where. It's time to evolve past the Red Team and replace it with something that does work.
The scope is not well defined. Most Red Teams try to review: capture strategies, the proposal outline, production quality, compliance, accuracy, effectiveness of the approach, persuasiveness of the writing, completeness of the document, how you stack up against the evaluation criteria, implementation of win themes, and incorporation of customer/solution/competitive awareness. Is it any wonder that they finish feeling incomplete? Or that when you have a meeting with a mandate so broad that you have trouble focusing their attention?
Now, try removing items from the list above and see how far you get before you delete something vital.
Here are some of the other problems people experience with Red Teams:
Participants do not add value. Red Teams do not help people win. It's not even part of the charter for most Red Teams. They are typically positioned as a quality control function whose job it is to find problems. They play little or no role in preventing problems, resolving problems, or in helping the proposal team to win. The best you can hope for is some helpful suggestions on how to fix something that you already know has problems. There is no good time to have a Red Team. You can have your Red Team too early, or you can have it too late. If you have it too early, you are asking people to review a document that is incomplete and different from what the customer will see. If you do it too late, the document will be more mature, but you will be out of time to make any changes. This is why people add "pink team" reviews, or have follow-up Redder-Than-Red Team reviews. Neither approach works. The problem is inherent in the design and due to a scope that is so broad it contains requirements that conflict and are impossible to implement. Adding colors will not solve the problem. Inexperience and lack of training. The Red Team concept relies on highly experienced staff to advise the proposal team. However, these people are rarely available. And when they are, they usually can't dedicate the time that a good review requires. It is not realistic to expect senior staff to be available to participate in an unlimited scoped review of every proposal a company produces. The concept is flawed. A reengineered solution should make better use of mid-level staff (since that's who populate most Red Teams anyway) and limit the use of senior staff to where they are most effective. Lack of purpose. Most Red Teams are hunting expeditions where reviewers see what they can find. Red Teams like this do not produce results on purpose ? they produce them by chance. Proposals should be purpose-driven documents that are validated explicitly and intentionally. Lack of leadership. Who oversees the Red Team, holds them accountable, calls them to order, instructs them in their mission, and teaches them how to do their job? Does that person have the authority to direct the "gray beards" selected to participate? Usually it defaults to the Proposal Manager to direct the Red Team. Leadership by default is not a best practice. Every step in an effective workflow must have oversight, accountability, guidance, and training. This is the role of a leader. To be effective, every review must have one.

The Problem With Red Teams is The Color Team Model People have tried to overcome the limitations of the Red Team by inventing a host of other "Color Teams". A pre-writing strategy review might be called a "Pink Team." A formal draft review is typically called a "Red Team." Pricing reviews are "Green Teams." Final reviews are "Gold Teams." Some companies have Blue Teams, Purple Teams, and occasionally other colors. Color team labels mean so many things to different people that they have become meaningless. This is because the scope is not well defined for any of the color team labels:
Is the Pink Team review an outline review, win theme review, capture strategy review, storyboard review, production plan review, or all of the above? There is no formal mechanism to validate that what is shown at Pink Team actually makes it into the document (Pink Teams and Red Teams are almost always conducted independently). Is there only one Green Team or do there need to be more than one pricing review? How do pricing reviews, technical solution development, and proposal text get reconciled? How does this reconciliation get validated? There is no integration between Color Team reviews. They are conducted independently. Future reviews do not validate against prior reviews. They don't reinforce or add up to anything. Each review re-invents the wheel. Reviews often revisit difficult issues, contribute to indecision, and consequently make drastic last minute changes more likely. This is the exact opposite of what is needed. What is the scope of the Gold Team review? Is it strictly a validation that the document has been produced and assembled accurately, or is it a final chance to change strategies and message? The endless conflict that erupts at this stage results directly from acceptance of the inadequate color team model. What exactly is a "red team?" Ask 20 people and you'll get 20 answers (if not more). Then ask them what a "blue team" or a "pink team" is and you'll get even more varied answers. People have so many goals for their color teams that can't agree on which goals apply at any given time. The result is that most color teams do not achieve any goals. And while I am sure that you, gentle reader, know what a Red Team, Pink Team and a Blue Team are supposed to be, it doesn't do any good unless all of the stakeholders share a common set of expectations.
While it may be possible to narrowly define a set of reviews and give them color labels, you cannot implement this consistently or effectively across an organization:
You cannot take a poorly scoped review and make it better by having more of them. If the Red Team review does not add value, then having more colors will not either. The Color Team model is based on problem detection and not on helping to win or adding value. When is the right time for a color? The Color Team model imposes sequential milestones on a process that is not sequential. If experienced and trained reviews aren't available for the Red Team, how do you think you are going to get them for the other colors? How does a color translate into a purpose driven act? Reviews should focus on what needs to be validated, and not on the state of the document at a moment in time. Most Color Teams practice leadership by default. The result is usually a lack of leadership. This means the review team is not accountable, directed, or trained.

Why the Color Team Model Can't Be Fixed The problems run far deeper than the lack of guidance that color team labels provide us with. The real problem is the lack of purpose and guidance in the color team model. The color team model does not add up to a completely validated proposal, because it was not designed to do that. Color team reviews were designed around a sequence of milestones. The reason they cannot be made to work is that you cannot define the scope of the reviews in such a way that they meet the need of the proposal for validation.
People have been unwilling to get rid of color teams because the need for quality proposals is supreme, and an ineffective attempt at it is perceived as better than no attempt. Is this the best that the industry can come up with? We can throw out the "red team" but keep the goals. Indeed, we must throw out the Red Team in order to achieve the goals.
The Red Team review in particular, and color team reviews in general, were created with good intentions. But they fail in implementation. If Red Teams are good in principle but can't be implemented effectively in practice, then I question whether they are any good. Without positive results after 20 years, Red Teams certainly can no longer be considered a best practice. Does it make sense for the entire industry to accept a process that no one can implement with consistent success? In spite of the good intentions, and in spite of the need, color team proposal reviews are a waste of time and resources. Even with Color Teams, the need for proposal validation is going un-met. It's time to drop Color Teams and replace them with some real validation. Call it evolution.
What we really need...
Well defined review scopes that validate specific items A methodology that defines the review requirements according to the needs of each particular business and proposal An approach that incorporates guidance for review team members Approaches for conducting reviews that better fit what circumstances require Less impact on proposal workflow ? reviews that can be conducted without freezing the baseline or requiring a wasted production cycle A way to determine what level of review is sufficient Traceability from issue through validation Quality assurance and quality control (they are two different things) Reviews that add value Reviews that help the proposal win How to Turn Down a Request for a Red Team
From now on, when I am asked "When will we have the Red Team," I will answer:

Proposal Quality Validation IS the Proposal Process If you look at any proposal process, you will find the review phase to be at the heart of it. The review phase verifies that the proposal was written correctly. The planning phase helps ensure that the writing phase can successfully pass the review. Because the purpose of a proposal process is to improve quality, and quality is achieved through reviews, the proposal process serves mainly to prepare the document for review.
The Proposal Quality Validation (PQV) methodology addresses the need for many types of reviews throughout all stages of the proposal. The basic approach to implementing PQV is to define the specific outcomes that you want and to plan a validation review to ensure that they are achieved.
Recently I was considering how to integrate PQV into the overall proposal process. While thinking about it, I realized that every outcome desired during each phase of the proposal should be validated. Proposal Quality Validation isn't just for the review phase, it's for the entire effort.
Traditional proposal processes treat the review phase as something that comes after writing and before production. With PQV, it is easy to extend the "review phase" much earlier into the process. This is usually a key goal of proposal managers, but difficult to achieve. Because PQV starts by validating the proposal plan, it already starts before the writing. In fact, PQV starts before the RFP is even released because it can be used to validate the readiness of proposal preparations. You could begin applying PQV the moment a lead is identified to ensure that it meets the specifications for pursuit. Like many things in PQV, these are things that you should be doing anyway. PQV helps you formalize them and make them part of an overall process.
Here are some key attributes of PQV and how it impacts the overall proposal process.
Phase/Activity PQV Impact On The Proposal Process Lead Identification and Qualification Validates that the opportunity is worth pursuing and corresponds to your strategic and tactical goals. Intelligence Gathering and Business Development Validates that you are ready to start the bid and have collected the information you will need to win. Proposal Start-up Validates the proposal plans prior to writing. Proposal Writing and Review Validates the execution of the plans by making sure that what was produced reflects what was planned. Proposal Production Validates the assembly of the final document to make sure it is accurate and ready to submit. PQV covers each phase of activity. It also forces you to identify the criteria by which you judge the quality of performance within each phase. It not only gives you the process, but also the tools to measure progress and performance within the process. It also provides a common basis for approaching each phase and brings everyone onto the same page regarding how to approach process within their areas of responsibility.
Curiously, I developed PQV because the color team model has failed to produce effective results consistently. If the review process is the heart of the proposal process, and the review process is flawed, I wonder if that isn't a big part of the reason why people have been struggling with their proposal processes. I also wonder if a more effective review process might just lead to better results with the overall proposal process.

Using Red Teams effectively to improve your proposals The most important tool for ensuring proposal quality at most companies is a Red Team review. A Red Team can turn a proposal that is destined to lose into a winner. However, the Red Team review process can be cumbersome, confusing to writers, and highly ineffective if not handled appropriately for the situation.
When to hold a Red Team Review
When to review a proposal presents a dilemma. The later the Red Team review, the better the shape the review document is in. However, a late review may not leave sufficient time to fix problems. The best way to handle this dilemma is to have one or more short reviews early in the proposal writing process.
Types of Proposal Reviews
While a traditional red team evaluation can be effective under the right circumstances, other methods are available. If the proposal is on an extremely tight schedule, for example, companies may wish to employ review approaches such as: running red teams, single person reviews, and internal reviews by members of the proposal team who were not involved with the preparation of the section being reviewed.
The traditional red team is normally tasked with (1) evaluating and recommending improvement fixes and/or (2) evaluating and scoring the proposal according to the solicitation evaluation factors.
Evaluating-and-Recommending-Fixes Red Team: An evaluating-and-recommending-fixes red team reviews the proposal for a broad range of factors, including:
Compliance Completeness Responsiveness Presentation Sell The team makes recommendations on how deficiencies can be fixed. Although this red team does not have the customer expertise to formally score the proposal in accordance with the solicitation evaluation factors, it is helpful to provide an informal quality score (excellent, good, marginal, and unacceptable) of each section for general evaluation purposes.
Customer-Evaluation-Simulation Red Team: This red team attempts to simulate the customer's formal proposal evaluation process. This red team measures the proposal by:
Evaluating each solicitation requirement, listing proposer benefits and deficiencies, and identifying needed clarifi- cations for each solicitation requirement providing a specific score to each evaluated proposal section/subsection according to the solicitation evaluation factors.
In order for this red team to score a proposal effectively, its members must have a comprehensive understanding of the customer's requirements including the budget for the proposed work and political agendas. This type of red team should include recent employees of the customer.
Running Red Team: When a proposal is on an extremely tight schedule, a running red team is often an effective method of proposal evaluation. When a writer completes a section draft, he or she immediately gives it to the running red team for a quick response evaluation.
Selecting Red Teams and Preparing for Proposal Evaluation
For the most effective red team reviews, it is essential to select the right individuals, to ensure that they are adequately prepared prior to the actual proposal review, and to prepare the proposal properly for the review.
Composition of Red Team:
The foundation for an efficient red team is a team of skilled, experienced reviewers. Red team members comprised of all outsiders will generally be more objective than one with company members. Avoid using senior company executives on the red team unless they agree to give full-time effort to the review. The most important member of a red team is the red team manager. The ideal individual is someone totally familiar with the proposal review process, the proposal preparation, and the customer's requirements.
Red team members normally include:
Outside proposal professionals Customer specialists Employees who thoroughly know the bidder's capabilities, products, services, and past performance history Subject matter experts Red team members should be limited to those individuals who Can spend not only sufficient time evaluating the proposal but who can also assist the proposal team in making fixes. If early reviews (blue teams, pink teams, etc.) are used, the reviewers should be the same as those on the red team.
One important review often omitted is the cost volume review. Many contracts are lost because of major inconsistencies between the proposal technical and cost volumes.
Red Team Planning Procedures:
The red team evaluation should be planned early. The proposal manager and capture manager should jointly select the red team manager. The capture manager, proposal manager, and red team manager should then determine the type of red team to be used, its exact function, and a list of desired red team members. Red team members should be provided with copies of the solicitation as soon as possible.
In addition, it is beneficial to provide reviewers with red team procedures and evaluation forms prior to the evaluation. Red team procedures should include a breakdown of tasks for each red team member and a schedule for red team activities. Sample red team evaluation forms include:
Proposal Deficiency Form Proposal Comments Form Proposal Scoring Form Preparing the Proposal for Red Team Evaluation:
The most important thing in preparing a proposal for review is having it complete. If important text and graphics are missing or incomplete, the review is a waste of time. To ensure that the red team will understand the proposal, it is also important to write the proposal for the reviewer and to have totally completed executive summaries and section introductions that contain all major themes and discriminators.
I recommend that the proposal be given a hard edit prior to red team review. I used to believe that significant editing prior to red team review was a waste of time. However, earlier this year I had a proposal assignment that changed my mind. I was managing two proposals that were similar in type and content and that were written concurrently by the same authors for the same federal customer. One of the proposals had a shorter due date, and we did not have the time to edit it prior to red team review. The reviewers of the unedited proposal came back with comments mostly relating to minor editing. However, the reviewers of the edited document were able to identify real deficiencies and weaknesses.
In addition to having the text and graphics complete before the review, a detailed compliance matrix should be included. This compliance matrix should be in a check-off-list format that follows the requested information of the solicitation proposal instructions, evaluation factors, and statement of work.
Red Team Evaluation
I have found it better to have the red team members located together during the review than to have them separated. Continual discussions among the red team are important in recommending solutions. When I have worked with red teams where members were not co-located, the resulting recommendations were conflicting. After receiving the proposal, the red team evaluation procedures will include:
Final assignment review Finalization of review schedule Coordination with proposal team for debrief and follow-up actions Review of total proposal against the solicitation requirements In-depth review of assigned sections, noting deficiencies and strengths, identifying needed clarifications, providing recommendations, and completing evaluation forms Compilation of comments into single book Debrief of proposal team. Reviewers should avoid general comments like, "motherhood," "marketing baloney," and "re-write." Be specific in making comments and recommendations.
The red team should meet and prepare a formal debriefing to The proposal team. The presenters should emphasize only the major points relating to deficiencies, weaknesses, and strengths: minor issues can be documented on written evaluation forms. The red team should concentrate their presentation on a realistic approach to improve the proposal. Comments written in individual books should be combined into a single book.
Post-Red Team Evaluation Actions
After the red team evaluation, the red team members should assist the proposal team in making the recommended fixes. When this responsibility is understood in advance of the review, the red team comments will invariably be more realistic. The proposal manager is the person in charge of the proposal and he/she will have final say on accepting and implementing any red team recommendations.

How to review a proposal Reviewing a proposal involves a lot more than assessing compliance, style, and checking for typos. Here is a list of questions that reviewers should consider:
Proposed Solution. Will it work? Does it fall within risk tolerances? Is it price-competitive? Is it best-in-class/best-value? Have all the benefits of the solution or approach been pointed out. Have all the features been sufficiently tied to the evaluation criteria in order to ensure credit? RFP Compliance. Note any ways that the section does not adequately address an RFP requirement. Make sure all RFP requirements are addressed, especially anything relevant in Sections C, M, and L as well as any other sections that might contract relevant requirements. Call attention to anything that might contradict an RFP requirement. Score. Give the section a grade according to the evaluation criteria, as if you were the client. Bid Strategies. Does it reflect the correct bid strategies? Additions. Note anything missing that should be added to the section or any parts that require additional detail. Deletions. Is there anything that really shouldn’t be there or that a client might find patronizing? Is there anything redundant or superfluous (We disagree with “tell them what you going to tell them” introductions and simply delete them). Is there anything that can be taken out that will make it easier for the evaluator to get through your proposal? Changes/corrections. Note anything that is not accurate or requires changing. Experience. Has all relevant corporate experience been mentioned? A lot of times proposal reviewers are senior managers and may be aware of project experience that didn’t occur to the proposal team. Themes. Are the themes for this section adequately highlighted? Graphics/Illustrations. Are there a sufficient number of graphics in the proposal? Is there anything in the text that could be enhanced through illustration?

What is a Black Hat Review? Black Hat reviews are a little like Red Team reviews in that I have never seen two people conduct them the same way. However, the subject of a Black Hat review is very different from that of a Red Team review. A Black Hat review is a competitive assessment to consider who the competition is, what their strengths and weaknesses, and how you should position against them in your proposal. The best Black Hat reviews score your company and your competition against the anticipated evaluation criteria.
There are many techniques for acquiring and assessing competitive intelligence. These range from simple SWOT (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats) analysis to more sophisticated methodologies. The technique you use is less important than your diligence at implementing it. However, like risk assessment and quality assurance, if you don’t implement a formal methodology, you won't consistently get good results.
Also, any assessment is only going to be as good as the data it's based on. Gathering good competitive intelligence takes time. If you simply bring all the stakeholders into a meeting and ask them what they know about the competition, you will not get the best data to work with. You must collect and validate competitive intelligence data throughout the lead qualification and capture phases of the pursuit if you are going to have solid data to assess at a Black Hat review.
The key to a successful Black Hat review is to translate what you know about the competition into action items. And those action items should not simply be to fill in the holes in what you should know. The action items coming out of a Black Hat review need to affect your capture and proposal strategies in ways that will impact your odds of winning. Otherwise, it’s an academic exercise that doesn’t affect your chances (this is a fancy way of saying “a waste of time”).
One set of action items that should come from a Black Hat review relates to teaming. A Black Hat review should tell you which companies are strong where you are weak and therefore make good teaming candidates, because you are more likely to win together than you are if you remain apart. It can also show you who you might want to take off the street by teaming with them. It may be better to give up a portion of the revenue by teaming with someone than it is to risk losing all the revenue in competition. Or not. A good Black Hat review should help you assess this quantitatively, by showing the effect on evaluation scoring of different teaming scenarios. That’s another reason that formal competitive assessment methodologies can be valuable. They help you look at things objectively by providing the means to rank and score the competition.
Finally, a Black Hat review should help you finalize your win strategies. Win strategies cannot be developed in isolation from your competition. It's not enough to simply articulate to the customer why they should select you. You must also be able to say why they should select you, rather than your competition. A Black Hat review can help you formally position yourself against the competition instead of just guessing, the way most people (including your competitors) do.