Pink Team Perfection: How to Avoid Common Mistakes and Win

Picture this: You’ve invested weeks of hard work and resources into crafting a proposal, only to watch it unravel during the Pink Team review. The disappointment is gut-wrenching. But why does this happen? Understanding the root causes of Pink Team’s failures is crucial for avoiding common mistakes and transforming frustration into winning proposals.

Why Pink Teams Falter and How to Fix Them

• Lack of Understanding of the Requirements: A critical error proposal teams make is an insufficient grasp of the proposal requirements. This often arises from inadequate customer feedback and intelligence. To fix this problem, do your homework. Conduct meaningful discussions with customers about their objectives, requirements, risks, dependencies, schedules, budgets, and preferred performance measurements.
• Failure to Identify Proposal Strengths: Another blunder is failing to identify proposal strengths or mixing them up with win themes. To fix this problem, start by creating a strength budget and scorecard. During the solution phase, verify you can document one more strength for each evaluated section. Get your customers to buy in on the strengths for the best results.
• Non-Compliance with Instructions: Compliance is non-negotiable. Yet, Pink Teams sometimes falter by overlooking critical instructions. To fix this problem, have one or more staff members verify the compliance of your proposal outline and provide writers with compliance instructions in the outline template.
• Unclear Writing Guidance: Writers need explicit, actionable guidance on what to write. Without this, even experts can produce off-target or irrelevant content. To fix the problem, provide clear templates and guidance.
• Inexperienced Writers: Proposal writers are often subject matter experts (SMEs) but lack proposal writing experience. This mismatch results in content that’s technically accurate but fails to persuade. To fix this problem, invest in training your team to transform technically sound content into compelling, winning proposals.
• Lack of Cohesion and Coordination: Disjointed sections that fail to flow together can doom your proposal. This usually results from poor coordination among team members. To fix this problem, implement structured project management and regular communications.
• Inadequate Review and Feedback Processes: A robust review process is critical for identifying mistakes and enhancing proposal quality. However, some Pink Teams fail to provide constructive feedback, leading to recurring errors and subpar proposals. To fix this problem, have reviewers score the proposal and provide clear and actionable feedback to improve its score.

Conclusion

Fixing these common mistakes demands a strategic approach. Begin by ensuring a profound understanding of the customer and the requirements. Identify and emphasize proposal strengths early in the process. Rigorously comply with RFP instructions and offer clear guidance to your writers. Train inexperienced writers and foster strong coordination within your team. Lastly, a thorough review and feedback can catch and correct mistakes.

By addressing these common pitfalls, you can turn your Pink Team reviews from disheartening to empowering to perfection, paving the way for more successful proposals.

Relevant Content

• Why Proposal Reviews Fail and How to Fix Them

• Video: Moving Proposals from Good to Great: Insights from Three APMP Fellows

• Ensure Your Proposals Stand Up to Scrutiny with Expert Proposal Reviews

By Brenda Crist, Vice President at Lohfeld Consulting Group, MPA, CPP APMP Fellow

Lohfeld Consulting Group has proven results specializing in helping companies create winning captures and proposals. As the premier capture and proposal services consulting firm focused exclusively on government markets, we provide expert assistance to government contractors in Capture Planning and Strategy, Proposal Management and Writing, Capture and Proposal Process and Infrastructure, and Training. In the last 3 years, we’ve supported over 550 proposals winning more than $170B for our clients—including the Top 10 government contractors. Lohfeld Consulting Group is your “go-to” capture and proposal source! Start winning by contacting us at www.lohfeldconsulting.com and join us on LinkedIn, Facebook, and YouTube^(TM).

Brenda Crist

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