Smarter Proposal Reviews Start Here
Color team reviews are often thought of as a given in proposal management but sometimes these reviews do more harm than good. In a busy season defined by speed, focus, and evaluator clarity, these rituals can slow you down, exhaust your team, and leave your proposal less compelling. In this article, we explore why color team reviews fail, what to do instead, and how to make immediate, actionable improvements this week.
How We Got Here: The Rise of Color Team Culture
In the early days of proposal maturity, color team reviews were a breakthrough. They offered structure in a chaotic process and gave stakeholders defined roles:
- Pink Team = Concept check
- Red Team = Evaluator simulation
- Gold Team = Final quality
They created clarity. Expectations. Deadlines. In a 2010 environment, they made sense.
But fast forward to today. Most color teams don’t look like that anymore. They look like this:
- Reviewers aren’t aligned on scoring criteria.
- Comments are conflicting, vague, or petty.
- Writers wait to make revisions until after the color team meets.
- Real decisions happen in side conversations, not review meetings.
Color team culture has gone from disciplined to dysfunctional.
The Evaluator Doesn’t Care What Color Team You Used
Let’s get real. The evaluator doesn’t care about your internal review process. They only care about:
- Does this proposal make my job easier?
- Is the value clear?
- Can I score this confidently?
Here’s the kind of feedback you want in a debrief: “Offeror’s proposal was consistently clear, well-structured, and responsive. Value propositions were supported with compelling proof points. Evaluators required minimal clarification.”
You do not get that by routing a document through three teams and ten contradictory opinions. You get that by producing clear, confident, evaluator-aligned content.
The Risks of Color Team Dependency
Here’s what over reliance on color team reviews does to your proposal:
1. It Slows You Down
Writers wait to revise. Content freezes. Reviewers leave conflicting markups. And no one feels ownership of the final product.
2. It Encourages Lowest-Common-Denominator Writing
In trying to satisfy every reviewer, you end up with:
- Safe, generic language
- Blunt transitions
- Watered-down win themes
3. It Obscures Responsibility
Who actually owns quality? The volume lead? The writer? The review chair? The executive who vetoed everything?
Color teams make accountability murky.
5 Review Process Changes You Can Make This Week
You don’t need to get rid of your reviews. You need to fix how they work. Here are some changes you can implement this week to be more aligned to successful proposal teams who are laser focused on winning:
1. Replace One Color Team Review with a Live Working Session
Instead of: 10 people reading 100 pages, alone, over the weekend
Try: 5 people reviewing 25 pages together, on screen, in real time
Benefits:
- Shared understanding
- Faster decisions
- Immediate revisions
2. Use Comment Guidelines
Not all comments are created equal. Ask reviewers to:
- Focus on clarity, credibility, and scoreability
- Avoid personal style preferences
- Justify major changes with evaluator and evaluation criteria rationale
- Make their comments actionable
3. Pre-Align Reviewers
Before the review:
- Determine and walk through the section goals
- Clarify what a good answer looks like
- Share recent evaluator debrief language
Now reviewers are aligned before they read. The goal here is not to get everyone thinking the same way so everyone provides the same comments. Rather, the goal is to avoid wasting time going back and forth on comments that never should have been raised in the first place.
4. Assign a Volume Lead Who Will Have the Final say
One person must synthesize feedback. Otherwise, writers are stuck choosing between three conflicting edits. The volume lead makes the call.
5. A Smarter Review Rhythm
Instead of a rigid Pink-Red-Gold formula, try this rhythm:
- Drafting with Dialogue: Writers meet twice a week with the volume lead to discuss progress and win themes.
- Mid-Draft Coaching: At 60% complete, hold a working session to identify issues before they harden.
- Evaluator Simulation: At 90%, simulate a scorecard exercise—but limit participants to 2-3 evaluators max.
- Final Polish: Leave time for a proofread, design pass, and executive sanity check—not a reinvention.
This approach is faster, more focused, and far more evaluator-aligned.
Cultural Shifts That Make It Stick
To move away from broken color teams, you need to:
- Reward Initiative: Celebrate contributors who improve sections outside of formal reviews.
- Train Reviewers: Teach staff how to comment for clarity, evaluation, and action.
- Decriminalize Early Drafts: Make it safe to share imperfect work so it can evolve faster.
- Model Behavior: Proposal leads should show how to give useful, respectful feedback.
Closing Thought
A good review process doesn’t just find problems. It builds alignment, clarity, and momentum.
If your color team reviews feel like chaos, politics, or delay – take the time to stop, rethink, and rebuild. Time is a luxury in proposal busy season, and taking the time to fix your review cycles early will save you much more time in the long run. Because in busy season, the teams that win are the ones that review smarter, not harder.
Need a proposal manager to shepherd you through a better review process this summer? We’ve been doing that for 21 years. We are Red Team Consulting after all.
