Color-coded reviews are an accepted industry practice for a disciplined, logical
process to bring a RFP response to completion in winning form. The reviews
represent increasing levels of maturity. Its core purpose is to help the writing team
improve the quality of the proposal, and ensure a compliant product to increase the
potential of winning.
Review Process
There are many levels to its working and at each level, the reviewers should be
qualified to assess the proposal at its given stage and provide the necessary
assessment and guidance to move the proposal to the next level. Each level of review
should be evaluating the presence or absence of win themes and discriminators,
compliance with the RFP requirements, and responsiveness to the customer’s needs
that produced the RFP in the first place. At the end of the iterative writing and then
review process for each level, the proposal response should be compliant,
compelling, and complete.
Different Colour Team Review
The teams encompassing the Review include the following:
Blue Team reviews and approves final solution, strategy, and storyboards or richly
annotated outlines. It ensures that the basic outline of the proposal is correct and
complete and also identifies gaps in information, data, designated SMEs,
discriminators, and win themes.
Pink Team reviews for compliance with RFP instructions and requirements and should
determine that the proceedings and overall efforts are being properly led.
Red Team reviews for compliance, presentation of themes and discriminators,
effective substantiation of all claims, continuity from one section to the next, effective
“storytelling,” ghosting of competition, and wordsmithing.
Green Team is responsible to ensure that all pricing information required by the RFP
is presented and in the formats prescribed. The team will also ensure that company
pricing policies are followed depending on the type of contract.
Gold Team Review focuses on contractual terms of the proposal, pricing, and
scheduling.
The White Review, often called White Glove, review is a page by page mostly visual
review of the document to catch any obvious errors in printing.
Tips To Keep In Mind
To make an effective colour team review there many factors one should keep in mind,
including the avoiding of pitfalls. The teams should be organized, understand their
core roles, and help the proposal writing team to improve the quality of the product
and the evaluation score.
Purpose Of Rating
Each colour team review has different purposes. A red rating means that the reviewer
believes there are major elements of the proposal which are deficient that would
result in the proposal being non-compliant and not technical acceptable. A yellow
rating means that the proposal/section is generally compliant but not complete. A
green rating means that the proposal is essentially compliant with minor areas
requirement correction or improvement. The proposal if submitted in the condition
would be competitive but at risk for selection. A blue rating means that the proposal is
fully compliant, complete, compelling, and priced to win.
