Page 143 - Writing Winning Business Proposals

134 Writing Winning Business Proposals

optimistic, feeling good about its competitive position and chances of winning.
This optimism may blind the team to potential biases, hidden problems, and risks.
Worse, they fail to determine what their firm knows, other broader per-
spectives of which the proposal team is unaware. This collective wisdom is the
combined knowledge, the sum of intellectual capital, capability, and experience
of others in the firm not directly involved with the proposal team.
Beyond this level of knowledge, of course, is “all there is to know.” There will
always be more information, more intelligence, than any individual, team, or firm
will ever know. Your goal during business development should be to expand your
base of knowledge, going beyond what you know to what you don’t know and to
what your firm knows. You can do that by using a 40-minute Green Team Review.

The Green Team Review: What It Is

The 40-minute Green Team Review is a focused, high-impact process through
which a proposal team can expand its knowledge and improve its selling strategy
by learning what it doesn’t know and what the firm knows. With this increased
knowledge, the team can be made aware of and choose to execute strategic
actions that leverage its strengths and/or offset its weaknesses relative to its com-
petition. The Green Team has no direct line of authority; ownership of the lead
and decisions regarding changes to the selling strategy continue to reside with
the proposal team. The Green Team provides the proposal team with construc-
tive, creative suggestions for its consideration.
The Green Team Review process seeks to supply important missing, unverified,
and uncertain information as well as information or perspectives about which the
proposal team might not completely agree. Information, most likely the lack of
information, in any of these categories could pose vulnerabilities or red flags to the
proposal team’s firm as I and my colleagues make our selection decision. Red flags
are not created by the process. They already exist even if they are not identified or
acknowledged, even if they are hidden within my firm. The Green Team Review
process allows these potential vulnerabilities to be identified, prioritized (given the
time remaining before the proposal is submitted), and systematically addressed.

The Green Team: Who It Is

Ideally, the Green Team includes six to twelve individuals who are not directly
involved in the selling opportunity and who can provide a range of different per-
spectives, attitudes, and points of view. They might bring to the Green Team Review
different functional perspectives (e.g., marketing, information technology, manufac-
turing, logistics, finance) as well as different leadership styles (e.g., the Myers-Briggs