Page 144 - Writing Winning Business Proposals

Green Team Reviews 135

descriptors—Intuitive, Sensing, Thinking, and Feeling—or more simplified matri-
ces that use categories such as Controller, Analyzer, Promoter, and Supporter).
By including individuals with different industry and geographic experiences,
as well as different styles of thinking, you can configure a Green Team with per-
spectives well beyond those of your proposal team. In brief, you’re asking the
members of the Green Team to use their range of experience and expertise to
imagine my mind-set and to view the proposal team’s thinking as if they them-
selves were I and my colleagues. This orientation allows the Green Team to
consider the proposal team’s thinking from divergent perspectives.
How do you persuade your busy colleagues to participate and to collaborate
on selling opportunities about which they haven’t even been involved and about
which they know little or nothing? You design the review process to be quick and
to the point, but not judgmental and not open-ended. Even the busiest people
can spare 40 minutes to help their colleagues improve their chances of winning
important opportunities—if you honor their time commitments. You can with a
properly structured Green Team Review.

The Green Team Review: How It Works

As Figure 8.2 illustrates, the 40-minute Green Team Review includes five distinct
steps, each with a specific task, that together are aimed at identifying creative
potential actions to improve your probability of winning.

Step 1: Listen

During Step 1, the proposal team presents, without interruption, the most impor-
tant elements from the Logic and Psychologics Worksheets (which should be
2
poster-size and taped to the wall), the logical and psychological elements of its
thinking about the proposed problem or opportunity to date. The Green Team
listens silently and takes notes. This fast-paced, to-the-point presentation must,
by design, focus only on the big picture and identified red flags, not on less criti-
cal details of the selling situation. A timekeeper (who must not be a member of
the proposal team) alerts the proposal team’s presenter(s) at several checkpoints
to ensure that this high-level overview is completed within 15 minutes.

Step 2: Ask

In this step, members of the Green Team ask questions of the proposal team to
understand the lead better and to determine weaknesses or red flags that have not
yet been identified. As the proposal team responds, the Green Team “fills in the
blanks” of its understanding of the lead’s current status. Since only 10 minutes is