Ghosting
A writing technique that highlights a competitor's likely weaknesses by emphasizing requirements or solution attributes where that competitor is known to fall short, without naming them directly. Done well, it plants doubt about the competition in the evaluator's mind while staying within ethical and compliance bounds.
Related terms
Annotated Outline
A proposal outline expanded with section-by-section guidance (compliance references, win themes, discriminators, content direction, and page allocations) and handed to writers before drafting starts. It turns a bare table of contents into a writing tool that keeps every section tied to RFP requirements and strategy.
Bid Readiness
The state of having enough capture intelligence (customer insight, teaming, staffing, price-to-win, and compliance understanding) to commit resources to a compliant, competitive proposal. Bid readiness is what a bid/no-bid decision and capture gates are ultimately checking for before a pursuit is funded.
Bid/No-Bid Decision
A formal go/no-go checkpoint where leadership scores an opportunity against qualification criteria (strategic fit, incumbency, competitive position, funding certainty, and win probability) to decide whether to invest capture and proposal resources. It can recur at multiple points as an opportunity matures.
Black Hat Review
A capture-phase session where the team thinks like a specific competitor to forecast their likely solution, staffing, pricing, and win themes. Unlike the color-team reviews, it looks outward at the competition rather than at your own draft, so you can adjust strategy to beat them.
Blue Team Review
The first color review, conducted on the annotated outline before writing begins. It checks that section assignments, compliance mapping, win themes, and discriminators are correctly reflected in the outline and flags gaps in solution, data, or SME coverage early, before drafting starts.
