Blog · Tag
year-end.
12 posts in this archive.
The annual proposal-team retro template
The questions we ask at year-end and the format that surfaces what monthly retros miss. A 90-minute meeting that produces a durable artifact instead of a slide deck that gets archived and forgotten.
Year-one numbers we can share
The product metrics we're willing to post publicly after year one, the ones we aren't, and the reasoning behind each line. An honest ledger instead of a slide deck.
The end-of-year reading list for proposal operators
Fifteen links outside our bubble — books, long essays, research papers, category-adjacent writing. Not a proposal-industry reading list; the reading that makes proposal work feel new when you return to it in January.
The week between Christmas and New Year, for proposal teams
The slowest week of the year has a use. Five low-overhead rituals that cost an afternoon each, capture the year's learning, and set up the team for a clean January. What to do when nothing is landing.
An end-of-year letter to early customers
Short. What we shipped this year, what we did not, what we learned from you. No CTA, no pitch, no asking for anything. Just an accounting.
The 2025 proposal-tool hype cycle, mapped
Who peaked, who plateaued, who crashed, and who quietly held a line this year in the proposal-tools category. A data-grounded map of vendor posture across 2025, drawn from public reviews and pricing signals.
The DDQ evidence-gap audit before year-end
A 60-minute audit that surfaces the DDQ answers you can no longer support with current evidence. Run it before the auditor in February asks. The answers that survive the audit are the ones worth keeping in the library.
The end-of-year win-themes audit
Five prompts for retiring win themes that have lost discriminatory power, and promoting the ones that actually showed up in wins. A year-end ritual that takes an afternoon and pays out across the next twelve months of bids.
The holiday handoff runbook
What to write so the on-call proposal lead isn't paged at 11pm on December 23. A 30-minute template that pays for itself the first time a portal deadline moves.
The December DDQ panic day
A field note on the second Monday of December: what buyers send, why they send it then, and what the vendor side should do about it.
Year-end DDQ surge: how to staff it
The operational playbook for running 40 to 60 due-diligence questionnaires through a small security and proposal team in the last six weeks of the year, without losing the team.
Past-performance library hygiene for year-end
Three questions that decide whether a past-performance entry stays in the library, gets rewritten, or gets retired. A December sweep that pays off in the Q1 pursuit wave.
See the proposal workflow
Take the 5-minute tour, then start a trial workspace when you're ready to run a real pursuit against your own source material.