Color-team reviews, explained
A free 8-page field guide to color-team proposal reviews: what Blue, Black Hat, Pink, Red, Gold and White Glove each check, and how a small business can run the same quality gates on its sales proposals and marketing launches.
Free
- Format
- An 8-page PDF with six copy-and-use checklists
- Price
- Free. Payhip asks for your email to send it.
Delivery is through Payhip, a separate site with its own terms and privacy policy.
The problem
The people writing a proposal are too close to see its flaws. Left alone, a team polishes the wrong document: a well-written answer to a question the buyer didn’t ask, at a price the owner won’t sign. Defense and government contractors fix this with color-team reviews. Most small businesses have never heard of them.
What you get
- The 60-second version and a one-table summary of all six reviews.
- A timeline showing where each review sits on a 30-day proposal, and why the order matters.
- One card per team: when it runs, who sits on it, what it checks, what it produces.
- How to run a review that helps, a typical evaluator rating scale, and the common failures with fixes.
- The small-business version: the six reviews renamed in plain terms, about 3 hours of review time per big deal, and three tiers so you don’t review everything.
- Sales and marketing playbooks side by side, a 30-60-90 day rollout, the CRM fields to add, six copy-and-use checklists and a glossary.
The catch
Colors, timing and scoring scales vary by company and agency. This is the common pattern. The deal-size tiers are my suggested starting points, not an industry standard.
Who it’s for
People new to government proposals who need to get up to speed fast, and owners or sales leaders at 5 to 50 person companies who want fewer mistakes reaching the customer.
Questions
Why does Payhip ask for my email? That’s how it sends the file. You can unsubscribe from anything I send later.
Can I share it with my team? Yes. It’s for personal and team use. Please don’t resell or repost it.
About me
I’m Seth Levanen. I’ve spent 26 years in B2B sales, most recently in battery, defense and autonomy tech. I help owners and sales leaders cut busywork without cutting quality. I call that the smart-cut. Questions: hello@sethlevanen.com.
More for government bidding: how to get ready to win government bids.