The proposal & RFP glossary
Every term of art in the response world, defined in plain language — from solicitation types to proposal-industry methodology.
Answer library
An answer library is a curated repository of previously approved question-and-answer pairs, reused across questionnaires and RFPs. It accelerates recurring responses but requires constant curation — every stored answer ages independently and drifts from current truth.
BAFO (Best and Final Offer)
A Best and Final Offer is the revised proposal a buyer requests from shortlisted vendors after evaluation and discussions — the last opportunity to adjust price, terms, or approach before award. As the name warns: no further rounds should be expected.
Bid author
A bid author is the person who writes the responses to tenders, RFPs, and questionnaires — turning a solicitation's requirements and the organization's knowledge into compliant, persuasive answer text. The role sits alongside bid managers and proposal managers, owning the words themselves.
Boilerplate
Boilerplate is reusable standard text — company history, certifications, policy summaries — dropped into proposals with little modification. It saves time on recurring content but reads as generic filler when it ignores the specific solicitation, and evaluators recognize it instantly.
Capture planning
Capture planning is the pre-RFP work of positioning to win a specific opportunity: building customer relationships, shaping requirements, assessing competitors, and drafting win themes — so the proposal writes from a strategy rather than reacting to a deadline.
Color team reviews (Pink, Red, Gold)
Color team reviews are the proposal industry's staged quality gates: Pink Team reviews the early draft for approach and coverage, Red Team scores the near-final draft as the evaluator would, and Gold Team gives executive approval on the finished, priced proposal.
Compliance matrix
A compliance matrix is a table mapping every requirement in a solicitation to the section of your response that addresses it, with a compliance status per row. Evaluators use it to verify coverage; response teams use it to guarantee nothing was missed.
Cost volume
The cost volume is the separately submitted pricing section of a structured proposal: rates, cost breakdowns, assumptions, and required forms. It is evaluated for realism and reasonableness as much as amount — an unexplained low price is a risk flag, not a bargain.
DDQ (Due Diligence Questionnaire)
A DDQ is a standardized questionnaire an organization sends to assess a counterparty's risk before or during a business relationship — covering security, compliance, financial stability, and operations. DDQs recur on cycles, making consistent, well-maintained answers as important as correct ones.
Evaluation criteria
Evaluation criteria are the published factors and weights by which proposals are scored — technical approach, past performance, key personnel, price — defined in the solicitation. They are the actual exam: responses are written to the criteria, not merely to the scope.
Executive summary
The executive summary is the proposal's opening argument: a short, customer-focused synthesis of why your offer wins — their priorities, your discriminators, and the proof — written for the decision-maker who may read nothing else.
FAR (Federal Acquisition Regulation)
The FAR is the rulebook governing how US federal executive agencies buy: solicitation procedures, evaluation methods, contract types, and the clauses flowed into contracts. Proposal requirements that seem arbitrary usually trace to a FAR provision.
First-draft automation
First-draft automation uses AI to produce the complete initial response — requirements extracted, each answered from the organization's knowledge base with citations — shifting human effort from authorship to review. The draft arrives written; the team's job becomes verification and refinement.
Ghosting (proposal strategy)
In proposal writing, ghosting means highlighting a competitor's weakness without naming them — planting evaluation doubts by emphasizing the risks of the alternative approach: 'Unlike solutions that require lengthy library curation, our platform grounds answers in your live documents.'
Go/No-Go (bid decision)
A go/no-go is the structured decision of whether to pursue an opportunity, made against explicit criteria — fit, win probability, resources, margin, strategic value — before response work begins. Disciplined no-gos are the cheapest win-rate improvement available.
Incumbent
The incumbent is the vendor currently holding the contract being recompeted. Incumbents defend with relationship knowledge and switching-cost fear; challengers attack with fresh pricing, new capability, and the buyer's accumulated frustrations — both positions demand distinct proposal strategies.
ITT (Invitation to Tender)
An Invitation to Tender is a formal notice — standard in UK, EU, and Commonwealth public procurement — inviting suppliers to submit sealed, compliant bids against a precisely specified scope. Evaluation is criteria-weighted and strict, with far less negotiation than a typical RFP process.
Knowledge base (proposal)
A proposal knowledge base is the maintained corpus of company truth — capabilities, policies, past performance, technical documentation — from which responses are built. In AI-assisted response platforms it is the grounding source: answers are generated from it and cited against it.
NAICS code
NAICS (North American Industry Classification System) codes classify businesses by industry — six digits, e.g., 561720 for janitorial services. US federal solicitations carry a NAICS code that determines the applicable small-business size standard and who may bid set-asides.
Past performance
Past performance is the evaluated record of how a vendor executed similar prior contracts — scope, scale, outcomes, and reference verification. In federal and formal procurement it is often a standalone scored volume, and 'similar' is defined by the solicitation, not the vendor.
PQQ (Pre-Qualification Questionnaire)
A PQQ screens suppliers before they may bid: financial standing, experience, references, insurance, and compliance are scored to build a shortlist. Passing the PQQ earns the right to receive the tender itself — completeness and evidence quality decide who gets to compete.
Prime contractor
The prime contractor holds the contract directly with the buyer and bears full responsibility for performance — including every subcontractor's share. The prime signs the proposal, fronts the compliance burden, and owns the customer relationship.
Proposal manager
A proposal manager owns the response process for a pursuit: the compliance breakdown, schedule, writing assignments, reviews, and production. Distinct from the capture manager (pre-RFP strategy) and SMEs (content), they are accountable for a compliant, scored, on-time submission.
Question extraction
Question extraction is the process of pulling every requirement, question, and mandatory instruction out of a solicitation — including those embedded in tables, appendices, and attachments — into a structured, answerable list that nothing escapes.
RFI (Request for Information)
An RFI is an exploratory procurement document used to survey the market before a formal solicitation: which vendors exist, what solutions are possible, and roughly what they cost. It gathers information and shortlists candidates; it rarely commits either side.
RFP (Request for Proposal)
An RFP is a formal document organizations issue to solicit competitive proposals for a project or service. It defines requirements, evaluation criteria, and deadlines; vendors respond with how they would deliver the work and at what price.
RFQ (Request for Quotation)
An RFQ is a procurement document asking vendors to quote prices for precisely specified goods or services. Unlike an RFP, the solution is already defined — the buyer compares price, availability, and terms rather than approaches, and award usually goes to the lowest responsive quote.
SAM.gov
SAM.gov (System for Award Management) is the US federal government's registration and opportunity portal: companies must register there to be awarded federal contracts, and its Contract Opportunities section publishes solicitations, sources-sought notices, and awards.
Security questionnaire
A security questionnaire is a buyer's structured assessment of a vendor's security posture — controls, policies, certifications, incident history — sent during procurement or vendor review. Standardized forms (SIG, CAIQ) and bespoke spreadsheets alike, they recur relentlessly.
Set-aside
A set-aside restricts a government competition to a class of businesses — small businesses generally, or specific programs like 8(a), HUBZone, women-owned, or service-disabled-veteran-owned firms — reserving the award for eligible bidders only.
Shipley method
The Shipley method is the proposal industry's dominant formal methodology: a phased business-development lifecycle from market segmentation through capture planning, proposal development, and post-submission, with defined gates, color team reviews, and customer-focused writing standards.
SME (Subject Matter Expert)
In proposal work, SMEs are the practitioners — engineers, clinicians, operators, security officers — whose knowledge the response needs. They are chronically over-requested and time-poor, so extracting their expertise efficiently is a core proposal-management discipline.
Sources sought
A sources-sought notice is pre-solicitation market research: an agency asks who could perform anticipated work, often to decide whether small-business set-aside conditions exist. Responding shapes acquisition strategy and puts you on the buyer's radar before the RFP is written.
SOW (Statement of Work)
A Statement of Work is the contract document that defines what will actually be delivered: scope, tasks, deliverables, schedule, acceptance criteria, and responsibilities. In procurement, the buyer's SOW inside a solicitation becomes the baseline your proposal must respond to line by line.
Subcontractor
A subcontractor performs part of a contract under the prime contractor rather than the buyer directly. In proposals, subs contribute their sections and credentials to the prime's response; post-award, their obligations flow from the subcontract, not the buyer's contract.
Teaming agreement
A teaming agreement is a pre-award contract between companies pursuing an opportunity together — typically a prime and subcontractors — defining workshare, exclusivity, proposal responsibilities, and the intended subcontract if the team wins.
Technical volume
The technical volume is the section of a structured proposal containing the substantive response — approach, methodology, staffing, management plan — evaluated separately from price. Formal solicitations often require it as a physically separate document with its own page limits.
Tender
A tender is a formal, sealed offer to perform work or supply goods at a stated price, submitted in response to an invitation to tender. 'Tendering' names the whole competitive process — common in public procurement across the UK, EU, and Commonwealth markets.
Win rate
Win rate is the percentage of pursued opportunities a team wins, measured by count or by contract value. It is the response function's headline metric — but only interpretable alongside pursuit selectivity, since bidding everything reliably buys a low one.
Win theme
A win theme is a short, evidence-backed message repeated throughout a proposal that connects your differentiators to the customer's priorities — the two or three reasons this buyer should pick you, stated in their terms and reinforced in every scored section.
Stop defining — start generating
BidAuthor extracts every requirement from a solicitation and drafts cited answers from your knowledge base. The vocabulary above becomes buttons.