Blog · Tag
win-loss.
15 posts in this archive.
Win-loss, Part 5 of 5: the eighteen-month view
Eighteen months of running a win-loss program for ourselves. What we'd change if we started over today, what we wouldn't, and the one investment that compounded more than we expected.
Win-loss, Part 4 of 5: closing the KB feedback loop
How a debrief finding becomes a block edit that ships into the next bid. The review cadence that makes it stick. The specific anti-patterns that break the loop.
Win-loss, Part 3 of 5: the five anti-patterns
Lessons logged and never applied. Themes that don't match answered questions. Five failure modes I see when a win-loss program looks healthy from the outside but isn't moving the win rate.
Win-loss, Part 2 of 5: debrief rituals that actually run
A 30-minute debrief format with four questions and one DRI. Why quarterly debriefs fail, why per-bid debriefs work, and the calendar discipline that keeps the practice alive past month four.
Linking debrief notes to the specific answer blocks that failed
How every debrief comment becomes a KB-block edit suggestion. The two-pass linker that walks from a free-text comment to the exact block that sourced the failed answer, with the SQL and the heuristics.
The 'we lost on price' excuse, decoded
What 'we lost on price' actually masks. An opinion piece, with evidence from the GAO debrief corpus and the patterns I've watched in our own win-loss data.
What 120 public debrief transcripts tell us about why bids lose
We read 120 public debrief and protest decisions — federal GAO and state equivalents — and coded the stated reasons for losses. Four patterns repeat. Three things surprised us.
Shipped: the win-loss dashboard with debrief capture
We shipped the win-loss dashboard last week. It's the feature behind this month's series. Debrief capture, theme clustering, and KB write-back, all wired to the schema.
Clustering win themes across 200 past bids
How we cluster win-theme assertions across a corpus of past proposals to surface repeat themes, where the signal is real, and where the clustering is just noise dressed as insight.
Win-loss intelligence, Part 1 of 5: what to capture and when
The 18 fields we capture on every bid, why each one matters, and why most teams skip twelve of them. Part 1 of a five-part series on running win-loss as a habit, not a quarterly ritual.
The win-loss database schema, explained
The five tables behind PursuitAgent's win-loss intelligence feature: proposal, theme, outcome, debrief, and the join back to the RFP block that sourced the claim. With the SQL.
Win-loss intelligence starts on day one
Most teams collect the wrong signals after a bid, and the wrong signals compound. An opinion piece on what to capture from the moment the RFP lands, not the day after the award email.
In preview: the post-mortem pipeline at submit close
The moment a proposal marks won or lost, PursuitAgent opens a structured post-mortem against the captured pair. In preview while the post-mortem template, reflection, and write-back loop mature toward general availability.
Shipped: answer-block tagging for win/loss cross-reference
A small change with a downstream payoff. Every answer block now carries tags for buyer, sector, theme, and outcome — wiring the foundation for the win/loss cross-reference work next month.
Shipped: win/loss pair capture at submit time
When a proposal hits submit, PursuitAgent now captures the response, the disposition, and the structured post-mortem inputs into a single record. The first piece of the win/loss intelligence loop is in production.
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.