WINtel™: The Customer Intel that Actually Wins

Every proposal team on earth has the RFP. So do your four competitors. Same Section L. Same Section M. Same 47 pages of requirements.

If the RFP is all you’ve got, you’re writing the same proposal as everyone else… just with your logo on it.

What wins is everything the RFP doesn’t tell you. What keeps the program manager up at night. Why the last contract went sideways. What the customer actually thinks of the incumbent when nobody’s taking notes.

That’s real customer intel… we call it WINtel. And most teams walk into kickoff with almost none of it.

What counts as WINtel

Quick gut check. If your competitors can download it, it’s homework. Do the homework… the agency strategic plan, the budget docs, the IG reports, the incumbent’s contract. But that’s the baseline everyone shares.

WINtel is what you only get by showing up.

The real hot buttons. The RFP says “ensure continuity of operations.” WINtel tells you the last transition took nine months and the program manager got chewed out for it. Now you know what “continuity” actually means to this buyer.

The incumbent’s soft spots. Where they’re slipping. Which key personnel left. What the customer complains about over coffee. That’s how you ghost a competitor without ever naming them.

The decision-makers. Who owns the program, who shapes the requirement, and what each of them cares about. A program manager and a contracting officer want very different things from the same contract.

The customer’s words. The phrases they use when they describe the problem. Mirror their language and your proposal sounds like it was written by someone who’s been in the room… because it was.

What nobody wrote down. The workaround the field team built because the system never worked. The pilot that got killed. The budget fight that’s shaping this requirement.

If it’s in the RFP, everyone has it. If it’s WINtel, only you do.

Where WINtel comes from

One rule first. WINtel has an expiration date.

Once the RFP drops, the cone of silence comes down. No more conversations. You submit formal written questions to the contracting officer, and the answers get posted publicly for every bidder to see. So the good stuff happens months earlier... or it doesn’t happen at all. That’s capture’s job, and it’s why we put Position before Propose in the Summit Win System™.

Here’s where the best teams find WINtel.

Customer conversations before the solicitation. Meetings, industry days, one-on-ones. Go to listen. Ask what’s hard about their mission right now, then shut up and take notes.

Your own people. The project manager already working at that installation. The engineer who’s been on site for three years. Plenty of SMEs are seller-doers who position the next job while they deliver this one… and they’re sitting on WINtel nobody ever asked them for.

Your teaming partners. They have relationships you don’t. Build intel sharing into the teaming agreement from day one.

Every debrief, win or lose. Ask what the evaluators saw as your strengths and weaknesses. Write it down. Share it. Most teams file debriefs in a folder nobody opens again.

Your RFI and sources sought responses. What the customer asks about tells you what’s keeping them up at night. Read the questions as closely as you write the answers.

Capture finds WINtel. Proposals cash it in.

Afraid to talk to your customer?

Here’s what I see over and over. Teams skip the customer conversation entirely… then wonder why their proposal sounds like everyone else’s.

And I hear the same reasons every time.

“I don’t want to be salesy.” Good. Don’t be. Show up with a point of view on their problem, ask about their mission, and listen way more than you talk. Customers remember the vendor who taught them something.

“I don’t want to waste their time.” Then don’t. Twenty minutes. A clear reason for the meeting. One useful insight they didn’t have before. That’s a meeting they’ll take again.

“I’m not even sure it’s allowed.” It is. The FAR encourages it. FAR 15.201 says exchanges with all interested parties are encouraged from the earliest identification of a requirement through receipt of proposals… as long as they stay within procurement integrity rules.

“I don’t know what to ask.” Start here. What’s the hardest part of your mission right now? What would success look like a year into this contract? What didn’t work last time? Then stop talking.

“That’s BD’s job.” Sometimes. But the government’s own myth-busting guidance tells vendors to bring their technical experts to agency meetings. Your SMEs, especially the seller-doers, might be your best capture asset.

The scariest customer conversation is the one your competitor already had.

“But isn’t that unfair?”

Fair question. Some of the smartest people I know push back on this one.

The argument goes something like this. Relationships create gatekeeping. Agencies have to justify awards on the technical response and price. Sometimes the incumbent loses anyway. And if 12 meetings happen with only one vendor in the room, the buy is wired.

I agree with more of that than you’d think.

A procurement built around one vendor is a real problem. Nobody should be cheering for that.

But the fix for a closed room is more vendors in it. Industry days, RFI responses, capability briefings, small business office meetings… those doors are open to everyone. The teams that walk through them get WINtel. The teams that stay home get the RFP.

And yes, awards get justified on the technical response and price. That’s exactly the point. Evaluators can’t score a handshake. They score a proposal that nails what the customer actually needs… and you write that proposal a lot better when you’ve heard it straight from them.

Can you win a cold RFP? Sure. It happens. WINtel just means you’re not counting on luck.

Evaluators score understanding. Go get some.

How WINtel turns into a win

Here’s the catch. Evaluators can only score what’s on the page.

WINtel that lives in your capture lead’s head scores zero. It has to make the trip from the hallway to the proposal. Here’s how it gets there.

It shapes the solution. You know the last transition took nine months? Your transition plan gets a 30-day retention push, named key personnel on day one, and a risk register built around exactly what went wrong last time.

It sharpens the win themes. Generic theme: “low-risk transition.” WINtel theme: “Your mission keeps running from day one, with the people who already know your systems.” One of those sounds like everyone. The other sounds like you were listening.

It turns features into benefits. WINtel tells you which benefits this customer actually cares about. Then you attach the proof that makes them believe it.

It ghosts the competition. You know where the incumbent is struggling, so you address that exact pain… without ever saying their name (don’t make it weird, okay?!).

It gives your team its brain back. When the proposal team walks into kickoff with real WINtel, nobody’s guessing. The outline makes sense. Writers know what to say. And that’s when proposals actually get fun.

WINtel only counts if it makes it onto the page.

You can’t prompt your way to WINtel

AI can shred an RFP in minutes. It can build your compliance matrix, summarize the agency’s strategic plan, and draft boilerplate faster than any of us.

What it can’t do is sit across the table from a program manager.

It didn’t hear the sigh when someone mentioned the last transition. It doesn’t know the incumbent lost two key people in August. It has no idea your site lead has been fixing the customer’s workaround for three years.

Everyone has the same AI tools now. Everyone has the same RFP. So the gap between the firms that win and the firms that “hit the ground running” in 50 identical pages keeps getting wider… and WINtel is what’s sitting in that gap.

Everyone has the tools. Only some teams have the WINtel.

Go get it

Here’s my challenge for your next pursuit. Before kickoff, write down three things you know about this customer that aren’t in the RFP.

Can’t name three? That’s your answer… and maybe a go/no-go conversation worth having before you write a single page.

Can name ten? Congratulations… your team is about to have a lot more fun.