Top Weaknesses Driving Low Proposal Rating and Mitigation Measures

In 2025, Shipley formally reviewed and analyzed hundreds of competitive proposals across agencies, incorporating formal evaluations, agency debriefs, GAO decisions, and direct client feedback. Viewed collectively, this data revealed consistent, repeatable patterns in how evaluators documented weaknesses, justified ratings, and supported award decisions.

Across this dataset, the same proposal deficiencies surfaced repeatedly regardless of agency, customer, or solution strength. Proposals with strong technical approaches still received lower ratings when content failed to align clearly to Section L and Section M requirements or when claims could not be substantiated with data and documentation sufficient to support evaluator findings. In many cases, these weaknesses drove lower subfactor ratings, non-selection, and evaluation records that could not withstand protest.

In this webinar, Shipley’s SVP of Professional Services, Nia Mahallati, will walk through these recurring weaknesses and the specific, pre-submittal processes and tools teams used to eliminate them before submission, including:

Section L/M traceability processes and supporting tools
Evaluation-aligned color team review criteria and scoring methods
Documentation and data-quantification practices that support defensible source-selection decisions

Who Should Attend: Executives, technical leads and SMEs, capture and BD professionals, proposal managers, volume leads, writers, pricing, contracts, and compliance professionals.