Go/No-Go Decisions for Services Proposals: A Scoring Checklist

A go/no-go decision is the call a services firm makes before writing a proposal: pursue the work or decline it. Score each pursuit on six groups (relationship, fit, competition, capacity, terms and strategic value), check deal-breaker vetoes first, and record the score and the reason on the deal, whether the answer is yes or no.

What is a go/no-go decision in a services proposal?

It is the point, before proposal writing starts, where someone with authority decides whether a request for proposal or a referred lead is worth the firm’s senior hours. Every RFP costs roughly the same to write badly and to write well, so the decision is really about which requests get that time at all.

Forrester’s State of Business Buying, 2024 research, based on a survey of more than 16,000 business buyers worldwide, found that a typical purchase now involves 13 people in the buying organization, and that 91% of purchases stall at some point. A pursuit that stalls after the proposal is written costs a firm the same senior hours as one that closes. The go/no-go call is what keeps a firm from discovering that the hard way, a dozen times a quarter.

Why do firms end up deciding go/no-go in a hallway?

Because it feels faster. A partner reads the RFP, says “let’s go for it” between meetings, and writing starts. Nobody wrote down why, so nobody can check later whether that instinct is any good. Two problems follow from that.

First, the decision cannot be reviewed. If the firm loses eight of its next ten pursuits, nobody can say whether the losses came from weak proposals or from chasing the wrong RFPs in the first place, because the reasoning behind each “let’s go for it” was never written down.

Second, the decision cannot be delegated. A scoring checklist lets an associate or a business-development lead screen incoming requests against a standard the partners already agreed to, instead of every RFP waiting on a partner’s hallway instinct.

What six groups make up a go/no-go scoring checklist?

Score each pursuit 0 to 3 in each group, using the criteria below as a guide rather than a rigid rubric: a firm’s own experience should adjust the questions over time.

1. Relationship

An existing client or a warm referral scores higher than a cold RFP response. Ask whether a named contact has confirmed the timeline and budget, and whether the firm can reach the actual decision-maker rather than only a procurement contact.

2. Fit

Ask whether the scope matches work the firm has delivered before, in a comparable sector, and whether any specialized expertise or certification the RFP requires is in-house today rather than planned for next quarter.

3. Competition

Count the firms invited to bid. An incumbent already doing the work, or an RFP that reads as price-only with no room to differentiate on approach, both lower the score.

4. Capacity

The team that would staff this engagement needs available hours in the proposed timeline, and the proposal itself has to get written without pulling billable staff off paying client work. Ask whether the firm can actually meet the stated start date.

5. Terms

Payment terms, liability cap and insurance requirements should sit within what the firm already carries. Watch for intellectual-property or confidentiality clauses that would sign away the firm’s own methodology to win one engagement.

6. Strategic value

Some pursuits are worth chasing on a thinner score because they open a sector or geography the firm wants, lead to a larger follow-on engagement, or would let a case study be built for that market. Score this honestly and separately from fit, so it cannot quietly excuse a bad relationship or a competitive dead end.

How do you score and total the checklist?

Add the six group scores for a total out of 18, and set the pursue threshold before you see the first RFP, not after. A firm scoring a pursuit at 12 has to decide in advance whether 12 clears its bar; deciding case by case defeats the purpose of scoring at all.

Example (illustrative): a 14-person structural engineering firm in Charlotte scores a cold invitation to bid on a public-sector bridge-inspection contract.

Group	Score (0–3)	Why
Relationship	1	Cold invitation, no existing contact at the agency
Fit	3	Firm has completed six comparable bridge inspections
Competition	1	Incumbent engineer has held the contract eight years
Capacity	2	Team is available; the timeline is tight but workable
Terms	2	Standard public-sector net-45 terms, insurance within limits
Strategic value	3	Opens the state DOT prequalification list the firm wants
Total	12 / 18

A firm with its bar set at 10 would pursue this one; a firm with its bar set at 14 would not, because a weak relationship against an eight-year incumbent rarely closes on strategic value alone. Neither answer is wrong: the point of scoring in advance is that the firm commits to its own threshold instead of arguing the exception every time.

What deal-breaker vetoes override the score?

Check vetoes before scoring, not after: scoring a pursuit the firm cannot legally deliver wastes the time the checklist exists to save. Common vetoes for a services firm:

• The firm cannot meet a required insurance, bonding or licensing threshold.
• A conflict of interest exists, such as already working for a competing bidder on the same award.
• The scope requires a service line the firm does not offer at all, not one it could learn on the engagement.
• The contract terms include a liability structure the firm’s insurer will not cover.

Any one of these ends the discussion regardless of what the six groups would have totaled.

Why record the decision and the reason on every deal?

A score written on a sticky note answers today’s question and nothing else. Written on the deal record, the same score answers a second one a quarter later: did the checklist actually predict which pursuits were worth the hours? That comparison only works if every decision, win or no-go, is recorded the same way, with the score and the reason attached rather than just the outcome.

İntaç İnşaat’s Senitix pipeline, built for an engineering firm’s fee proposals, includes exactly this as a stage: “Go or no-go” records the decision, who made it and when, before scope work or a fee proposal starts.

What should happen after a no-go?

Close the deal as a no-go with the score and the reason recorded, so it counts in the quarterly comparison instead of vanishing. Those reasons are worth reading alongside your closed-lost reasons: together they show which requests the firm keeps declining and which it keeps losing.

What mistakes weaken a go/no-go process?

• Scoring after the proposal is half-written, so sunk cost pulls every group toward a higher number.
• Skipping the veto list, so a low relationship score quietly overrides a real insurance or licensing blocker instead of the other way around.
• Deciding out loud in a meeting with nobody assigned to write the score and the reason down afterward.
• Using one fixed threshold for a five-figure engagement and a multi-year contract, when the hours at risk are not the same size.

How does Senitix CRM support a go/no-go process?

Every RFP or referred lead becomes a deal moving through your own pipeline stages, and a professional services team can set up a go/no-go stage the whole firm reads the same way: guidance text plus up to five key fields the partners agreed on, such as the total score, the deciding partner and the date, shown on the card. It is guidance the team follows, never a rule the product enforces: the decision itself still belongs to a person.

A custom field for each of the six group scores can be added directly on the deal, so a reviewer sees the breakdown, not just the total. The completed checklist can be attached as a file on the deal, or kept with folder and version history in the Documents module. Once decisions carry a score, a report grouping closed deals by outcome (won, lost, or closed as no-go) against their original score band shows whether the checklist is actually predicting anything.

To read that report correctly, use consistent rules for what counts as won or lost: our guide to calculating win rate covers which deals belong in the count and how to compare count versus dollar results, the same rules that make a win-rate-by-score comparison fair. Plan details are on the pricing page.

Frequently asked questions

What is a good go/no-go score to pursue a proposal?

There is no universal number, because the eighteen-point scale only means what your firm decides it means. Set the threshold from your own win-rate-by-score history once you have a few quarters of data, and expect it to sit higher for a large, multi-year engagement than for a small, low-risk one.

Who should participate in a go/no-go decision?

At minimum, someone who can speak to capacity, such as a delivery lead, and someone who can speak to the relationship and terms, such as the partner who received the RFP. A decision made by one person alone tends to score relationship and strategic value too generously, since that person made the initial contact.

How is a go/no-go decision different from lead qualification?

Lead qualification (see lead qualification frameworks) asks whether a prospect is a real buyer with budget and authority. A go/no-go decision comes after that, and asks a narrower question: given a real, qualified deal, should this specific firm commit senior hours to writing this specific proposal, against this specific competition, right now.

Should go/no-go apply to contract renewals, not just new proposals?

Yes, on a lighter version. A renewal still consumes proposal-writing hours and still has terms and competition to weigh, even with an existing relationship. Score it on the same six groups, but expect relationship and fit to carry more weight than they would on a cold RFP.