You can't blame a solution consultant for losing an RFP they never had the power to win. Tom Josephson, Director of Solution Consulting at Braze, joins Christina Carter to explain how he runs enterprise RFP responses without a dedicated bid team, and why the way most leaders measure this work falls apart under scrutiny.

Tom has managed solution consulting teams that own RFPs end to end and teams that work alongside proposal specialists. He breaks down how to decide which RFPs deserve effort, how to get SCs to own the work, and how AI changed the job from writing answers to editing them.

✹ Why the SC who fills out the RFP should own the deal it becomes

✹ How relationship depth and influence over the document decide priority

✹ Why win rate is the only fair KPI, and losses can't be pinned on the responder

✹ How evaluators score with a checklist, and how to respond and demo to it

If you lead SCs, sales engineers, or a proposal team that leans on SMEs, this one gives you a sharper way to run and measure RFP work

✨ Links & Resources

✹ Tom Josephson on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tom-josephson/

✹ Braze: https://www.braze.com

✹ 2026 Proposal and Bid Software Report: https://stargazy.io/offers/2026-proposal-and-bid-software-report

✹ Join the Stargazy community: https://stargazy.circle.so/join

✹ Subscribe to The Stargazy Brief for weekly conversations on how teams win RFPs

Christina Carter talks with Philip De-Bodene, a federal and SLED proposal consultant behind more than $8 billion in pursuits and a 65% win rate on priority bids. They get specific about how evaluators actually score a submission, and what that means for the way you build every response. Philip walks through his shred, the outline that maps requirements to scoring, run-in headings that earn Strengths, and where teams quietly bleed points on self-scoring vehicles.

• ✹ Read Sections L, M, and C before writing a word. Often only 30 of 150 requirements matter.
• ✹ Clear the gates in order: compliant, then responsive, then compelling.
• ✹ Shred the solicitation into an outline that ties each requirement to how it will be scored.
• ✹ Use run-in headings that echo the evaluation language so an evaluator can score you fast.
  

If you write proposals or run bid teams in government contracting, this episode hands you a method you can apply to your next solicitation.

• ✹ Philip De-Bodene on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/pdebodene/
• ✹ The PDS: https://www.thepds.com
• ✹ Stargazy proposal software market report, updated monthly and unbiased: https://stargazy.io/offers/2026-proposal-and-bid-software-report

Winning bids are decided before the RFP arrives, and again by whether the buyer trusts you enough to call you back.

Chris Carter sits down with Simon Cuthbert, founder of Arthurian Labs (Bid Manager Pro), a sales leader turned cybersecurity advisor who speaks at InfoSec and advises across Parliament on cyber. They work through the full pursuit: shaping the opportunity before the document drops, mapping buyers by role, priorities and relationship, qualifying (and re-qualifying) with discipline, and building the bid story before anyone writes a word. Then Simon turns to the risk most teams ignore: what happens to your IP when you paste a live bid into a public AI model.

• ✹ Why the pre-RFP window is a strategy phase, not a preparation phase
• ✹ The two qualification traps that quietly kill win rates: revenue optimism and sunk-cost thinking
• ✹ Where AI belongs in a proposal, and where only a human can win the work
• ✹ The security questions to ask any AI vendor before you upload your data

If you run bids, write proposals, or own a revenue number, you will leave with a sharper way to decide what to chase and what to walk away from.

• ✹ Simon Cuthbert on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/simoncuthbert/
• ✹ Arthurian Labs (Bid Manager Pro): https://stargazy.short.gy/DC8HtH
• ✹ The Stargazy Brief and Stargazy community: https://www.stargazy.io
• ✹ Bid qualification survey referenced in the episode: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSckMSbM-sOc8ACa9cSU8jb5DDmZVbHS09A2zGz2O-fvMCgIog/viewform?usp=sharing&ouid=107704204777263607772