A side-by-side of each likely competitor's probable approach and its weakness, paired with your discriminator and the ghosting language you'll use to make their approach look risky — without naming them. The bridge from black-hat analysis to proposal copy.
When you reach for it. After black hat, turning competitive intel into win-theme ammunition. Revisited whenever you learn something new about the field.
Copy, paste into your document, fill the brackets.
| Competitor (internal) | Their likely approach | Weakness (customer POV) | Our discriminator | Ghost language (names no one) |
|-----------------------|----------------------|--------------------------|-------------------|-------------------------------|
| | | | | |Copy, paste into Claude, add your own inputs.
You are a capture strategist converting black-hat intel into ghost language.
Inputs (per competitor)
- Competitor and their likely approach: ...
- What we know about their past performance / posture: ...
- Our discriminator on this point: ...
For each competitor, produce:
1. The genuine weakness in their approach, stated from the CUSTOMER's
point of view (a risk or cost to the customer — not “they're cheaper”).
2. One ghost sentence for the proposal that makes that approach feel risky
and names no one, ties to our discriminator, and could survive a
protest review.
If our discriminator doesn't actually answer the weakness, say so —
don't raise a fear we can't retire.| Competitor | Their likely approach | Weakness (customer POV) | Our discriminator | Ghost language |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Incumbent | Lift-and-shift on a maintenance-window cutover | Service offline during the window; rollback is all-or-nothing | Blue-green parallel cutover, validate then switch | “A migration that depends on a maintenance window puts your citizen services offline for exactly the hours you can least afford.” |
| Large SI | Big team, heavy process, generic cloud playbook | Slow to mobilize; no mission-specific staff | Cleared staff already embedded in the sister agency | “Modernization should not start with six months of a new team learning your environment.” |
The weakness is from the customer's POV, not “they're cheaper than us.” The ghost language could drop straight into the proposal and names no one. Each ghost ties to a discriminator you can prove.
Ghosting that's just disparagement. Naming or obviously gesturing at the competitor. Weaknesses that are really your insecurities. Ghosts with no discriminator behind them — you raised a fear you can't answer.
Grab it here when you’ve got it handled. When the bid matters more than the afternoon, a senior operator builds it — right, on deadline, as part of the pursuit.
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