The Intelligence Crisis: Why Your Gate Reviews Are Fiction

Your must-win proposal just lost. The internal debrief was brutal: “We thought we understood their priorities, but how did we miss that they’ve shifted their acquisition strategy?”

Sound familiar?

Your teams have the best technical training money can buy. They’re certified on the latest software platforms and ready to tackle complex customer requirements. But here’s the thing nobody wants to talk about: while you’re training your people on everything that matters, you’re probably not training them on the one thing that matters most for growth, which is how to engage with customers.

This shows up clearly in your gate reviews, where assumptions are often presented as facts. The problem isn’t intelligence—it’s Human Intelligence Quotient (HI-Q). Your people lack the skills to validate what they think they know through strategic customer engagement.

The Gate Review That Fooled Everyone

Probability of Win: 85%

The confidence in the room was palpable. Sarah, your star hire with 15 years at the target agency, laid out the intelligence: “The KO always prioritizes cost. They’ll never risk going with a small business on something this critical. We need to undercut them by 8%.”

Executive nods all around. Green light to proceed.

Four months later, a small business wins. Not on price, but because they understand that new leadership had mandated vendor diversification. Sarah’s “intelligence” was three-year-old institutional memory presented as current fact.

The real problem: Your gate reviews are built on Human Intelligence Quotient (HI-Q) failures. People who can’t distinguish between what they assume and what they actually know.

The HI-Q Skills Your Teams Are Missing

Low HI-Q: “Based on my experience, they always…” High HI-Q: “When I asked them last week, they specifically said…”

Low HI-Q: “I’m confident they’ll prioritize technical capability.” High HI-Q: “They told me their biggest concern is implementation risk, not technical specs.”

Low HI-Q: “Trust me, they’ll never go with a small business.” High HI-Q: “The new director mentioned they prefer a diversified contractor base.”

The difference? High HI-Q professionals validate assumptions through strategic customer engagement. Low HI-Q professionals present assumptions as intelligence.

The Former Fed Problem

Your best former government employees often have the lowest HI-Q scores when it comes to customer engagement.

Classic HI-Q failure: During a technical discussion, the customer mentions budget constraints. Your former fed nods sympathetically—they’ve been there. They don’t probe deeper because they feel they understand the situation.

Meanwhile, a competitor’s team member with a higher HI-Q asks three follow-up questions and discovers the real issue: they’re not budget-constrained, but rather timeline-constrained due to a congressional mandate.

• Your gate review: “Budget is their primary concern.”
• Competitor’s gate review: “Timeline pressure from congressional mandate is driving all decisions.”

The HI-Q difference: One team assumed. The other engaged, listened, and validated.

Gate Review Red Flags: Low HI-Q in Action

Red Flag 1: Certainty Without Recent Contact “I know how they think—they always prioritize cost over innovation.” HI-Q gap: When did you last validate this assumption?

Red Flag 2: Relationship Overconfidence “We have great relationships there—this should be straightforward.” HI-Q gap: Have you confirmed your contacts are still champions?

Red Flag 3: Process Assumptions “The KO makes these decisions—we don’t need to worry about the technical lead.” HI-Q gap: Has the decision-making process changed?

Red Flag 4: Competitive Blind Spots “They’ll never go with them because of what happened last time.” HI-Q gap: Are you sure current leadership knows about “last time”?

What Better Gate Reviews Look Like

• Low HI-Q presentation: “I’m confident they’ll select us because I know how they operate.”
• High HI-Q presentation: “Last Tuesday, the technical lead said their biggest concern is implementation risk. When I asked about their previous vendor experiences, they mentioned two failed implementations that created political problems. The CTO confirmed that proven track record now weighs more heavily than technical capability in their evaluation matrix.”

The HI-Q difference: Specific, recent, validated intelligence versus institutional assumptions.

The HI-Q Skills That Change Everything

Strategic Questioning

• High HI-Q: “What’s changed in your decision-making process since the reorganization?”
• Low HI-Q: Assumes the process hasn’t changed

Validation Discipline

• High HI-Q: “Let me make sure I understand—you’re saying timeline is more critical than budget?”
• Low HI-Q: Makes assumptions based on past patterns

Trust-Building Before Intelligence-Gathering

• High HI-Q: Creates environments where customers reveal real concerns
• Low HI-Q: Stays in technical lanes to avoid seeming “salesy”

Comfortable with Strategic Silence

• High HI-Q: Allows pauses for customers to think and reveal insights
• Low HI-Q: Fills silence with technical explanations

The Competitor Reality

While you’re building partnerships and training teams on new software platforms, your competitors are developing higher HI-Q skills.

Real scenario: During a routine technical meeting, a competitor’s engineer with high HI-Q asks, “What’s been bothering you lately?” The customer reveals a political pressure point that changes everything. Your technically superior team loses because they never asked the question.

• Your gate review: “Technical capability is their primary concern.”
• Competitor’s gate review: “Political pressure is driving vendor selection.”

The Growth Leader’s Reality

Your technical capabilities get you invited to compete. Your partnerships prove you’re serious. Your experienced hires provide credibility.

But your people’s Human Intelligence Quotient. Their ability to distinguish between what they think they know and what’s true today—that’s what separates winners from losers.

The question isn’t whether your teams are technically competent. The question is whether they have the HI-Q skills to gather the intelligence needed to win.

Because in a market where everything just changed, yesterday’s assumptions are tomorrow’s loss reviews.

Summary

The Vision: Gate reviews where every statement is backed by recent customer engagement. Where assumptions are flagged as assumptions. Where confidence levels reflect the quality of intelligence, not historical relationships.

The Reality: Most gate reviews are low HI-Q presentations masquerading as intelligence assessments.

Are your gate reviews built on high HI-Q customer engagement or low HI-Q assumptions? Are you measuring your team’s ability to gather and validate intelligence or just their confidence levels?