Why do they arrive together?
Because agencies refresh on a calendar, and because your inbox is the same inbox. Fifteen RFPs is not fifteen strategies. It is one week with fifteen close dates. The firms that write all fifteen recycle last quarter’s proposal and miss the clause that changed. That is the treadmill on the sector page.
Triage is the gate, run fast. Not a war room that starts fifteen templates.
How do you triage in week one?
List them. For each: mandatories held today, whether the category is one you have named as core, whether the refresh is a price-only down-select against incumbents, whether you can staff the expected call-offs. Anything that fails a hard gate is a no that afternoon. Do not save it for Friday because the pile is emotional.
Then score the rest on the three axes, twenty minutes each, one at a time. If the slot needs a day, you are already bidding. Several should die. That is the system working.
What gets a yes in a pile?
The ones where the seat is a channel to work you would take, the mandatories are held, the roster can absorb the call-offs, and the deed is one you can carry. Not the ones where a competitor is also refreshing. Not the ones you have always been on. Habit is a fake criterion.
If two yeses consume the same principals, you do not have two yeses. You have a capacity fail wearing a second ATM ID. Pick. Write the no. See when a refresh is unwinnable for the ones that look like yeses and are not.
What about the ones already on?
Being on is not a standing yes. Some refreshes are designed so incumbents re-apply and a few drop. Read the weights. If you cannot win and the call-offs you actually want will survive a drop, declining can be the call. If dropping loses the only channel you have named, that is strategy, scored honestly, not panic.
A written decline still matters on some deeds. Silence can be a drop you did not mean. Read the clause. Then decide in week one.