The best-looking proposal is often the least revealing.

A polished deck tells you how well a CRO sells.  It doesn't tell you how that CRO will behave halfway through the projected timeline, when enrollment is 40% behind forecast, sites have stopped enrolling, and your data manager just flagged a query backlog you can't explain to your board.

The signals are already there. They're in the language the CRO uses.

Here are three I look for…