Win Your Next RFP!
Photo by Anastasia Petrova on Unsplash
The first, and often most important, step to winning an RFP is determining if you have a reasonable chance to win. In many cases, the issuer already knows the companies they want to deal with, and the RFP is nothing more than a corporate compliance measure.
Thoroughly test the viability of the RFP opportunity to ensure it makes sense for your business, and you are 100% confident you understand the opportunity.
After validating the RFP, and committing to pursue with full resource allocation, here are four preliminary steps that can make-or-break your success:
Excruciating Review - The step I like to begin with is analyzing the RFP in excruciating detail by extracting all requirements and pasting them into a spreadsheet. As monotonous as this process can be, I suggest you read the entire RFP cover-to-cover, at minimum, three times to pull out all requirements. This level of focus will also help you uncover content that may be hidden "between-the-lines" and develop an intimate familiarity with the project as a whole. If possible, have a couple of other people read through it to ensure you didn't miss anything.
Hidden Requirements - Whether purposefully or not, most RFPs will contain a number of less than obvious requirements. Sometimes it's just the nature of a 75-page technical document. Look for these "hidden requirements" buried in the foreword, summaries, headers, footers, and other more obscure parts of the RFP. I not so fondly remember a team member finding a critical requirement in the foreword during the final proofing phase of a large RFP. Not fun!
Detect Themes - Reviewing an RFP, or any document, in this much detail, reveals hidden themes and congruencies impossible to find during a preliminary read. This deeper understanding sheds light on what the RFP authors are looking for on a macro-level and helps shape your answers. It’s the same phenomenon that occurs when re-reading a book or re-watching a movie, you’ll always notice things you didn't see the first time.
Separate Deliverables - Assemble all deliverables into a spreadsheet separate from the RFP document. Removing them from the context of the formal document also reveals areas of emphasis and patterns not noticeable when analyzing the document as a whole. This requirement isolation process is especially helpful when tackling online RFPs, where it can be harder to wrap your mind around the project as a whole. The separate document also ensures nothing falls through the cracks.
The next step is to map out the RFP's overall goals and objectives. What is the RFP issuer really looking for? As an example, do they want your service, but with an emphasis on less environmental impact? Incorporate the sub-themes you found in step three to craft a response strategy aligned with the issuer's underlying goals and objectives.
To ensure nothing is missing or misinterpreted, have at least two team members from separate groups and a trusted 3rd party advisor work with you on this. I've learned the hard way that entrusting RFP deliverables to any single team is not always the best strategy.
Sales, or any group intimately familiar with the opportunity, often have preconceived notions about what the client is looking for. This can result in confirmation bias and has the potential to skew the entire submission in the wrong direction.
Tip: Ensure you note, and pay particular attention to any acronyms or repeated buzzwords which provide further insight into focus areas.
After the multi-disciplinary review, set up a meeting so each party can debrief on their respective findings and assemble a master goals and objectives document.
You will now have two invaluable documents containing all the RFP's detailed deliverables and all high-level objectives. This puts you in the best possible position to execute the RFP response process successfully.
Tackling the RFP is best done using a collaborative approach bringing in the subject matter experts on your team. If you want to win an RFP, you have to do more than your competitors and stand out. This is not the time to conserve human resources.
I used to work for a company that would deploy 15-20 percent of their 50 person staff to RFP opportunities. They would take us away to a hotel and sequester the teams to work on various parts of the RFP individually.
We spent the bulk of our time in small groups and would gather two or three times a day to collaborate and iterate. This process would continue until the RFP was completed to the entire team's satisfaction. The old saying, "two heads are better than one" applies here, and we enjoyed outstanding results, winning more RFPs than we lost.
I'm not suggesting you must go to this extreme to be successful, but be sure to use a collaborative approach and don't hesitate to bring in the right staff. It will pay-off.
As part of the process, it is advisable to task one capable team member to be the group secretary. They will create a database of all the answers and develop a centralized folder with all responses, questions, branding, diagrams, and other supporting material.
This level of organization will also speed up future RFP responses and develop a sales and marketing knowledge base. One of the many intangible benefits of completing a big RFP is grinding through the process and leveraging the output to create new sales and marketing material.
As your team works through each step, many questions will arise, and it's critical to conduct this part of the process before the RFP's question deadline has passed. Ensure everyone is on alert for areas that are unclear, missing, or generally don't make sense. Take each of these questions and structure a comprehensive list that illustrates your areas of concern.
Before submitting, vet each question as a group to ensure all questions are constructive and relevant. Submit the queries to the appropriate address on the RFP. Do not fear; questions won’t make you look weak.
On the contrary, it demonstrates your ability to communicate and thorough commitment to the best job possible. The issuer will appreciate your reaching out because others will have the same questions, and clarifications will ensure higher-quality responses.
Tip: During the RFP black-out period, there is often no better way to get noticed than differentiating yourself in the question/answer process.
Illustrations, charts, and infographics are very valuable for supporting text-based responses. Depending on the format of the RFP, these can often be included inline or as an appendix. It demonstrates you have a formalized process in place, have critically evaluated your workflow, and are familiar with project management methodologies.
If you do not have supporting material available, prepare some for the RFP. In addition, support performance claims with applicable analytics and reports and include these with your response.
It’s compelling to show you actively monitor internal quality, and develop improvement programs based on KPIs and metrics. This lends credence to all of the answers you have provided and helps mitigate one of the RFP company's most significant fears. Choosing the wrong vendor.
The RFP process is also costly for the procuring company, and teams running the program are responsible for the results. After a time consuming and expensive RFP, the procurement team can't afford to select inappropriate vendors.
Part of a solid RFP strategy involves demonstrating that you are a safe choice and present minimal risk. The old saying, "no one ever got fired for selecting IBM" often applies.
One of the best ways to mitigate perceived risk is by evaluating your current market position. Specifically, when the issuer begins analyzing your submission, what information is available to support your responses?
What you illustrate in the RFP is important. What you can demonstrate beyond the RFP is equally important. If the issuer is considering selecting you, they will most certainly conduct background research to substantiate their findings in the RFP.
Do you have pre-existing marketing collateral available online to support their research process? This is a great time to perform a marketing self-audit on your company to ensure, at a minimum, you can substantiate what you claimed in the RFP.
This is where your inbound marketing program, such as blogs, industry articles, whitepapers, and case studies, pays dividends. If the RFP evaluation team can research your responses and validate the authenticity themselves, this greatly reduces perceived risk.
When the RFP content is complete, ensure that you clean it up and assemble in the best format possible. If a free-form approach is permissible, include a table of contents and an exceptionally well-organized layout.
Avoid large blocks of text, and build in lots of whitespace, lists, and bullets. You don't want your quality content to drown in a sea of text.
In most cases, there will be multiple evaluators each with specific sections to review, and they appreciate working with companies who make the evaluation straightforward and easy.
If it is a pre-canned format, your flexibility can be greatly reduced. Sometimes there is nothing you can do, as with many of the online RFPs. However, in all cases, perform a final quality control pass.
Ensure every question is answered, character limits are respected, and double-check the answer matches the question. In large online RFPs it is very easy to mix up answers, so be extra careful.
A final check for grammar, spelling, and punctuation is always a good idea. Spellcheck and Grammarly are excellent starts but (at this time) are not a substitute for knowledgeable human review. I suggest using a third party unfamiliar with the RFP.
Experience has shown unfamiliar parties will often pick up on details and inconsistencies those familiar with the project will miss.
After you are sure the RFP is complete, accurate, and formatted in the most functional manner possible, the final piece of the puzzle is the delivery. Try to submit the RFP at least two business days before the deadline.
If possible, choose a socially engaging team member to hand-deliver it. They just may get the opportunity to create a relationship with a member of the RFP team. At the least, your RFP will be one of the first ones evaluated while they are still fresh and eager to dig into the process.
There is no question committing to an RFP is a big decision and should never be taken lightly. People talk, and the quality of your RFP response directly reflects on the state of your business. No response is better than a weak or half-hearted one.
I hope this overview helps you out. Pay particular attention to the preliminary steps; your diligence here will drive the rest of the process.
As you are working your way through the questions, track if you have marketing material available to support your answers. If not, get your sales or marketing team on the task right away. This will help eliminate gaps at the end.
Sometimes the RFP process really is an exercise in weeding out the weaker vendors. Having material available for them to review and validate goes a long way to ensure you aren’t one of the weeds that get pulled.
After all, getting through the first stage is the primary objective. Staying in the process and making it through the first round of cuts is statistically the most challenging part of the process.
I hope some of these suggestions will help, and you avoid the pitfalls I learned the hard way.
If you think this overview could benefit someone, please feel free to share. If you have any comments or questions, please do not hesitate to reach out.
Thanks for reading, and best of luck on your RFP!