Why RFP Responses Don’t Win as Often as they Should

Why RFP Responses don't Win As Often as they Should

RFPs are time-consuming, burdensome, and expensive. Absent an existing client relationship, win rates are notoriously low. And unless you have a dedicated writing and design team to respond to requests, they are exceptionally difficult to put together well in the tight timeframes allowed.

The only way to be confident you’re maximizing their potential is to firstly define what makes an RFP response excellent. This requires defined processes, quality measures, and clear benchmarks to avoid ad hoc, inconsistent, and ineffectual submissions.

No method is madness

Throughout my 25 year career I have written hundreds of responses to corporations, law firms, and government entities. As a freelance writer I have written and designed dozens more on behalf of clients that wanted to “up their game.”

What I found is that most companies approach RFPs in an ad hoc fashion, struggle to get answers from their various SMEs in a timely manner, rely on outdated (read wrong) information from old responses, and typically lack the writing and document design skills needed to create the kind of RFP that delivers winning potential. Let alone craft responses that stand up to higher resourced and more sophisticated competitors.

What I discovered

  • No real analysis of the RFP, client research, or integration of any sales or pre-sales insights
  • Little if any relationship to the structure or criteria of the RFP
  • Factual inconsistencies and errors regarding product and service specifications (thanks largely to cut and paste from old responses)
  • No defined processes
  • No defined roles and responsibilities (RACI)
  • No single source of truth
  • No consistency between responses
  • No agreed document formatting and design elements
  • No adherence to brand guidelines
  • No compelling focus or narrative, and
  • Writing stuffed with marketing fluff and stale templated language

Virtually no expectations or demands at all. Other than getting it done on time and finger crossing. Yes, sometimes they succeed (for any number of reasons) but not nearly often enough. The cost of losing an RFP – not because of price or a competitor’s better fit, but rather a perceived incompetence – is exponentially higher than the value of that single deal.

These issues plague small, midsized, and large companies alike. Namely, RFP chaos. Not a winning formula.

Improving RFP response outcomes.

While establishing processes, defined roles and responsibilities, and content libraries (single source of truth) is a longer-term project, it is possible to immediately improve RFP responses if you routinely follow these suggested steps and quality considerations.

3 things to do before you write:

  1. Document learnings and insights (objective and subjective) from any presales/consulting activities with the client. This will provide further context and direction beyond what can be gleaned from the RFP alone.
  2. Perform client research. Understand their mission, corporate values, and how they approach their clients’ challenges. Look for opportunities to demonstrate commonalities in your approach and alignment of values. If needed, also perform relevant industry research.
  3. Carefully and thoroughly review the RFP. Highlight critical issues, key requirements, specifications and capabilities, and the outcomes the prospective client seeks. Create a checklist for review to help ensure that each is thoroughly and properly addressed.

Whether the RFP response is a document, a spreadsheet, or an online submission (government or business), this work is crucial and demonstrates that you have been thoughtful, careful, and considered in your approach: that you are speaking directly to the client and their specific needs: not just recycling canned responses.

8 Quality criteria to guide your response

  1. The RFP response structure should aid in ease of readability and readily track to the RFP’s structure. It should provide the varied stakeholders with a roadmap and context that directly maps to the RFP sections and requirements.
  2. Responses should directly address each performance and other criteria specifically and completely with as much (or as little) wordsmithing as required. (It is nearly axiomatic that the longer the response to a simple question, the bigger the BS.)
  3. When evaluation criteria are provided, responses should directly relate to these criteria. Consider separately listing and delineating how you meet each one – even if you have addressed them throughout your response. This level of restatement works well and aids the client in their submission review and ranking exercises.
  4. The response to each question – including workflows and other graphic elements – should clearly tie back to the client’s desired outcomes. Answers should go beyond what you do to relate why and how you do it to achieve the outcomes the client seeks more effectively than competitors.
  5. As much as possible, each answer should persuasively communicate experience, expertise, and authority. Your unique competitive differentiators and how they translate into advantages for your client: whether in terms of value, performance, risk mitigation, business impact..
  6. Responses, when applicable, should take into account the varied perspectives of the multiple stakeholders evaluating the response.
  7. If you have information that you think is important and supportive of your value proposition but hasn’t been explicitly asked for, consider adding it to an “additional information” appendix with in-text references to it where applicable.
  8. The executive summary is the last thing that should be written. This is not the place for packaged marketing or sales material. The summary should track the RFP requirements and be as brief as possible while communicating the critical competitive differentiators you offer specific to the criteria in the RFP and relate specifically to its content. It should highlight the themes in the RFP. If it is the only thing that is read by a key individual, did the summary make a compelling case?

Finally, the visual appearance should be engaging and easy on the eyes. This not only includes the use of graphics, workflows, and illustrations, but also your choice of fonts, use of titles, headers, subheads, hyperlinks, bullet points, spacing, margins, and other elements. Beyond visual appeal, these stylistic elements aid readability and navigation. Those evaluating your response will appreciate it.

There is much else to consider but following these suggestions — and the ability to write competently — your RFP response will denote care, thoughtfulness, excellent organization, and attention to detail. Both as denoted by content and connoted by form and visual appearance. Attributes your prospective clients expect and deserve from their service providers.

Lead. Frame the debate. Be expert.