Are Requests for Proposals Good for Your Business?

I had an eye opening experience recently. We submitted a response to a request for proposal (RFP) and then were notified of a public evaluation of the responses. This happened to be a public institution and for their “transparency” of the process was to have a public meeting of their evaluation committee.

Obviously, we attended the meeting. We were told that we were there as observers only. No comments allowed. We could however ask for clarifications or questions afterward.

RFP Responses Take Time

I don’t know about you, but I have been responding to more and more RFP’s over the last couple of years. I’ve won some and I’ve lost some. Some companies are very good at managing their processes and their proposals are easy to complete while others have a much less organized process and many of the questions are ambiguous. They all take time to complete correctly.

Now, some of my “friendly” competitors say they never respond to RFP’s as they feel they are a waste of time. They feel they can typically do business with the company even if a primary vendor is chosen as a result of an RFP.

You Don’t Always Get to Keep the Client

I am sure that is true some of the time. I know for a fact one “not so friendly” competitor didn’t submit an RFP for a large local company and we did (as did about 8 others – only 12 were invited). We won. We have had the contract for 5 years now and that company hasn’t had an order since. So it’s not a true “rule” that you can continue working with a company after an RFP.

Is it a Cattle Call?

I’ve also submitted RFP’s in what turned out to be cattle calls. One recent one had 40 responses. And yes, it took them way beyond their original schedule to review and pick their “winners”. And I’m not sure anyone was a true winner. They ended up selecting 18 vendors that could now compete for the business and were qualified as vendors. This may be a situation where you probably were better off not competing because I’m not sure if there will be strict adherence to the qualified vendor list.

The one I just participated in wasn’t quite that bad but close. If you’ve done RFP’s you are aware that you typically get to ask questions in writing during a specified period of time. Most of the time the company issuing the RFP answers all the questions at once and posts them for all the participants to see, but that’s not always the case.

Be Sure to Ask Questions and Get Clarifications

I always have some questions to ask. Clarifications on how something should be presented, scope of projects and the like. One question I need to start asking and you should too: will this be a single provider decision? You know, winner takes all. I’ve won a couple of those but I’ve also been part of the cattle drive for “preferred vendors”.

This one ended up that way. My understanding based on how the RFP was written was that this RFP would be a two vendor award. It was not. As we learned at the public evaluation they were looking to expand their complement of preferred vendors to 12. Now, granted this is a very large organization and they spend over one million dollars annually on promotional products and programs so there is enough to go around, but it would have been good to know.

During this public committee meeting, they did a brief review of the 16 companies that made it past the vetting round (we were one of them).

Some key areas for more consideration in my next RFP responses include:

• Flexibility in production timing (one company basically indicated to please “respect” their need for 7-10 days production, really?)

• Details on rush production options (we included ours but it seems many did not)

• Years in the business and number of accounts (some touted so large a number of accounts that the committee didn’t feel that they could service them properly)

• References were very important to be included in the review (this particular organization required the reference complete a questionnaire and send directly to them, not the vendor – we also included some of our client reviews in our proposal)

• Pricing parameters (no one was consistent across the board with the discounts, as we all know in this business that is very difficult to do, but be clear)

• Community involvement (I was surprised by this, granted I am very involved and did include as part of an answer to one of their questions, but it had more weight than I thought it would)

• Making empty promises (one company said a money back guarantee, but only on non-imprinted items, since all would be imprinted it was disregarded and actually counted against them)

• Local presence for them was extremely important (we all worry about the internet sales but this organization wanted local companies, some of the respondents didn’t have any presence in the state, let alone the community)

We will be one of their new 12 approved vendors. As you know this only gives us the opportunity to compete and hopefully gain their business. However, I think it was worth it. We’ve never done business with them before and now at least we have a chance to introduce ourselves.

RFP’s are Worth Responding to for my Business Growth

As I’ve mentioned, we’ve won a number of RFP’s over the past 5 years. These companies now represent more than half million annually to our sales. Definitely worth the initial time and effort for the response.

I’ve already been alerted about another RFP that I will be invited to respond to in July. It will be my fourth large one in less than a year. And, I think the experience I’ve gained from each one will help us in answering the next one and hopefully win it as a single winner opportunity.

Good luck everyone on your next RFP opportunity!