RFPs (Request for Proposals) are not something any sales person looks forward to. They are often time tedious, repetitive, long, full of a significant amount of legalese and in many cases do not allow the responder to properly highlight why their solution would be the best fit for the issuer. That being said, in some cases they are simply a necessity of the sales process. This blog will provide a few suggestions on how to best influence and respond to an RFP to increase your chances of differentiating your product or solution.

Suggestions for improving your RFP response success rate include:

• Be involved in the sales process as early as possible – for any sales person, being involved at the beginning of a prospects hunt for a new product or solution can be very beneficial. It may mean a bit of a longer sales cycle, but it also gives you the opportunity to consult on the sale vs hard sell.Acting as a sales consultant has its benefits in that you position yourself as a trusted advisor to the client, you work with them to identify the key business pains that need to be addressed and potential solutions, you can assist the client is allocating budget and ultimately you can assist the client with the RFP itself. In some cases where clients of ours were involved with the sales process early, the prospects RFP was written to correspond with a number of the key features and benefits that our client provided
• Provide the information requested and provide supporting documentation if allowed – be detailed in your response and do your best to answer all the questions as thoroughly as you can given in many cases the limited room or flexibility. If you can provide supplemental information, do it. Take advantage of any opportunity to give the prospect a better understanding of the features and benefits you bring to the table.
• Take time to understand how the RFP is going to be scored / weighted – having an understanding of what is of most importance to a prospect is key. This will vary based on the product or service you are providing but oftentimes price, safety record, history, similar projects are all worth a lot. Be sure to highlight your strengths in the areas you feel are weighted the heaviest.
• Give yourself plenty of time if possible to respond – the worst thing I find about RFP responses is the lack of time in some cases to respond effectively. Having just a few days to respond to a 100 page RPF is stressful and does not always lead to a solid response. Take your time if you can, be as thorough as possible and request input from various members of your team if needed (e.g. operations, engineering, software development etc…)
• Don’t overlook the details – what I have found difficult about RFP responses is the level of detail and not only with respect to the content. Even the submission request procedures can be onerous as many, particularly for governments and large corporates are antiquated.I remember one scenario I had where we had compiled a very thorough response only to find out that the courier envelope the document was received in had opened and this rendered my submission invalid. Luckily I had placed the RFP response in an inner envelope and sealed it and had written all the “To” and “From” and RFP# information on it and they were gracious enough to accept it then as this passed their submission requirement.

If you are a small business or a startup and looking for additional RFP tips, feel free to check out an earlier blog. Good luck with your RFP responses. If we can help or if you are simply looking for a source of excellent sales and marketing information, please don’t hesitate to contact us. For great insight into startup sales and marketing, feel free to sign up for our newsletter or follow us on twitter