Eight Tips for Putting Respect into RFPs

WHEN I STARTED MY CAREER IN PR, I didn’t know what an RFP was. I quickly learned: Request For Proposal. But after more than 20 years in the business and after responding to an especially large number of RFPs in the past year, I’ve come to think of them as Rising Frustration and Pain. While I’m happy to say some are very well done, the majority are better suited as tests for paranormal powers; you’d have to be a mind reader to understand them.

As my friend Brian Cox might say, “This isn’t rocket surgery.” Putting together, issuing, and managing responses to an RFP is mostly a matter of respect — respect for agencies’ time, money, intelligence, and ideas. So here are eight tips for putting respect into RFPs: 

TIP No. 1  Question if you need an RFP in the first place. RFPs can be effective tools to help you evaluate a carefully selected set of competitors against a uniform set of criteria. If you’re planning to spend an especially large amount of money, award a long-term contract, or are sure you want to make a major change in your agency roster, go for it and issue an RFP. But, if you simply want some fresh thinking, or want to get a feel for alternatives to your current agency, you can be plenty effective without a formal process. Get referrals from people you trust in your industry and screen a couple of agencies through one-on-one meetings and reference checks. Go to lunch. Chat about your business. Ask them how they would approach things. Then pick the one you feel best about and give them a one-off assignment. You’ll save everyone time and money (including yourself) and get a better sense of the new agency’s real-world work. When I first started at Fleishman-Hillard RFPs were the exception. Today they’re the rule, and candidly, I don’t think companies in general are any happier with agency relationships than when they went by informal relationships alone. 

TIP No. 2  Don’t use RFPs to shake up your current agency. If you issue an RFP, be serious about making a change. Every agency colleague I know who has any tenure to speak of at all has been through time-intensive and expensive RFP responses only to discover that the mission was mainly to scare the incumbent into rate reductions, staff changes, or renewed appreciation for their client. That’s just not fair to the other agencies. If your current agency is complacent, there are other ways to frighten the love back into them. But don’t waste other agencies’ time and money simply to forge a threat.

TIP No. 3  Make a great impression. Your RFP may be an agency’s first introduction to you. Typos, redundancies, disorganized thoughts, and lack of clarity about the opportunity call into question the quality of your thinking and attention to details. Remember, smart agencies like to work with smart clients. There’s no point in making a bad first impression and potentially discouraging a great agency from pursuing your business. Don’t “crank out” an RFP. Compose it carefully.

TIP No. 4  Be clear, specific and thorough. RFPs aren’t game shows where the winner is whomever can come closest to the right answer based on the least amount of information. Review your RFP as if you don’t know anything about your brand, company or industry. Answer the basic questions: Why this RFP and why now? What are your objectives? How will you gauge success? Have you provided enough information to help the responding agencies be thoughtful and focused on your needs? Sure, they’re going to do research on their own, and they should. But don’t make your RFP a guessing game. I was once a part of a team that responded to an RFP from a consumer tech company that wanted a launch proposal without telling us what the product was. We won the business, but that doesn’t mean it was a good process. (After we saw the product, I could see why they didn’t tell us what it was. It was a real dog. A few months in, well before launch, a new CEO killed the product. Thankfully.)

TIP No. 5  Provide a budget. Most frequently, budget isn’t simply omitted, but it is replaced by a notation that the organization doesn’t want to “limit creative thinking” by providing a figure. I can appreciate the thinking, but it just doesn’t hold up. Creativity benefits from constraints, not deficits of information. I once worked for a man (pre FH) who would always tell me he wanted a project “at the highest possible quality for the lowest possible price.” Of course, this was no use to me at all. So finally I said “Would you agree that when I tell you what a project is going to cost you either react by thinking ‘I can do that’ or ‘I don’t want to spend that much’?” He said yes, he agreed. “So, doesn’t it seem reasonable that the only way you can have those thoughts is by having a number in your mind that you compare to the cost I give you?” Again he agreed. So I said. “If you would just tell me what that number in your head is BEFORE I start planning the project, it would save us both a lot of time and frustration.” Eventually he started giving me real budgets. An organization issuing an RFP must have some “number in its head” or at least a range. Not sharing it wastes time and energy and does nothing to enhance creativity. 

TIP No. 6  Explain the process and stay in touch. Responding to an RFP with written materials and then usually with in-person presentations may represent $50,000 or $100,000 or even more of agency time and expenses. Staff members will almost certainly work late nights, reschedule time off, and juggle existing work to create a smart proposal. They are understandably very personally invested in the process and the outcome, and they have a right to know what to expect and to be informed. Spell out not only agency deadlines, but your internal deadlines for reviewing proposals, selecting and notifying finalists, scheduling presentations, etc. then do everything in your power to stick to them.  Most often what happens after an agency submits a response is … nothing. No acknowledgement of receipt, no notification of next steps, until it becomes an immediate need. You’ll engender tremendous amounts of respect and goodwill if you simply keep the responding agencies posted each step of the way. 

TIP No. 7  Don’t claim ownership of ideas unless you pay for them. I’m still surprised that every now and then an RFP comes our way that states that any ideas we submit in our response become the property of the issuing organization, whether we win or lose. Really? I won’t belabor this point other than to say I’m not sure whether to be insulted or amused. 

TIP No. 8  Tell us if we didn’t win. If we didn’t win, tell us right away. Radio silence is a disrespectful way of saying “someone else got it.” (Yes, it happens.) Most people don’t like to deliver bad news and will try to soften or avoid it. But honestly, we want to know. We can take it. And we’d like to learn from the experience. I’ve been a part of pitch processes in which the client evaluated each agency via detailed score cards. When we didn’t win we asked to know more about our scores. They wouldn’t tell us. Why not? I don’t know either.
 

 

© 2009 John Armato

Comments

[Michel Theriault]

John, you make a lot of good points. Unfortunately, many RFP's are run by procurement types who don't see the process as a way to get the best result, they see it as a process to get the lowest initial price with the minimum compliance.

In the service business where the relationship is ongoing and requires either creativity or leadership/management over the life of the contract - especially when the service is front and centre with their own downstream customers and clients - they end up sacrificing overall results by emphasizing the wrong things in the RFP process.

On the issue of Tip # 8 - Telling suppliers when they lose, I have a podcast on my blog about suppliers getting feedback if they lose - and asking for it if it isn't offered. It's at www.howtowinmorebusiness.com .

Michel.

[John Armato]

Michel -- thanks for visiting the blog, and thanks for your comment. Sounds like we share some frustrations. I appreciate your link. I'm eager to check it out. I hope you'll subscribe or check back periodically. Best, John