SPOTLIGHT

SPOTLIGHT ON

PROPOSALS

When was the last time you received a well-written RFP?

This was a discussion recently posted on Linked In. For the entire post, click on the title.

I've worked on so many RFP's that were so poorly written, it was hard to tell what was being requested. How many of these cases sound familiar to you?

Discussion:

I hate to admit it but about 90% of the RFPs I see have little thought or process behind them. They don’t clearly communicate the scope of the project, the critical details and the objectives the client expects. It’s almost as if they’ve never done one before.
Then the client seems frustrated and irritated by questions from all the bidders in attempt to learn what they need to successfully respond to the RFP. In some cases the client provides far more details on how they want the document organized and formatted than the response and the estimates.

How many good RFPs do you receive?

What do you think would be the long-term impact of clients actually investing the time to develop well-conceived RFPs instead of doing cut & paste on the last confusing document they issued?

Some Responses:

I recently reviewed two RFPs. The company spent three months developing the RFP for a $500K IT project. They spent about two days on the RFP for a $1.5 million annual meeting.

The big objective was to give the sales force the same experience they enjoyed the last few years at 50% of the budget. They sent the RFP out to seven companies - plus the incumbent. Guess what, they were upset because the bidders didn't seem to understand the project. By the time I became involved the RFP schedule was weeks behind, bidders were getting upset and and top management was screaming.

I agree that one of the hallmarks of an inexperienced client is when you see 6+ bidders. Besides indicating that they don't know what they're doing, it shows a great disregard for suppliers who are expected to spend thousands of dollars in proposal costs with little chance or winning the job.

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This issue of RFP's seems to be plaguing us all lately...lots of time spent only to have our ideas taken and turned around to the one who will do it the cheapest. Sometimes you don't even hear back. One of the issues we disucssed was charging for proposals and if the bid is won then it can go towards the mgmt fee. But if everyone's not charging, then it's not likely to go over well.

We've gotten a few RFP's this past year that have been absurd. And we're asked to submit all of our ideas and take days/weeks of our time out of our schedule only to have these ideas taken, or as said by Richard Rowlands "to check out the market." The process has been very frustrating...wish we could figure out a way to reform it!

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Very recently, we received a RFP from a prospect where we didn't have a prior relationship. The RFP came from a Gmail account of the prospect company, without a contact person's info and a less than one week turnaround that included creative concepts for a 2010 program.

Not sure what to think here...is it a real opportunity? Why such a quick turnaround? How many agencies received this RFP? Why isn't there a contact person? Do they really expect us to provide some free ideas to a Gmail account? We politely declined...