Answering Unexpected RFPs

Most of us in sales don’t like RFPs. They’re time-consuming. They’re often poorly written. They rarely tell the whole story.

Still, we dutifully fill them out. It may be company policy to do so. Or, our pipeline needs prospects and after all you can’t win if don’t play, right?   

The problem is we can’t afford to respond to every RFP that crosses our desk in the same way. Because our win probability varies widely depending on the situation.

For example, an RFP that you knew was coming, and even better, helped craft, is a very different situation than one that came in unexpectedly from an organization you’ve not worked with, and upon reading it, looks wired for the competition.

Time is always our most precious asset and probability of success should dictate how we spend it.

In my career I’ve discovered 8 different RFP situations and that each one should have it’s own strategic response. (I created a mini-course on what that is and how to execute it. Send me an email if you’d like to know more.)

Let’s talk about one of those situations today. It’s definitely one of the tougher ones.  It’s the RFP that comes in unexpectedly, from an organization you’re not working with, but reads like a great fit. They appear to have needs in areas where you can help them. But, again, you’ve never worked with them. They’re not only not in your funnel, you weren’t aware they were even looking.

Although we want to respond, we have to guard against becoming column fodder. Column fodder is when you’re an also-ran, an option to put on their spreadsheet. Unfortunately for you, the evaluation team already has their preference. They just need to show management they’ve done their due diligence, so they send out an RFP to get additional bids.

The only thing going for you at this point is that they need your response. So you use that as leverage to get what you want - information from the stakeholders that matter the most right now. And those are the senior executives driving or most impacted by the project. That’s the “trade” you want to make - access to them for an RFP response from you. 

Here’s one way you do that:

(1.) Contact the consultant (or contact who sent the RFP) and let them know you’d be happy to respond but in order to ensure the response is the best it can be, you’d like to have brief meetings (face-to-face or via phone/videoconference) with key executives driving or impacted by this project. If these execs aren’t mentioned in the RFP, suggest the heads of the functional areas where you’d like to talk.

(2.) If they push back, tell them you understand, thank them for their consideration, that you wish them luck in their search, and that you’ll be happy to send them detailed product and service information (note: this is off-the-shelf boilerplate stuff) and that you’ll happily answer any questions they have about that information. 

(3.) If they ask why you need to talk to those CXOs, calmly explain that your experience has been that there’s often a gap between what CXOs want and expect and what gets put in the RFP. And you’ve seen where things change between when the RFP was created and when responses are received. Last, but not least, for a project to be successful, your experience has been that the CXOs impacted must be happy.

(4.) Also let them know after you have those meetings, you’ll not only fill out the RFP, but you’ll share your findings from the meetings so the evaluation team is not blindsided by anything new.

Your goal is to make a compelling argument for the meetings. It should come across as logical and as risk-free to the consultant or project lead as possible.

This forces a decision - one where you win either way. You get access to better qualify and potentially influence this opportunity or you get confirmation that your chances are slim so you can feel good about not wasting your time and can instead spend it on better opportunities. 

(5.) If you get the meetings, ask the execs what business issues are driving the project (that the RFP represents). Spend your limited time focused on them - problems/pain, impact, their goals for the solution, and what they want in a technology partner. I guarantee you will find out things that were NOT outlined in the RFP. You’ll then use that information in your response, both in the cover letter and appended to the RFP reply. This fulfills your promise and gives you a fighting chance to get to the next round.

Even with a blind RFP.

Action step: Create buckets for the kinds of RFPs you’ve received and come up with a strategy that makes sense for each one.

Have a great week!

Bob