Win the RFP: How to Turn Your Agency’s Response into a Strategic Selling Tool
We have a love/hate relationship with the RFP.
On the one hand, we love to see a new RFP land in our in-box (perhaps way more than we should). It holds the promise of new revenue and fills the pipeline just enough to convince ourselves to shift attention away from more proactive new business activities.
And we hate RFPs because they’re so often inscrutable documents that monopolize time and resources for however long (and it’s never very long) we’re given to respond while the uncertainty of it all gnaws away at our conscience.
I’m firmly in the camp of people who say avoid competitive RFPs whenever possible (or at the very least don’t design your new business strategy around them), but for a lot of agencies, that’s not always realistic.
As long as RFPs are a reality, I want to help you turn your responses into strategic selling tools.
First, it’s worthwhile defining some terms:
RFP = a request for proposal, as all of us know, that is issued by a marketer looking for agency services. It says proposal, but often it requests so much more than a proposal, from introductory credentials to spec work to detailed staffing allocations.
And, while a proposal should really come towards the end of a buying process, after you’ve qualified the client and they’ve qualified you, and you’ve reached general agreement on a scope of work, timeline, and budget, getting an RFP often indicates the beginning of the process.
Adding to the murkiness, the term RFP is often used as shorthand for the entire agency review process.
RFP response = the written document that’s submitted in response to the RFP. It often includes a proposal (or the closest you can get to one given that you probably have limited information at this point) but also the credentials, spec work, etc.
And why do RFPs even exist? Well, the best reason I came up with is this:
RFPs—and the responses that result—exist to provide comparative information to a group of stakeholders in order to reduce the risk of hiring the wrong agency.
The pivotal phrase here being to reduce the risk of making a bad choice.
Remember, you are selling the promise of a better future with no guarantee of success. That’s risky stuff. If a marketer makes the wrong choice, it’ll have serious repercussions like missed business opportunities, delayed campaigns, and staff burn out.
And while an RFP may not be the best method for reducing that risk, it’s a preferred method and will probably stay that way for the near future. So, let’s figure out a way to use it to our advantage.
Here are 4 opportunities to turn your response into a strategic selling tool that you are likely not taking full advantage of.
Respond, don’t react
What’s the first thing you do when you get an RFP?
Many agencies leap into action, carving up other recent proposals and pasting in answers that seem close enough to addressing the questions. Often this results in a patchwork of disjointed content that ironically requires more work to transform into a cohesive whole.
Instead, give yourself a chance to respond rather than react. One of the best ways to do this is to take the time to look for implicit as well as explicit needs expressed in the RFP.
I’ve never read an RFP that wasn’t rich in concealed meaning. There is rich information to be mined by reading between the lines and trying to understand why they’re asking certain questions. Instead of getting frustrated by enigmatic questions that seem to come out of left field, ask yourself, “what past mistakes is this client hoping to avoid?”
I don’t think it’s every client’s intention to hide things; I truly think they’re trying to write the best, most comprehensive yet concise document possible. But it's almost impossible to concisely yet comprehensively represent the situation the client finds itself in and the problem it needs to solve.
By recognizing and responding to implicit but unexpressed needs you’ll position yourself as an insightful, problem-solving expert, not an order-taker.
2. Define Your Destination and Plot Your Course
OK, I realize you’re not given the luxury of time when responding to RFPs, but a little bit of strategic planning goes a long way in putting together a response that is not only easy for the client to digest but that strategically positions you as the right solution
There are three important steps here.
Step 1: Define your “win themes.” These are the top reasons why you’re best qualified for the job. This shouldn’t be vague, aspirational stuff, but rather demonstrable capabilities and experience like knowledge of the category, mastery of a marketing discipline, or a unique methodology. You need at least one win theme and I don’t recommend more than three. Too many and you are constructing a complicated narrative that can’t be followed.
Step 2: Choose the evidence to back up the win themes. This includes all the usual suspects—case studies and client examples, team qualifications, service descriptions, processes that lead to reliable results.
Step 3: Build the bridge between the two. Give your readers the context they need to understand the significance of what you’re telling them. Use language like,
“We’re including this case to demonstrate that…
“Our team brings this type of experience, which benefits you in these ways…”
“You’ll see results using our process because…”
This step is not complicated or esoteric and yet is often overlooked. Provide the context and reinforce those themes throughout your response. This is so important because it contributes to a narrative flow that is invaluable for helping the client not only understand your pitch, but to remember it.
And, use this as a guide for what to include and what to leave out so that you are reinforcing your win themes, not contradicting them.
3. Engage the Client
I’ll acknowledge that sometimes clients put up barriers to any kind of contact. Or they offer a Q&A free-for-all that not only doesn’t provide an opportunity for quality connection, it doesn’t yield a lot of good answers.
Let’s eliminate those unfortunate situations and focus on what I see more frequently, which is that agencies conclude that if they’re not specifically invited to contact the client, that they shouldn’t. I think that’s a bad assumption and I’m not the only one. A search consultant I was speaking with recently lamented the fact that agencies don’t take the initiative to engage the client more if they have questions about what’s being asked in the RFP.
We’re so conditioned to believing “the client is always right” that if they haven’t expressly said they’re open to a conversation that they must know what they’re talking about.
In most cases, you won’t be penalized for asking for a conversation. And, if you can engage them, you have the opportunity to connect, maybe build some trust, and in the process help to mitigate, even on a subconscious level, the risk associated with hiring you versus someone else.
Plus, you’ll likely walk away knowing more about the client than you did before and you can use that intelligence to craft a more strategic response.
4. Check Your Tendencies
If you’re following the other three guidelines, then you’re less likely to get derailed by well-meaning but ultimately tendencies, like—
Making it all about you
It’s almost a cliché to say that agencies talk way too much about themselves, but clichés are born from real and stubborn habits and patterns. We naturally default to talking about ourselves, not because we’re self-centered jerks, but because we believe that’s what the clients have asked for in the brief with requests to –
“Define your process…”
“Tell us who’s on the team and what their experience is…”
“Describe the work you’ve done in our category…”
Sure sounds like they want to hear all about you. But really, what they’re saying is “give us a lens through which to see ourselves and our business challenges reflected in the work you do.”
(Hint: defining win themes and having a plan for reinforcing them will automatically prevent you from indulging in this tendency.)
Quality of content over quantity or cleverness.
I know that most of you want to take a dry process and enliven it to your advantage. Cleverness may charm, but it also may alienate. That’s because an RFP response is by its nature a utilitarian tool. Allow it to do what it’s designed to do.
Likewise, less is more. Resist the temptation to attach a 180-page slide deck (as one consultant told me an agency did). Will it support your strategy? Or, will it freak out your audience (because nobody wants to wade through a 180-page deck)?
Make it easy to read and distribute.
Here’s more advice from another search consultant: use the template provided!
There are other ways to push back and challenge the client, but this isn’t one of them. Learn to work within restrictions because they’re probably in place for specific operational reasons that you have little possibility of affecting.
Finally, approach the task with an empathetic mindset
We like to grumble about what an ordeal it is to respond to RFPs, but the fact is, the client team is putting in a tremendous amount of work too. Whatever you dish out, they’ve got to wade through and try to remember enough to make an informed recommendation.
The good news is that making it easier on them may also increase your chances of making it to the next round.