10 BEST PRACTICES FOR DEVELOPING A STREAMLINED RFP PROCESS LEARN HOW TO WIN OPPORTUNITIES MORE EFFICIENTLY AND EFFECTIVELY!

Transcription

1 10 BEST PRACTICES FOR DEVELOPING A STREAMLINED RFP PROCESS LEARN HOW TO WIN OPPORTUNITIES MORE EFFICIENTLY AND EFFECTIVELY!

2 TABLE OF CONTENTS 10 BEST PRACTICES FOR DEVELOPING A STREAMLINED RFP PROCESS REVIEW ALL RFP DOCUMENTS 3 ENGAGE ALL INTERNAL STAKEHOLDERS EARLY 3 CREATE A PROJECT TRACKER 4 UTILIZE A RFP LIBRARY MANAGEMENT SYSTEM 4 TARGET THE KEY QUESTIONS THAT MATTER TO CLIENTS 5 USE A SHARED DRIVE TO TRACK CHANGES 6 DEMONSTRATE PROOF 6 KNOW YOUR AUDIENCE(S) 7 BE CLEAR AND CONCISE 7 EXPECT SNAGS IN THE PROCESS 8 CONCLUSION 10 A PARTNER YOU CAN TRUST 10

3 Request for proposals (RFPs): everyone s least favorite part of the sales process. With hundreds of (often repetitive) questions, tight turn-around times, and number of internal resources necessary to get the final product out the door, RFPs are typically daunting and arduous. Despite this, given most organizations (particularly those looking for human capital industry offerings) opt to use RFPs to compare your company s services against your competitors, it s a step you have to follow. With potential business on the line and deadlines varying from two months to two weeks, it s crucial to have established procedures in place. As such, here are 10 best practices you can incorporate into your company s RFP process to avoid potential pitfalls and wasting valuable time helping you reach the next stage of the opportunity. 1. Review All RFP Documents As tempting as it may be to for you to start answering questions, it s important to take a step back and evaluate the RFP as a whole. After receiving an RFP, the first thing you should do is go over all of the documents and familiarize yourself with these key items. Things to look for include: Deadlines (for questions to ask and final submission) Scope of the opportunity Number/types of questions Character/attachment limits How to submit questions/final responses (usually via or through a tool) After you ve familiarized yourself with these components, a good next step is to set up calendar reminders for yourself (and sales people if you re the proposal writer) to avoid missing deadlines. 2. Engage All Internal Stakeholders Early Whether you re a proposal writer or a sales person leading the RFP initiative, you will most likely have to consult with various stakeholders across your organization to qualify the opportunity and gather what you need. This will require scheduling a kick-off meeting to discuss if the business is worth pursuing, as well as setting expectations with stakeholders and determining the level of involvement that will be required from different teams (e.g. pricing, implementation, technology) usually within 48 hours of receiving the RFP. 3

4 Before the meeting, the sales person should create a brief assessment overview that highlights the scope of the opportunity (client s current state, estimated spend, pain points, etc.) to send out to stakeholders. Additionally, exporting and compiling all questions into a Word document to send out beforehand will give everyone a better understanding of what the client is looking for, and provide the opportunity to come better prepared to the call. Once an opportunity has been given the go-ahead, it s important to send out any questions you know you ll need help answering. For those not a part of the kickoff meeting, comprise an that includes a brief explanation of the opportunity, questions he or she is responsible for answering, and the date in which you need responses back. As a rule of thumb, it usually helps to provide yourself with buffer time for questions (i.e. if you have a deadline of Friday, ask for responses back by Tuesday to allot for more time, if needed), and keep a running list of subject matter experts to go to for certain question-types to save time. 3. Create a Project Tracker Project management plays as big of a role in the RFP process as writing does. RFPs usually have serval moving parts, and it s important to keep track of who is responsible for answering various questions, when they anticipate getting answers back to you, and which answers are still under review. By creating a project tracker, you can easily monitor your progress in a central location and follow up on outstanding items. 4. Utilize a RFP Library Management System While it might be tempting to copy and paste answers from old proposals to current RFPs, this practice can lead to serious issues; the information you re consulting may not be up-to-date, not applicable, or worse include another client s name that you forget to find and replace. 4

5 Helpful Tip: When building your proposal library, keep things organized and easily searchable by creating individual entries for each questiontype, tagging appropriate key words, and sorting them in topic-specific folders. If your organization does not currently have one in place, make a case for buying a RFP library management system, such as Qvidian or RFPio. These online libraries are designed specifically for completing RFPs, and include search-function capabilities, plug-ins that integrate with Microsoft products, and automation capabilities. RFP library management systems allow you to develop a repository of scrubbed, up-to-date, consistent content that anyone with a license in your organization can access. Furthermore, an automation function can help save you precious time that would be lost inserting everything in manually. 5. Target the Key Questions that Matter to the Client Although it might feel natural to take the path of least resistance and fill in the easy questions first, the about your company section isn t going to be the one that wins you the client s business. If you re the sales person, you will have had multiple conversations beforehand that you can leverage to easily identify questions that will take more time and care. If you re the proposal writer and you re giving the first draft an initial pass, look for trends and key words that keep coming up, as well as review the opportunity assessment. For these key questions, focus on crafting responses that demonstrate you understand what issues the client is looking to solve, and speak to how your services can directly alleviate these issues and better their business operations. 5

6 6. Use a Shared Drive to Track Changes Nothing wastes time and increases the likelihood for error like having multiple drafts of your RFP floating around. Not only do you have to go back through and consolidate changes, but it limits internal stakeholder visibility into how others might want to answer client questions. By using an internal compliant system (e.g. OneDrive) to track changes and make comments, select editors can have access to the most-recent draft in real time. Furthermore, shared drive can provide track-version history allowing you to go back to previous versions, should you need to. 7. Demonstrate Proof Sometimes clients will directly ask for success stories, other times they won t. Either way, if you re saying you re the best at something, make sure you show it! For example, if your client is looking to reduce costs (stated either directly in an RFP question or mentioned in previous conversations), it is important to highlight a time your organization was able to provide cost savings or cost avoidance for a client. Furthermore, the more similar the client profiles, the better (e.g. same industry sector, similar spend under management, etc.), as it provides more of an apples-to-apples type comparison. If possible, creating a case studies and/or proof points library can be extremely beneficial. While there will still be times you need to reach out to customers or other internal stakeholders for proof/ references, having a backlog of approved, easily-referenceable material will save you time and prove to be meaningful sales collateral. If you re saying you re the best at something, make sure you show it! 6

7 8. Know Your Audience(s) The term know your audience can be interpreted two-fold: knowing which specific individuals will actually be reading your RFP vs. understanding what your readers need to know and properly conveying it. Speaking to the former, it is likely that your RFP response will be read by multiple stakeholders within the client s organization executives, key stakeholders, procurement specialists, etc. However, given the length and range of topics in an RFP, it is likely these decision makers will end up reading the various components that apply to their section of the business. As such, while you should avoid being too repetitive, don t stray away from consistently demonstrating your company s value over and over again treat each section as its own opportunity. When it comes to the latter, try speaking to what stakeholders need to be aware of to aid their decision-making process. For example, if a client asks you to describe your implementation process, don t just provide a rote description of the different procedures explain how your implementation process might impact their business, how your organization serves to make the transition as seamless as possible, and what resources you will need from them to ensure the implementation is successful. Keep explanations to a need-to-know basis and avoid overselling all of which leads into the next best practice 9. Be Clear & Concise RFPs are long documents usually ranging anywhere from 50 to 200+ pages. And with a recent Microsoft study noting the attention span for an average human being is eight seconds, it s important to make that small window of time count. Sometimes RFP responses force you to be clear and concise with character limits. However, when those aren t in place to limit your word count, it becomes even more important to: Leave out sales jargon: while an RFP is a sales document, there s no need to overdo it avoid overused, salesy verbiage when making your points. Explain acronyms: unless you know your reader has the same depth of knowledge about your industry/organization as you do, you re better off spelling out any acronyms to avoid confusion. Answer the question directly: don t just copy and paste standard answers from previous proposals or your content library customize and cut where possible to get to the meat of what the client looking for. Speak in laymen s terms: avoid using terms that are overly technical or hyperspecific to your organization (unless necessary e.g. pertinent to a service offering). 7

8 10. Expect Snags in the Process Even with a refined RFP process put in place, the course of business does not always run smooth. Rather it be internal- or client-driven, a few common disruptors you can anticipate include: Getting answers back to questions. While you may have pushed out questions to different members of your organization for help, it s not uncommon to have an go unanswered. Don t take it personally though; your coworkers have their own workloads to manage and/or might be out of the office for business, vacation, etc. To avoid getting caught in a bind, create your own deadlines for responses back (preferably at least a week before the RFP is due), and ask for confirmation of the requests details/timeline. If a deadline comes and goes without any response from an internal stakeholder, feel free to send a follow-up /ask if they have time to jump on a call to discuss. If you still don t receive a response, see if there is someone else available on their team who can provide you with answers to your questions. Last-minute feedback. With the exception of pricing, submission day is not the time for significant changes it leaves too much room for error and causes unnecessary stress for everyone involved. However, if you find yourself in this unfavorable position, it doesn t have to derail submission day. For one, not all feedback will be applicable last-minute content you re receiving might be repetitive or overruled by a stakeholder further up your organization s food chain. Still, you might have to personally discern what changes make it in the final version of the RFP, based on your timeline. To ensure last-minute feedback is the exception and not standard practice, place a limit on when you ll accept feedback (e.g. 48 hours before the RFP deadline) and inform all involved parties. This will give you time to consolidate all feedback, check for spelling/grammar, and begin uploading responses (if applicable). 8

9 Software issues. Although third-party technology platforms can simplify the RFP process, they do not come without their limitations. While there are some aspects that are completely out of your control (i.e. system crashes), familiarize yourself with these following aspects of the tool: Registration authorization: Depending on who receives in formal invitation from the vendor, getting into the procurement system can be tricky. If you re not the person the RFP was released to, make sure you obtain the correct login information from the assigned sales rep. Often times, you have to register before a company will release the RFP to you, so you want to make sure to get into the system quickly to guarantee you have as much time as possible to work on the RFP. Character limits: Although these were mentioned in the Review All RFP Documents section, sometimes clients will create character limits in a tool without overtly stating they ve done so. To avoid last-minute issues, try copying and pasting a long answer into various sections of the tool and see if any of the answers cut off after a certain character limit. Attachment capabilities: Similar to character limits, check to see if the technology platform supports the use of attachments. If it does, make sure to follow any instructions regarding where you can upload attachments, size requirements, etc. Again, it s helpful to try uploading attachments of various sizes early on to see if there are any issues. Client communication. It s important to make sure you re checking all appropriate communication channels, so that you don t miss any RFPprocess updates. For example, clients will often post RFP updates through the technology platform s messaging tool. To avoid missing any pertinent information, get into the habit of logging into the tool daily. Pushed deadlines. Sometimes, an RFP extension can be a good thing especially if you re juggling multiple RFPs at one time. However, these extensions can fall at inopportune times (same day as another RFP deadline, close to a holiday, when key contributors are out of office, etc.). Additionally, clients may often delay their responses to questions you ask, but not provide an extension for the RFP itself giving you less time to gather necessary info to craft your answers. 9 While these deadline changes remain relatively outside of your control, being aware and adaptable can help you avoid derailment. By remaining on top of everything within your means, pushed deadlines are less likely to cause a significant impact.

10 Conclusion Ultimately, you have to create a process that works best for you and your organization. The number of RFPs your organization receives/how crucial they are to bringing in new business can help you determine if you can get away with just having your sales people respond to them, or if you need to bring in dedicated resources (i.e. bid managers and proposal writers). Furthermore, as you build out and refine your RFP process, consider asking other, involved stakeholders in your organization for their feedback. Doing so can ensure a well-rounded view of the process (i.e. how long a certain department might need to answer questions, what information they ll need, etc.), and help them become accustomed to what will be expected of them. At the end of the day, you want your sales people spending the majority of their time doing what they do best: selling! By creating a streamlined system and implementing these 10 best practices, you ll not only find the RFP-writing process easier to navigate, but also as a strategic means of winning more opportunities! A Partner You Can Trust As a part of our strategic workforce engagement model, People 2.0 provides expert advice and consultation services for organizations in the human capital services industry. Whether you re seeking guidance on sales and marketing strategies or looking to expand your staffing and recruiting capabilities, People 2.0 serves as both your strategic industry partner and provider of comprehensive back-office support! Learn more about how we can help you improve your RFP process to drive more revenue: call or visit This material is for informational purposes only and does not constitute advice. No reliance should be placed on the information contained and guidance should be sought from People 2.0. No information contained in this ebook may be reproduced or copied in any format without the express permission of People People 2.0