Writing an effective RFP (Request for Proposal)

The other kind of B2B copywriting

By Sarah Saunders [May 28, 2003 issue]
Contributing Writer

Not long ago, I helped sell multi-million dollar solutions for one of the world's leading supply chain management software companies. Over a two and a half year period, our team increased our software license revenue contribution from less than one percent of the corporate total to over 15 percent.

Although we began as the clear underdog in our market, we wound up stealing business right and left from our largest competitor. How did we do it? By outexecuting the competition. Every step of the way. Including our responses to RFPs (Requests for Proposal).

While we freely admitted that no RFP response ever single-handedly won us business, we also knew that a poorly executed response could lose us business - get us kicked out of the running altogether. So we did everything in our power to make each document we delivered a powerful selling tool in its own right. Along the way, we learned some invaluable lessons about developing winning RFP responses.

Lesson #1 - Make Sure Someone "Owns" the RFP

For a lot of large companies, a typical RFP response may run 50 to 100 pages and include inputs from twenty or more people. Any time you have a communications project of that size, someone's got to be clearly in charge; someone's got to "own" the RFP, as we used to say. This person has to understand the project's urgency as well as its selling potential, and be willing to push hard for timely, high quality inputs from every member of the team.

Lesson #2 - Get Organized - EARLY!

If you're the RFP owner, here's what you should do to get things rolling:

* Read the RFP from cover to cover. Make sure you understand what's being asked of your company.

* Look for potential problem areas - questions that may require extra research time, executive decision-making, etc.

* Review these potential problems with sales management.

* Develop a project schedule: make sure every question is assigned out and all contributors know what's due and by when.

* Pad your schedule, because people will be late!

Lesson #3 - Make it Easy On Your Customer

You're asking your client to make a significant investment in your solutions. Better make it as easy as possible for them to review your RFP response:

* Use the same section headings in your response as the client uses in the RFP - makes it easier for them to skim your document.

* For soft copy submissions, use a "smart" table of contents, with hypertext links to each RFP section.

* If the client uses company-specific jargon in their RFP, echo it back to them in your response.

* Define all acronyms and technical terms; don't assume they know what you're talking about!

Lesson #4 - Give the Devil His Due

When it comes to RFP responses, the Devil is truly in the details:

* Leave time for one final review of the entire document; look for spelling and grammatical errors, and for ways to give the document one consistent "voice" throughout.

* If members of the Executive team expect to review the final RFP response, get time booked on their schedule early!

* Make sure you know how the client expects the RFP to be delivered (soft copy, hard copy, etc.) and by when. Whole deals have been lost because of a late RFP - due to unexpected traffic, flight delays, networking problems, etc.

Lesson #5 - Always Be Selling

Simply delivering a well-written, well-designed document on-time to the client is not enough. An RFP response is all about selling: it builds a solid foundation for the entire sales campaign. Always ask yourself whether:

1. You've hit all the key selling messages relevant to this solution, this client, this sales campaign

2. You've laid all possible "landmines" for the competition (i.e., subtly sewing Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt in the minds of your clients regarding the competition)

And finally, sum up all your major selling points in an Executive Summary. (This should be written last, by one of your best writers!)

Sarah Saunders is the principal of Saunders Insights LLC. Reach her at ssaunders@saundersinsights.com.

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