Meeting schedule is the most important thing in RFP responses.
“What?!?” you (or your executive boss) cries incredulously, disbelievingly. “What about compliance? What about the technical solution? What about (a pause here for emphasis) . . . low price?” Continue reading“The Most Important Thing in RFP Responses”
A procurement tool used to request, well, proposals from interested bidders. Its acronym—RFP, pronounced by spelling it out—is often used (confusingly) to refer not to the request but to the proposal responding to that request; for example, people say that they wrote an RFP when they did no such thing. Although context often makes the meaning clear, this conflation of terms is bad practice and should be avoided.
It’s a basic marketing principle: align your service or product with what the market wants, and the sales will follow. Not incidentally, the marketing communication will be simple. It’s a basic RFP response best practice, too: align your solution with the RFP, and writing the proposal will be simple. Not easy or fun, necessarily, but straightforward, and more likely to lead to winning the contract. Continue reading“Win More Contracts by Matching Client Wants and Terminology”
The mission: To write clear, responsive, persuasive responses to RFP questions that will score well against RFP evaluation criteria, be internally consistent with the solution described elsewhere in the proposal, align with the solution actually costed, and protect the eventual operator or project manager from unreasonable client demands so that the company can make money.
The resources: Oh, anyone can do it. Just assign someone who isn’t otherwise busy.
Now. Does that seem reasonable? Continue reading“Write Better RFP Responses by Assigning the Right Resources”
In writing RFP responses, concision is an important target. Getting directly to the point makes your answers easier (and more pleasurable) to read and to mark. Continue reading“Choose to Use Fewer Words”