There are certain mandates that cannot be won without going through the RFP stage, which is why so many asset management firms invest in Strategic Response Management (SRM). That and the fact that a high percentage of revenue involves proposals at BlackRock.
According to Kristen Carloni, Global Head of Aladdin Business Proposal Strategy at BlackRock, the Responsive SRM Platform allows her team to work efficiently while impacting revenue: “Because we were leveraging technology, we didn’t have to hire a single person, and were still able to significantly increase our output and contribute millions in additional revenue to the bottom line.”
Kristen was a featured speaker at Responsive Summit24 — the virtual conference for SRM, available now on demand. Watch her keynote session below and keep reading to learn how Kristen is driving increased impact by activating SRM at BlackRock.
Using SRM to impact revenue and boost your career
At BlackRock, the world’s largest asset manager, Kristen leads one of several decentralized teams that manage RFPs for the firm. At Responsive Summit24, she was joined by Carrie Jordan, Global Director of Proposals at Microsoft, and Michael Londgren, CMO at Responsive for a session titled, “Activating and scaling SRM across your organization.” Kristen shared insights on various topics, including how to use AI-powered Strategic Response Management (SRM) to elevate proposals, democratize access to organizational knowledge, and tie proposal teams’ contributions to ROI, revenue, and time saved.
Kristen Carloni,
Global Head of Aladdin Business Proposal Strategy,
BlackRock
“When I first started off in my role at BlackRock, it was a fairly administrative role. It was kind of junior and it was more of a means to an end. It wasn’t really a career path in and of itself. Over 10 years later, I’ve really been able to make a career out of it, and I now sit alongside my peers as the regional leads reporting into the global head of sales. And the only way I’ve been able to do that is through strategy.
“When you think about it, we’re not just copying and pasting responses from a library. We need to think critically around what our prospects want to know and the different solutions that we offer. And that’s strategic thinking.
“I also think all the time about how we can help the business. Several years ago we were working on two product lines. Today we cover 15! I’ve gone back time and time again to my boss to say, ‘Look, I think we can do more. I think we can adapt our process and our people and the great things we’ve done and materially contribute to the bottom line.’ And we have.”
Focus on outcomes that impact the bottom line
In the 2024 State of Strategic Response Management Report, Responsive and APMP found that many bid and proposal teams over-index on the wrong metrics to measure their effectiveness. They focus on metrics like response volume and completion speed. But executives want to know about metrics like win rates, revenue influenced, and ROI.
For bid and proposal teams to drive maximum impact, productivity must align with outcomes that contribute directly to organizational growth. Shifting focus toward revenue-linked metrics and compliance can highlight their value as strategic partners.
Firms that prioritize these factors enhance their ability to scale efficiently and deliver responses that not only meet deadlines but also elevate competitive advantage in an evolving financial landscape.
Kristen Carloni,
Global Head of Aladdin Business Proposal Strategy,
BlackRock
“I was talking to [my boss at the time] about what kind of reporting he wanted, and he said, ‘Kristen, I don’t want to hear about your volumes — that is a measure of how busy you are. I know that you’re working a full week. I know that your team is, too. I completely trust that. What I need to know is your impact. Tie that back to revenues. Tie that back to my bottom line. Tie that back to time saved, because time saved is money saved, as well.’”
Later in the presentation, Kristen again picked up the thread of how important it is for bid and proposal teams to advocate for themselves. “I want you to be able to look in the mirror and tell yourselves that your team is having an impact,” she said.
Kristen goes on to describe three ways that bid and proposal teams impact their organization.
- ROI: “Your company might be investing a couple hundred thousand dollars in you and you’re returning hundreds of millions of dollars. That may even be just one proposal. Some of the things we’re bidding on are these huge opportunities. It’s not all based on the RFP, but the RFP is a critical part of that.”
- Unique skill set: “Not everybody can take technical language and put it into a clear proposal.”
- Knowledge sharing: “The amount of knowledge — the breadth of knowledge — that we have in our heads, and more importantly at our fingertips, is really powerful. We make that available to other people at the time, and without us, that just wouldn’t happen.”
Effective AI requires preparation
Almost everyone (89%) is experimenting with AI to augment SRM. The focus moving forward is figuring out how to capitalize on it and trusting its output. Kristen believes in the possibility of AI, but there’s still work to do. Her team performs systematic testing to see what works and what doesn’t.
Kristen Carloni,
Global Head of Aladdin Business Proposal Strategy
BlackRock
“One of the places I found that we’re spending a lot of our time on AI is actually preparing for it…it’s not a push-button technology.”
“We had to really overhaul our content library. We had a great library in place for a world without AI. But today you have to point AI to the right information, and you have to structure your content library around that.”
“I have a big vision board of where I hope the technology is going, but it might not be there yet. In the meantime, we’re absolutely getting our hands dirty, having it generate responses, figuring out what works and what doesn’t, and how we can try to solve that today.”
Chart your path to profitable growth
Winning RFPs and new assets has never been harder. Kristen and BlackRock have embraced SRM to improve operational efficiency while boosting proposal quality, giving RFP teams more time to execute on strategy and increase the likelihood of winning.
Watch Kristen’s full session above for more of her expert SRM insight. You’ll also learn how SRM at Microsoft’s Proposal Center of Excellence supports a team that contributed $8.5B in revenue last fiscal year.
For more about AI in SRM and how to activate response teams dealing with increased RFP volume and complexity, watch all of the Responsive Summit24 sessions — available for free on demand.
