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Bringing your company knowledge to life: An interview with the SaaS cloud banking platform, Mambu

Bringing your company knowledge to life: An interview with the SaaS cloud banking platform, Mambu

Customer Stories

Company knowledge is your competitive differentiator. How it’s curated, leveraged, and accessed reverberates throughout every facet of your organization, from […]

Bringing your company knowledge to life: An interview with the SaaS cloud banking platform, Mambu

Bringing your company knowledge to life: An interview with the SaaS cloud banking platform, Mambu

Customer Stories

Company knowledge is your competitive differentiator. How it’s curated, leveraged, and accessed reverberates throughout every facet of your organization, from solution development to end-user training, and from proposal management to sales success.

Difficulty finding or accessing company knowledge is one of the most common roadblocks to productivity. In a study conducted by Forrester® Research, sales professionals cited the ability to find content or information as the number one area in need of improvement to be more productive, especially in remote work environments.

Knowledge management and content management are ubiquitous challenges for organizations of all sizes. Many software and cloud-based XaaS solutions exist to support optimization initiatives, but there’s an upstart sector that’s focusing on bringing your company knowledge to life.

Known as response management, it’s the next evolutionary step beyond RFP response automation. While it’s well-established with proposal teams around the world, response management’s knowledge and content governance capabilities are growing in popularity with sales, pre-sales, InfoSec, customer support, legal, and other teams that rely on accurate, accessible company knowledge to be productive.

Recently, Louise Fahey, Senior Proposal Manager at Mambu, a SaaS cloud-banking platform based in Amsterdam, sat down with an RFPIO representative to discuss how the software helped to bring Mambu’s knowledge to life. This interview took place during the BPC Europe conference hosted by the Association of Proposal Management Professionals (APMP) in Amsterdam.

In the interview transcript that follows (edited for length and clarity), Louise at Mambu and RFPIO’s Vice President of International Sales discuss:

  • How proposal automation capabilities of response management software saves time, both professionally and personally
  • Why content governance is such an important process within knowledge management
  • How quickly other teams recognize the value of knowledge management using response management software
  • Why it’s so easy for new teams, new users, and new hires to start using the software to access and leverage company knowledge


RFPIO (VP of International Sales): I would like to invite one of our customers, Louise from Mambu. She’s here to share her knowledge on how she’s bringing knowledge to life at her company. I understand that at your previous company, once a lifetime ago, you were actually a technical writer. So what encouraged you, what motivated you to actually move into proposal management?

Mambu (Louise Fahey, Senior Proposal Manager): The main reason I moved was the impact that I felt I could have as a proposal manager. I like to use a lifeguard analogy; people only notice the lifeguard when they’re not there. And it’s the same with the proposal manager. You notice when they’re not there and start wondering, “How are we going to manage this deadline with the amount of work that needs to be done?”

There are also a lot of transferable skills between technical writing and proposal management – both roles cover content management, dealing with stakeholders, getting reviews, and managing deadlines. So it was a comfortable transition.

RFPIO: Once upon a time, several years ago, there really wasn’t any software out there that was available to eliminate repetitive tasks. Like actually the company’s headquarters, the number of employees, PCI certification, and so on were a little monotonous. How did you actually feel once you had to do these repetitive tests and under pressure?

Mambu: It was quite frustrating and you questioned the amount of time that was spent copying and pasting into a Word document. Each proposal began to feel a bit like Groundhog Day!

It felt a bit unfulfilling and I started to think, “I can do more than this… I understand the customer’s hot buttons and strategy.” I can add more value to the proposal than just copying and pasting.

RFPIO: So you’ve now seen the light, and you’ve moved away from this random process, and you’re using a response management software. So you were truly bringing the company knowledge to life. So did you ever feel like you were drowning?

Mambu:  I can think of a few occasions.

When you work with a team in a different time zone or you have a tight submission deadline; you’re up until midnight and you know everything has to be submitted by 2:00 PM the next day. You feel like you’re drowning.

Another example is when you have so much content to manage. There’s a library of past responses and when a new proposal comes in, you need to query this library to get the information you need. However, when you start using the search functionality in SharePoint, or whatever repository your documents are hosted in, it doesn’t give you the results you need. That’s another example of drowning; not having the opportunities to adequately search for the answers you need.

RFPIO: How would you say morale has improved since adopting a response management software? Not just the proposal managers, but also the company stakeholders?

Mambu: It has definitely improved a lot, especially amongst our solution engineers (technical sales team). They’re seeing the value because they used to manually fill in proposals.

We also use RFPIO in other parts of the organization, including information security, and assurance teams. They use it to keep their content up to date. Now when we get something like a due diligence questionnaire, it’s easier for those teams to manage as well. It’s game-changing for not just the sales team, but the company as well.

RFPIO: So have they reduced the amount of time that people come to you for answers and improve the quality of those answers? Do SMEs really like them?

Mambu: Yes, definitely. We’ve had a lot less of the same repetitive questions. And it’s not just the Proposal Management team who are dealing with fewer questions, it’s other teams in the organization.

In my previous answer, I mentioned that the information security team uses RFPIO – they’re saving time by using their Slack channel to direct people with questions to RFPIO, where they can find answers.

RFPIO: What was the biggest learning curve switching from Excel to response management software?

Mambu: I think it’s the same as with any other new solution — finding where everything is in the UI takes some getting used to. But the more proposals you do in RFPIO, the better you get.

It’s important to find a solution with really good support, in case you find the learning curve steep. With RFPIO, we have a customer success manager who is there to help. Plus the support team and online help are also excellent.

RFPIO: So now that you don’t have to work holidays, what are you able to spend more time on?

Mambu:  Now that we have RFPIO in place; there’s more time to focus on process improvements, managing our content library better, and also my own career development. It also means we have extra time to create more personalized responses to our RFx.

Personally, it’s also been quite game-changing. Thanks to the efficiencies that come from having a proposal management solution in place, I’m less likely to work evenings — I get to spend more time with family and friends.

RFPIO: How have you made better decisions using RFPIO?

Mambu: We’ve made better decisions as a result of how good our content library is. In the past, I’d have to remember which proposal from 6 months ago had a really good response to a certain question. Now we have a library of good responses and that enables us to make better decisions.

In addition, the project management part of RFPIO takes some of the pressure and stress off and streamlines the process, allowing you to make better decisions.

RFPIO: What would be your number one piece of advice about bringing your company knowledge to life?

Mambu: Putting content into your RFPIO library is only the start. Your content is a living thing. Make sure you get ownership from content reviewers and subject matter experts. Always set your review cycles and then follow up. It’s too much for one person and even one team to keep an entire library of content up to date; getting ownership from outside the proposal management team is important too.

We have added RFPIO to the onboarding process for new employees. They receive training on how to use it, and we’re also working on some e-learning videos to further this process.

RFPIO: I like that last one, probably the most; you talked about bringing company knowledge to life.
A lot of us work at companies where there’s truth, people leave their jobs; like with the great resignation. So you’re bringing in new hires, what’s the fastest way to train on this? So if you have a tool now, use that to share the company knowledge, and that way you save time, because you’re not getting the same question 10 different times.

What advice do you have in regard to best practices or approaches to content management?

Mambu: Let’s talk about content governance. First step is to document the process itself, how we want to manage our content. Once you have your list of subject matter experts, enable them to use RFPIO. I think that’s really important.

It’s not enough for you or your immediate team to believe you’ve got this great proposal management software and that your subject matter experts will love using it to keep content up to date. In reality, don’t be surprised to hear them respond with, “I’ve got 100 other things to do, and I’m not doing this.”

You need to show them the value of using the tool — what’s in it for them? It could be the time saved because they’re not answering the same question multiple times for different people. Or the relief in knowing that the sales team is using an approved response from the content library to answer queries from prospects.

Our content library is tagged by different topics, such as InfoSec, support, implementation, and so on. We have reviewers assigned to our content, and tags help make this process easier. We can even schedule the review process, so reviewers automatically receive a notification about when they need to do the review. And there’s also functionality for adding comments so it can be screened at each step.

We also made it really easy for people outside our team to contact us about RFPIO. We have a dedicated Slack channel where people can ask us questions. And we present RFPIO to the solution engineering and sales teams, making it clear that the proposal management team is here to support them with it.

This helps a lot with content governance; getting that initial buy-in by showing the value of RFPIO, and then providing support to users afterwards.

[END OF INTERVIEW]

Learn more about how RFPIO can help with knowledge management and content governance by  requesting a demo today.

 

5 tips to make proposal content management easy

5 tips to make proposal content management easy

Product & Best Practices

No matter what industry or role you work in, tracking down the right information at the right time is key to success. This is especially true for proposal managers and RFP teams working to meet deadlines. However, thanks to technology, centralizing information in a proposal content library is easier than ever.

With a proposal content library, the manual process of searching through emails, old proposals, and spreadsheets is over. Finding answers is now easily completed with a simple search. But, as most proposal managers know, to be truly useful, the business must practice careful RFP content management.

This post will explore the value of a knowledge library, the importance of maintaining and managing your RFP content and best practices to help keep your proposal process running smoothly.

Proposal content library basics

So, exactly what is a proposal content library? A proposal content library is a centralized location where RFP response content is stored digitally. In some businesses or industries, it is called a proposal content repository or RFP content repository. Alternatively, teams that also store responses to security questionnaires or due diligence questionnaires may use the more general terms, knowledge library or content knowledge library.

Most proposal content libraries are created in Word, Excel, Google Docs or an RFP software solution, like RFPIO, with knowledge management functionality. Information can be copied and pasted into the centralized proposal content repository or, in the case of RFP software, simply imported from previous proposals.

Knowledge libraries with collaboration capabilities deliver even more value. The ability to work together more closely benefits both proposal managers and subject matter experts. As a result, they bypass the time-consuming back and forth of email and achieve true collaboration.

A well-curated content library contains a wealth of company information and its value extends far beyond RFP response. Increasingly, organizations turn to their content libraries for all sorts of response needs, including HR departments, public relations, communications, legal, etc.

The value of an RFP content library

Before the rise of digital transformation, proposal managers had to manually search through old RFPs, emails and documents to find the answers they needed. As intranets and cloud-based solutions grew in popularity, centralizing and storing information in a proposal content library quickly followed.

RFP content repositories bring improved efficiency, transparency and accuracy to the proposal process. A business empowered with a well-managed, organized content knowledge library sees a lot of benefits.

7 benefits of a knowledge library

  1. Easy, quick access to the information required complete proposals
  2. Consistent terminology, tone and style in proposal content
  3. Immediate and continual access to subject matter expert knowledge
  4. Faster onboarding for new subject matter experts
  5. Clear definitions of team responsibilities for revising and updating content
  6. Sales team that is empowered to complete proposals with approved content
  7. Extended value to entire company offered by answering common questions

The importance of managing your content knowledge library

Finding information quickly is one of the most common challenges facing businesses. In fact, the International Data Corporation (IDC) — a global provider of market intelligence — released a study that shows a typical knowledge worker spends “about 2.5 hours per day, or roughly 30 percent of the workday, searching for information.”

To solve this problem, businesses have invested in digital solutions to help collect valuable information. However, as information has become easier to retain, the flood of data presents a new challenge. The IDC article goes on to say:

“Intranet technology, content and knowledge management systems, corporate portals, and workflow solutions have all generally improved the lot of the knowledge worker. These technologies have improved access to information, but they have also created an information deluge that makes any one piece of information more difficult to find.”

Much of the value of RFP software is delivered through knowledge management functionality designed to make life easier. The practice of knowledge management focuses on saving, centralizing and organizing valuable information. Not only does RFP software store key proposal content for future use, but it also empowers users to organize and search for content. Proactive knowledge management is a crucial skill for effective proposal management.

Proposal content management best practices

The efficiency of using an RFP content repository depends on how well it is managed. Certainly, without proper maintenance, it can become a cluttered, unorganized mess of information. In order to avoid this challenge, follow these knowledge library best practices.

1. Add content to your proposal content repository strategically

How do you decide what goes into your knowledge library? Not every answer in every proposal or questionnaire needs to be collected and retained. You have to be strategic when building your proposal content library. Auditing content is an ongoing process, but beginning with best practices in mind will go a long way to keeping your RFP content repository clean and usable.

Avoid bulk uploading from old proposals

When creating your content knowledge library, it’s important to review the information you intend to include. Think of it like this: when you move to a new house, you don’t move the box of old cassette tapes and CDs gathering dust in your basement. Don’t bring things you don’t want to keep into your knowledge library.

Many RFP software solutions offer automated uploading of old proposals. On the surface, this option appears to offer a huge time savings. However, in practice, bulk uploading old proposal content creates a lot of unnecessary, out-of-date and duplicative clutter.

Analyze question intent to avoid adding duplicate content

From one proposal to another, there will certainly be similarities. In fact, in my experience, most proposals received by a business share nearly 60 percent of their content. These questions are a great place to start. Examine several proposals and identify core questions that exist in almost every proposal.

Take care to review several old proposals together, the language will differ but focus on the purpose behind the question and consolidate responses based on intent.

For example these questions have the same purpose. Each asks “who are you” however, each proposal might have a slightly different answer.

  • What is your company’s background?
  • Explain your company history
  • What does your company do and how long have you been in business?
  • Describe your company experience

Evaluate questions for future usefulness

Despite a large portion of similar information, some RFPs will ask questions so specific that the answer simply won’t apply to any future RFP you might receive.

Likewise, some RFPs are so customized to the company’s use case that reusing the content would take just as much rework as creating the answer from scratch. Evaluating questions critically is a key part of proposal content management.

Genericize your previous proposal content and add place holders

The last step before adding new responses to your RFP content repository is to remove any previous language, terminology or identifiers. For example, add placeholders like <>, <>, <> to stand in for specific information that was unique to the previous proposal. There’s nothing more embarrassing than sending a proposal with another company’s information still in it.

Because the amount of information created is constantly growing, managing what goes into the knowledge library is crucial. Evaluating the merit of content and deciding if it should be retained will avoid information overload.

2. Organize your proposal content library with tags

When it comes to knowledge management and keeping your proposal content organized and easy to search, nothing is more helpful than tags. Using tags adds key metadata to your RFP content, allowing it to be categorized. Tags are keywords and phrases you can associate to your proposal content. Then, when you later search for those keywords and phrases, you can isolate your search to just the tagged content.

Content tag categories

There are lots of ways to tag content. For instance, you may serve many different industries and find it helpful to tag responses accordingly — finance, healthcare, technology and so on. When you receive an RFP from a prospect in that industry, a simple search allows you to quickly access relevant proposal content.

Organizing RFP content by markets, however, might not make sense for your organization. It’s important to determine the organization method that would work best for your company’s employees. The important thing is to determine the categories that work for your users.

For example, you might choose to tag content based on:

  • Product lines
  • Internal groups that own the content
  • Security question categories
  • Geographic location

Tagging best practices for RFP content management

Use broad tags and limit the number of options

As you create tags in your RFP content repository, keep them fairly general. If too many tag variations are available, finding the exact one you need can become confusing. Limiting the total number of tags to less than 50 will keep your knowledge categorized and useful without being too segmented.

You also don’t need to combine tags to create highly specific categories that you’ll rarely use. For example, if you serve the healthcare and finance industries you may have proposal content in your library applicable to both. Instead of creating a new tag called “healthcare finance” it is better to tag it with both “healthcare” and “finance.”

Share your list of tags

Once you’ve established your core tags, publish the list. Then, when anyone in your organization needs to find information in the content knowledge library, they know where to start. Socializing your tags also has the benefit of validating your thinking and further defining tags. After all, what makes sense to you may not make sense to somebody else. Understanding the logic and justification behind tags will make your RFP content repository useful to everyone who needs it.

Review your tags regularly

It’s important to review your tag list regularly to make sure all of your tags are still useful. If your tags are well thought out and you have stored enough relevant proposal content, you should see between 10 to 20 records or more associated with each tag.

If you find an individual content record has more than four tags, you should reevaluate whether each tag is needed. On the other hand, if you identify untagged content, review it to determine whether the content is still useful. And if so, take a moment to add any relevant tags to ensure it can be found.

3. Give the right people the right access

You might want to share proposal content with certain users, but not with others. In some cases, providing access to the entire proposal content library may be an unnecessary distraction. How you grant access to your knowledge library depends entirely on where you manage it.

Version control and access in Word or Excel

If you’re managing your content repository in Word or Excel, your ability to collaborate with subject matter experts is somewhat limited. In order to collaborate with colleagues you may need to extract a set of questions from the knowledge library, create a new document with only the relevant info and send it over to your subject matter expert for review. Sending document versions through email can be difficult to track, so if you have an intranet platform it may be useful to share documents there instead.

Permission management in Google docs

Live editing available in Google docs makes collaboration easier, but permission management is still a challenge. Permissions are set at a document level so limiting access to your knowledge would mean creating individual documents for each subject matter expert. For Google sheets experts, there may be an available script to limit access by user by tab, but it’s far from a perfect solution. Google Drive’s search makes it possible to find content using keywords in multiple documents, but the process is cumbersome. It’s a time-consuming workaround.

User permissions in RFP software

RFP software makes setting user permissions easy. Using account hierarchies, you can easily ensure a user is only able to view and edit information that is relevant to their role. This empowers organizations to break down silos without putting sensitive client data into the wrong hands.

For example, if your company has multiple divisions, such as geographically separate groups, hierarchies and subaccounts can help you localize projects and users. Within each sub account, you can create additional subaccounts, continuing until you have a hierarchy structure that accurately reflects your organization. This empowers users to easily access all the data and information related to the sub account in which they’re searching.

In another example, if you’re a consultant who helps clients craft proposals, you can create a hierarchy structure to keep client work separate. When you set up clients as users in subaccounts, they cannot see activity in other client accounts.

4. Schedule regular content reviews

As your proposal content repository grows, implementing regular reviews will help things run smoothly. Old, unreviewed information opens you up to risk. Sending out-of-date information can compromise your chance of winning an RFP and damage your reputation.

As the proposal manager or sales person, you simply cannot keep track of every change throughout the business. Consequently, you won’t know when a change needs to be reflected in your response content. This is why proposal content management requires regularly scheduled updates to the proposal content library.

I recommend assigning subject matter experts the relevant tags to review on a regular basis. For most of your proposal content, reviewing once every six months is probably enough. However, for areas that change quickly, like security information for software a more frequent review cycle might be necessary.

Be sure to communicate expectations. It can also be helpful to encourage proactive updates when subject matter experts know changes have been made. And, finally, don’t be shy about following up and being persistent when proposal content reviews are past-due.

5. Teach key search skills

Once you have your proposal content library set up and organized, it’s time to make sure your team is getting the most out of it. Finding the right content often comes down to knowing what to look for and how to search for it. It seems obvious, but understanding how search works is an underappreciated skill. The ability to search is key to success, according to IDC.

“Increasingly, search has become one of the most frequent, vital tasks a knowledge worker performs.”

There’s a big difference between computer logic and how humans think. Using Boolean search logic will help you quickly find information in your RFP content library.

Boolean search basics

Most search engines leverage Boolean logic to find and narrow search results. Boolean search allows you to specify, group or exclude specific words using AND, OR and NOT functions.

AND search

AND logic only returns results that include all of the terms requested. This is useful when you’re looking for very specific information. For example, if you need answers for questions to respond to a potential client that provides financial technology, you could search for “finance AND technology.”

Proposal content management search skills for AND

OR search

OR will search for proposal content that has any of the search words entered. This is a great option when your key search term may have several synonyms. For instance, if you’re looking for responses that would fit for a banking client, you may want to search for “finance or banking.” Your search results will include any proposal content that contains either finance or banking.

NOT search

NOT searches for results that have one term but excludes another. This is helpful when you know exactly what you want to find between two closely related terms. For example, if you need to provide information about your company’s diversity, but don’t want to see results about HR recruitment policies. Searching for “diversity NOT recruitment” will yield the most relevant results.

Additional search options

In addition to AND, OR and NOT searching, you can combine the terms to further narrow results. You can also use quotation marks (“ ”) to request exact match for long search terms. And finally, you can use parentheses to tell the search engine which operation you’d like completed first.

For example, searching for “(banking OR finance) AND recruitment” will yield results that contain both banking recruitment and finance recruitment. Whereas “banking OR (finance AND recruitment)” will yield results that contain banking as well as results that contain both finance and recruitment.

How RFP software transforms proposal content management

Maintaining best practices for RFP content management is a challenge. However, RFP software makes the process much easier. The features of RFP software designed specifically to meet the unique needs of proposal managers and teams. Including everything mentioned above and more like, content importing, integrations, knowledge management extensions, tags, permissions, account hierarchy management and more ⁠— RFP software delivers huge value.

Discussing the value of their knowledge library, RFPIO customer Paul Maplesden from GEODIS said:

“The GEODIS Content Library refresh would have been much more difficult and time-consuming without the RFPIO tool. RFPIO features have made it much faster and easier for us to identify duplicate content and develop a strong approach to enhance the Content Library.”

To learn more about how RFPIO improves RFP management, learn more about our knowledge management solution or request a demo to see it for yourself.

Understanding the RFP response process

Understanding the RFP response process

Selling & Enablement

If your company is like most, you responded to a lot more RFPs last year than you did the year before. You’ll likely respond to even more in the upcoming months and years.

Leadership is beginning to understand the importance of dedicated response professionals. Still, they’re a bit more reluctant to invest in the processes needed for efficiency, faster response times, better morale, and higher win rates.

To be fair, not all RFP response processes call for automation or even computers, but unless you’re a one-person show–and even if you are—creating quality, on time responses requires a repeatable process. Here is what that looks like for us and perhaps for you.

The basics of the RFP response process

When a company or organization wants to make a major purchase or launch a project, they usually issue a detailed document–a request for proposal (RFP)—describing their needs to several potential vendors. A typical RFP will outline the following:

  • Their budget for the project or product
  • The project’s goals
  • Common deal-breakers, such as:
    • Unsatisfactory audit findings
    • Insufficient security protocols
    • Poorly-defined procedures and policies
    • Improperly vetted subcontractors
    • Customer support concerns
    • Inability to meet the buyer’s budget or timeline
    • Not enough customer references
    • No out-of-the-box functionality
  • The most important factors
  • The RFP’s due date

The prospect may also include separate documents such as a security questionnaire, which asks about your and third-party vendors’ security protocols, or due diligence questionnaire, which asks about your company rather than your product.

The best way to produce a winning bid is to have a process in place. Do you have project management software? Who is your project manager? Do you have a list of subject matter experts (SMEs) and their schedules? What about other stakeholders, such as writers and editors?

RFPs are more alike than they are different. Around 80 percent of an RFP’s questions are relatively standard. For example, it’s common for an RFP to ask about company history, hiring practices, and the onboarding process. Why not have those answers ready to go or at least prepared for a quick proofread?

Creating a repeatable process establishes:

  • Whether the RFP is worth pursuing
  • Team participants
  • Timelines
  • Role definitions
  • SME engagement
  • Final evaluation

Why are RFPs issued?

Organizations issue RFPs when their needs are complex and want to efficiently access multiple vendors. Governmental organizations, many nonprofits, and large companies send RFPs for every purchase exceeding a certain threshold.

Steps in the RFP response process

Establishing an effective and efficient process is easier than you might think. RFPIO’s response managers have identified eight steps:

Step 1 – Go/no-go

As the number of RFPs you receive increases, so does the number of questions on each one. Instead of attempting to respond to each one, choose those that best align with your business and are winnable.

Step 2 – Have a kickoff party

Unfortunately, most kickoff parties don’t have cake, but they do define team and individual roles, responsibilities, and objectives.

Step 3 – 1st draft

Because roughly 80 percent of an RFP contains questions you’ve probably answered before—many times—let your automated system take a run at it first. Make sure the answers are correct and up-to-date.

Step 4 – 2nd draft

Consult with SMEs and other stakeholders to answer the remaining questions.

Step 5 – Review and revise

Were the questions answered accurately and completely? Were all the objectives met? Are there any misspelled words or typos? Are the responses otherwise well-written? Have you attached all relevant documents?

Step 6 – Submit

Once you’ve completed and polished the response, submit it (hopefully before it’s due). Confirm that it was received and let team members know.

Step 7 – Save and audit the responses

Every answer is potentially valuable for future RFPs. Save them in a central location that’s easily accessible to key stakeholders. Make sure you regularly audit the content in the centralized repository.

Step 8 – Postmortem

Win or lose, every response is a learning opportunity. What worked? What could have used improvement?

An example of a high-quality RFP process

A high-quality process is well-defined, efficient, and generates quality proposals for winnable RFPs. Once you’ve established a high-quality process, your team will begin to run like a well-oiled machine, you’ll increase the number of responses and hopefully win more bids.

Accruent, a Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) company, has recently acquired several companies with highly-technical products. RFPs began arriving faster than the response team could master the new technologies. Unsurprisingly, SMEs were stretched thin.

Accruent introduced RFPIO into their response process. Confident that their answers would be stored for future use in their Content Library, SMEs were much more likely to offer their expertise.

Soon, because more than 75 percent of answers came directly from the Content Library, the response team more than tripled its capacity.

RFP response process metrics

The go/no-go step is key to increasing your win rate, but knowing which RFPs to answer requires data. Tracking metrics should be part of your response process. Those metrics include the following:

  • Project types – How many RFPs did you answer compared to DDQs and other documents?
  • Types of wins – You should save your resources for winnable RFPs. What kinds of projects provide the highest win rates? Break types down by:
    • Vertical – Are there specific industries that are more apt to purchase your product or service?
    • Company size – Are your target customers enterprise-level or small and medium-sized businesses?
    • Product line – What is your win rate for that product?
    • Project type – Has your company successfully implemented this type of project in the past?
    • Project stage – How far do similar projects make it through the sales funnel?
    • Number of questions – Do you have the bandwidth for an RFP of that size?
    • Project value – Is it worth it for you?
  • Project scope – How much work does your current project require?
  • Completion time – How long does it take, on average, to complete a similar project? What is the shortest time on record, and what is the longest?
  • Average response rate – What percentage of incoming RFPs do you answer?
  • Resource needs – Comparing the content and moderation needs, who are the people who are best suited for the project?
  • Content needed – Read and understand the questions and determine how much content you have in your Content Library.

Once you have decided to go forward, metrics help keep you on track and tell you whether it’s worth continuing.

  • Determine workload – Break down the project into manageable deliverables which can be divided among your team.
  • Readability score – Write in a way that’s easy to understand, typically at no more than a 10th-grade level. Use tools like the Hemingway App or Flesch reading ease test to ensure readability.
  • The Probability of Win Score (PWIN) – You’ve already calculated your odds of winning based on past similar projects. Still, the PWIN examines the details of your current project for a more accurate prediction.
    • How do your answers compare to similar RFPs that you’ve won?
    • Have you answered each question?
    • Have you met all the conditions?
    • How many questions were you able to answer in the affirmative?
  • Identify content gaps – What is missing from your Content Library? What needs to be updated?
  • Determine your Content Library’s health – How many questions can you answer using the curated content in the Content Library? Aim for 40-80 percent.

For more information on response metrics, read here.

Best practices for a smarter RFP process

Turning your RFP process into an 800-horsepower revenue-generating engine takes coordination, a great pit crew (so to speak), and tools to turbocharge efficiency.

At RFPIO, we receive and respond to RFPs just like you. Below are the best practices our experts swear by.

Encourage collaboration

A Facebook poll by RFPIO found that effective collaboration was considered much more important than an efficient process. I would argue that neither is possible without the other.

Because RFPs are long, complex, and require potential input from every department, from finance to HR to IT (and more), collaboration is a critical part of an RFP response process. And because we have distributed and siloed workforces, intense competition for SMEs’ time, and tight deadlines, smart processes foster collaboration.

An RFP response system should leverage project management and communication tools to keep everyone on the same page. And because respecting your colleagues’ time is key to continued collaboration, it should also include a single source of truth knowledge management system to record answers for use on future projects.

Bring effective storytelling into your RFP responses

No one is suggesting that your RFP response should include the next great novel, but telling your organization’s story helps make your response memorable and builds trust among readers.

Your proposal’s story should include information about your company, such as why your founders created your solution, how it will meet the customer’s needs, and how you will handle their needs.

Your cover letter might highlight your company’s values and what it does to live up to them. It’s also a great idea to include testimonials from customers with similar needs.

Automate your response process

At least three-quarters of companies hope to boost their RFP response, but only around half of those companies consider increasing response staffing. That leaves one option, which is to automate their response processes.

Because most questions on an RFP are exact or near exact duplicates of former queries, you can save hours, days, or even weeks by leveraging machine learning to access those repeat question-and-answer pairs, giving you the time to address the questions that need your efforts.

Develop habits that support organizational success

Suppose you worked out or ate well today. Congratulations! Continue for a few weeks, and the next thing you know, you’ll have formed a habit that might lead to better health and longer life.

When you habitually maintain your list of SMEs and other stakeholders, as well as your Content Library’s health, those habits will pay off with faster responses, smoother collaboration, and improved morale.

Enable your sales team

Aside from your employees, a well-maintained single source of truth is your company’s greatest asset. It might contain incorporation papers, financial statements, sales reports, and product details. There’s no limit to the number of use cases.

We like to think of RFPIO as a sales enablement platform. Naturally, RFPs generate tremendous revenue. Still, a well-maintained Content Library supplies relevant, customer-facing information for sales teams with a few keystrokes. RFPIO’s proposal management features can help you create winning sales proposals complete with automation and reporting.

And because salespeople spend time on the road, RFPIO® LookUp provides access to your Content Library from anywhere you have browser access.

The role of RFP software

Chances are, your company uses CRMs and other sales enablement platforms. You probably also use communication apps and some sort of project management software. How does one make a case for more on top of what your CIO might call a bloated tech stack?

Advanced RFP software works with your tech stack, not on top of it. It should integrate with your productivity, communication, and sales enablement apps, but it should also add value on its own. Unlike a standard project management platform, RFP software is customized for proposal management.

RFP software is designed to let you respond to more requests and maximize your win rate. It may not be a specific part of your sales team, but like your top salespeople, its superpower is revenue generation.

Advanced RFP software should import and export from and to nearly every format and offer standard and customizable templates. Its knowledge and document library should provide relevant stored Q&A pairs as well as required documentation with a few keystrokes. In fact, its knowledge and document library should serve as a single source of truth for the entire organization.

The software’s reporting features should go far beyond response analytics and help facilitate informed business decisions. Additionally, because RFPs come in waves, software should be scalable and instantly respond to your changing requirements.

Choosing the right RFP software for your team

I could spend hours highlighting all the RFP software features you might need, but the fact is that even you don’t know what might arrive next week and especially next year. Your ideal RFP response solution is a bespoke answer to your evolving needs.

The software should work with your existing systems to maximize revenue and efficiency. It should be designed by response managers who know the ebbs and flows of response processes.

The most important feature, however, is the designers. Is the company receptive to your questions and poised to consider adding features as requested?

RFPIO’s approach to the response process

RFPIO offers an end-to-end approach to RFP response. Its features include:

  • Knowledge – Store your commonly-seen questions and answers and your critical documents in a single repository.
  • Collaboration – Communicate with other stakeholders inside the platform or with your current collaboration apps.
  • Projects – Break your projects down into manageable pieces, assign tasks, and keep track right inside the app.
  • Insights – How much time and other resources are you using? How many and what kind of deals do you win? What are your strengths and weaknesses? RFPIO has many standard and nearly unlimited customized reporting features.
  • Integrations – RFPIO integrations work seamlessly with more than two dozen of the most popular business applications.
  • Remote access – RFPIO® LookUp provides access to your Content Library through Google, Microsoft Office, and many other applications.
  • Loyal customers – RFPIO is the response platform for many of the world’s most successful companies, including Google, Microsoft, Facebook, Visa, Lyft, Zoom, and hundreds more. Read more about RFPIO from our customers.

Case study

While RFPIO is the RFP response solution for large companies, most enterprise organizations have dedicated response departments. Employees for smaller companies find themselves wearing many hats, which sometimes means putting RFPs on the back burner.

Complí, a small software company located in Portland, OR, often found themselves missing deadlines for lack of time and personnel. Just a week after investing in RFPIO, that changed. The company was able to respond to RFPs without holding time-consuming, in-office meetings. They were also able to complete up to 80 percent of each RFP with just one click, thanks to the Content Library.

Today, they are submitting RFPs on–time (and even early) and the entire company uses the Content Library as their single source of truth.

RFP response management process FAQs

It isn’t easy to gauge RFPIO’s true value without seeing it in action. We invite you to view a demo to see how RFPIO might benefit your organization. Before that, though, here are some of the most common questions we are asked:

  • What is an RFP? – A request for proposal (RFP) is a document designed to solicit multiple bids for large organizational purchases.
  • What type of information and questions are included in an RFP? – An RFP provides in-depth descriptions of the customer needs, deadlines, and so on. It might ask for company history and details, pricing, related past projects, and projected deliverables, and so on.
  • Why do organizations issue RFPs? – Organizations issue RFPs to gather pricing and service comparisons in their desired formats.
  • Who responds to RFPs? – Some organizations have dedicated response departments. Others might respond through their sales teams.
  • What does RFP software do? – The short version is that RFP software helps organizations win more business using fewer resources. The longer version is that it utilizes your existing applications and teams, along with customizable tools and a robust Content Library, to become a revenue-generating engine.
  • Does RFPIO do more than respond to RFPs? – As a response platform, RFPIO will automatically respond to up to 80 percent of a request for information (RFI), request for quote (RFQ), security questionnaire, due diligence questionnaire, and more. As a sales-enablement tool, its proposal management features and Content Library will help you drive revenue. And as a business application, its built-in and customizable analytics will provide the information needed for informed decision-making.
  • Does RFPIO integrate with existing applications? – RFPIO integrates with more than two dozen applications, including the most popular ones.
  • What if we need to add or subtract users? – RFPIO has a best-in-class pricing model. Instead of purchasing licenses, we provide unlimited access.
  • Is RFPIO secure? – RFPIO has industry-leading security protocols. We are trusted by the world’s leading technology, healthcare, and financial services companies, including Google, Facebook, Microsoft, Visa, Cigna, and far more.
RFI vs RFP vs RFQ: What’s the difference?

RFI vs RFP vs RFQ: What’s the difference?

Templates & guides

RF-what? When businesses need to exchange information, you’ll often hear acronyms like RFI, RFP and RFQ. These similar-sounding terms are often used interchangeably and can cause confusion. However, each document serves a distinct purpose. Consequently, it’s important to understand the difference between an RFI vs RFP vs RFQ so you know how to use them and how to respond.

In short, the difference between these terms comes down to what you’re trying to accomplish. While all three documents help businesses exchange information, they each serve a distinct purpose. Used independently or together, RFIs, RFPs and RFQs are all important tools for communicating, reducing risk and forming mutually-beneficial partnerships.

So, what IS the difference between an RFI vs RFP vs RFQ? Here’s the short answer:

RFI

A request for information educates. 

RFIs gather info to research potential solutions.

RFP

A request for proposal compares.

RFPs evaluate the overall value a vendor can offer.

RFQ

A request for quotation quantifies.

RFQs detail the cost of meeting a specific need.

But, that’s just the beginning.

In this article we’ll explain everything you need to know (and more) about what RFIs, RFQs and RFPs are. We’ll start with key definitions and uses. Then, we’ll share how to select the right one for your project. And, finally, we’ll provide our favorite examples and resources for learning even more

Table of contents

Admittedly, there’s a lot to cover here. So, use the link below to jump to each section.

Definitions to know: RFX, RFI, RFP, RFQ

There’s a lot of jargon and acronyms involved when businesses begin exchanging information to form a new partnership. So, before we dig into the differences between each of these documents, let’s cover a few key definitions.

What is an RFX?

The acronym RFX stands for request for ____ (fill in the blank). It’s a term used to collectively refer to any questionnaire request issued by a buyer to a prospective vendor. So, RFX could stand for RFP, RFQ, RFI, RFO and so on.

What is an RFI?

The acronym RFI stands for request for information. A request for information is a questionnaire used to ask vendors about their products and services. Often, RFIs gather general information, market details and solution ideas for planning purposes.

An RFI is the most casual of all the RFX options. It asks general questions about vendors and the market landscape. Rather than sending an unstructured email to potential vendors, a request for information provides a standardized format, which is easier to review. Additionally, RFIs are a quick way to fill in gaps in your research. According to TechTarget, 

“An RFI is typically the first and most broadly cast of a series of requests intended to narrow down a list of candidates.”

RFI characteristics

  • Serves as a casual introduction to vendors
  • Offers a general overview of the vendor landscape
  • Asks open-ended, high-level questions
  • Used in the early stages of the buying process to refine vague project requirements

What is an RFP?

RFP is the acronym for request for proposal. A request for proposal is a detailed questionnaire used by buyers to collect decision-critical information and pricing from potential vendors. The RFP is one of the most commonly used tools for evaluating vendors and documenting selection justification.

An RFP is a formalized and structured way of getting specific vendor information (including pricing). It allows you to detail the problem you wish to solve and invites vendors to suggest solutions. Indeed, RFPs are very thorough and offer a side-by-side, fact-based comparison of vendors’ capabilities.

According to Hubspot, 

“RFPs give you a sneak peek into different strategies you may not have considered since each vendor will include their own unique action plan along with their bid.”

RFP characteristics

  • Shares background information about your problem, process and needs
  • Includes detailed questions about the vendor and solution
  • Offers specific parameters for the services and products you’re seeking
  • Indicates you moved beyond exploration and are ready to buy
  • Compares vendors based on your unique priorities

What is an RFQ?

RFQ is an acronym that stands for request for quote or quotation. A request for quotation is a document that details a buyer’s needs and asks vendors to respond with a detailed pricing proposal. Generally, a buyer issues an RFQ when looking for the lowest possible price.

An RFQ is a request sent to vendors for pricing and payment information. Generally, it includes detailed requirements and deliverables. Unlike the RFI and RFP, the RFQ rarely includes questions, because the buyer must already know exactly what they need. Indeed, only use this document if you are well aware of marketplace conditions and offerings. An RFQ means that a purchase is imminent and the list of needs detailed in the request rarely changes.

According to Investopedia,

“When the soliciting company knows the exact number or type of product or services it desires, it customarily uses an RFQ. Typically, companies use an RFQ when products and services are standardized, or off-the-shelf.”

RFQ characteristics

  • Includes a list of detailed requirements
  • Centers around deliverables, costs and payment terms
  • Used when you already know exactly what you’re looking for
  • Indicates vendors’ ability to provide the requested services and goods as requested
  • Offers with the lowest price generally win

RFI vs RFP vs RFQ comparison guide

As you can see from the definitions above, each RFX document has a unique goal. But there are other key differences between an RFI vs RFP vs RFQ. Outlined here, you’ll see that there’s a significant difference in the purpose, the questions the document asks, the purchase readiness indicated by the request, the style of the document, and its potential advantages.

Request for information

Purpose:
To gather data for planning purposes

Asks:
General questions designed to educate and inform

Purchase readiness:
Not yet ready, this is the exploratory phase

Request style:
Casual, asking for help

Response style:
Informal and consultative — your content will be more along the lines of solution briefs, case studies and custom answers to open-ended questions.

Advantage:
Offers buyers helpful insight and an up-to-date look at potential solutions.

Request for proposal

Purpose:
To compare vendor solutions and value

Asks:
Detailed questions about the product, people and process

Purchase readiness:
A purchase is planned, this is the due diligence phase

Request style:
 Formal, detailed and direct

Response style:
The tone of an RFP response mirrors the structured and formal nature of the request. Content will be in the form of answers to many, many questions. 

Advantage:
Provides a clear comparison of the capabilities and value vendors offer

Request for quotation

Purpose:
To find unit pricing for specific items 

Asks:
Pricing questions about specific goods or services

Purchase readiness:
A purchase is imminent, this is the final step

Request style:
Structured and itemized  

Response style:
Content in an RFQ response is usually very concise and unembellished. May also contain some technical, financial, and legal information.

Advantage:
Removes distractions and allows buyers to focus exclusively on pricing

How are RFIs, RFPs and RFQs related?

Each RFX achieves a unique goal. However, the core purpose of every RFI, RFP and RFQ document is to help select the perfect vendor. According to Kevin Iwamoto, senior consultant at Goldspring Consulting, 

“All three have been used globally for decades to obtain relevant information from potential suppliers and are meant to create and establish a fair and equal weighted process where all vendors, incumbent and potential, have a chance to become a ‘preferred’ supplier for a corporation. They have been instrumental in enterprise risk mitigation, process standardization, cost savings and cost avoidance.”

Who sends RFIs, RFPs and RFQs and why?

The practice of creating and issuing RFIs, RFQs and RFPs is called request management. While sourcing professionals and procurement consultants work with RFX tools daily, they are also useful to others. For example, a small- or medium-sized business that doesn’t have a dedicated procurement department may require department heads to use an RFP before making large purchases. Generally, this is to ensure a thoughtful, objective and financially-sound decision.

For high-value, strategic purchases, a multi-step process is wise. For example, when selecting a new accounting software to replace an old solution you may have a list of needs including a few custom requirements. Technology moves so quickly that starting with an RFI can help you explore new functionality that you may not be aware of. Then, once you know what features you need, you can narrow your vendor selection and send a more detailed RFP.

Who responds to RFIs, RFPs and RFQs and why?

Responding to these RFX documents (and other information requests) is called response management. When it comes to creating compelling responses that may lead to new business, it’s a team effort typically led by a proposal manager. The response process also involves sales, marketing and subject matter experts.

RFPs, RFIs and RFQs are a standard part of many procurement and sales cycles. They provide insight on customer needs and direct access to decision makers. Accordingly, businesses view these requests as opportunities to connect with buyers and win business. For many, answering RFPs is a significant part of their growth strategy.

How to issue and respond to requests

There are two sides to every RFI, RFP and RFQ: the buyer who issues the request and the vendor who responds. Here’s tips so you can do it all.

RFI, RFP, RFQ tips for buyers (issuers)

When you need to request information from a vendor, the first step is to decide which RFX to use.

Start by answering these questions:

  • Do you know what questions to ask a vendor?
  • Are your questions very specific or more general?
  • Do you already have a preferred vendor list (a shortlist)?
  • Do you need to bid out the work through a formal RFP process?
  • Are you working with repeat or first-time vendors?
  • Do you know exactly what you’re looking for, or would you like vendors to make suggestions?

With this information, you should have everything you need to decide if you should use an RFI vs RFP vs RFQ.

  • If you’re shopping for very specific services and know exactly what you want, then an RFQ is your best best
  • However, if you’re close to a purchase but open to ideas, an RFP is probably the way to go
  • Finally, if you’re just trying to get an overview of your vendors or see if there’s a solution to your pain, then the simpler RFI might be the better choice

Now, you can start writing your request.

Tips for writing an RFI

  • Give responders context — tell them about your challenge and goals
  • Let vendors confirm or challenge the research you’ve conducted independently
  • You don’t need to make any promises or commitments, you’re simply gathering information
  • Keep it short to encourage and maximize vendor engagement
  • Seek their perspectives, not detailed capabilities (you’ll judge these later)
  • Ask if they have any questions, while it may seem counterintuitive, it can give valuable insight
  • Cast a wide net, you’ll narrow your selection later in the process

Tips for writing an RFP

  • If you’re looking for specialized or customized service, ask to see an example of that kind of work done for other clients
  • Avoid sticker shock by requiring a comprehensive pricing plan
  • Be as in-depth as you need to be. At this point, you’re both invested, so make sure your priority questions are as thorough as they need to be
  • If you’re unsure of a seller’s expertise or competency for your needs, address it. Ask them for the examples, certifications or references that will put you at ease
  • Avoid vague questions — you have specific expectations, whether you realize it or not. So, if you’re having problems writing exact requirement questions, collaborate with someone outside the situation who can help challenge assumptions

Tips for writing an RFQ

  • Provide minimal background and a list of requirements
  • Detail your needs in a list of products, features and functionality required
  • Include the quantity of goods or duration of service required
  • Provide a timeline for expected delivery
  • State your preferred payment terms
  • Include a pricing table or form for consistency

RFI, RFP, RFQ tips for vendors (responders)

Regardless of which kind of request you’re responding to, there are two key practices that are essential to success. First, using your competitive differentiators. And second, leveraging a content library.

1. Know your competitive differentiators

The purpose of an RFI, RFP or RFQ is to compare several vendors. Knowing how to highlight your advantages is key to winning. It’s common for buyers to ask about these things directly. So, be prepared to answer questions like these:

  • What is the competitive advantage of your solution?
  • Describe your competitive position relative to your competitors.
  • When comparing yourself to the market, what are the unique selling points?
  • Briefly state how you are differentiated from any competitors.
  • Why should we work with you instead of one of your competitors?

Avoid offering a generic answer to these questions. Instead of using jargon-y adjectives that everyone else uses, focus on demonstrating the value your solution provides.

Knowing company differentiators is half the battle for many organizations — take the time to explore what these are for each prospective customer and how to communicate them.

“A value proposition offers clients something they want and gives them a good reason to choose you over your competitors. In the executive summary and in your full proposal, communicate a strong value proposition that matches your client’s needs and demonstrates your unique offer.”

– APMP Body of Knowledge

2. Leverage a content library

How do you make sure the best versions of your competitive differentiators are easy for your team to use in RFIs, RFPs and RFQs? Make sure they’re in your response content library, of course.

This is where all of your response content is stored and organized for future use. Much of the content in these libraries exists as Q&A pairs, making them easy to find and understand. Using response management software to create a content library has many advantages:

  • Repeatability – Build your response process around the foundation of your response management software. It will help establish steps for how you develop a response, access content, and collaborate with writers, editors, and experts time and again.
  • Efficiency – Make everything easier and faster—from finding content and assembling documents, to working with collaborators. Teams that do so are often able to increase efficiency by 40%.
  • Quality – With much of the time-intensive activities of responding offloaded to AI-enabled software and rock-solid processes, you can spend more time on personalizing responses and generating revenue.

Tips for responding to an RFI

As you respond to an RFI, remember that the prospective customer is still in the information-gathering stage of their process. Your response is an opportunity to connect with a future buyer, share your industry expertise and shape the content of any subsequent RFP the buyer may issue.

  • Write a thoughtful and thorough response focused on both solving the presented challenge and sharing your knowledge
  • Collaborate on the RFI response with subject matter experts who have the most up-to-date knowledge in their field 
  • If you don’t meet the exact requested criteria, but have an solution that solves the challenge, answer anyway
  • Focus on the creative and unique ways your organization would approach the customer’s needs
  • Use a cover letter or executive summary to offer a follow up call to connect and offer specific insight or to answer any questions that may come up

For more detail on how to respond to an RFI, check out this blog: Succeed with your next request for information response.

Tips for responding to an RFP

An RFP seeks to compare qualitative information as objectively as possible. Ideally, the buyer is looking for the solution that offers the best overall value. To help accomplish that, the RFP includes substantial detail about the buyer’s challenges, needs and goals. Be sure to use this information to your best advantage.

  • Review the RFP before beginning to ensure you fully (or at least mostly) meet the RFP criteria
  • Be sure to follow instructions closely and answer the RFP questions thoroughly
  • Incorporate win themes that convey your unique differentiators, expertise and understanding of the customer’s needs
  • Include customer stories with quantifiable results when possible, use your RFP content library to prepare these proactively
  • Customize your responses to include the buyer’s company name and echo the language they used

To explore how RFP software makes responding faster and winning easier check out this blog: Why you need RFP software.

Tips for responding to an RFQ

  • RFQs may not include detailed context or background, ask for clarification if needed
  • Take note of deadlines and delivery requirements to ensure your organization can meet the requirements
  • Clearly state any additional costs and fees associated with the requested items
  • This could be your only shot to win the business so, provide your best offer that is competitive but sufficiently profitable

Learn more about how to win RFQs and grow revenue here: What is a request for quote.

Sample RFI, RFP and RFQ scenarios and questions

RFI example scenario

ABC Company wants to strengthen their relationship with customers through social media channels. They currently maintain a Facebook page, Twitter account, and LinkedIn presence.

The challenge is to engage current customers and use their networks to refer your products and services to peers. Based on this scenario, here are some RFI questions you might ask:

  • What social media channels do you consider to be important for ABC Company and why?
  • What are your initial impressions of our social media presence?
  • How do you measure ROI for social media activities?
  • For efficient integration between our internal marketing and external service providers, what people, process and technology factors do you think are important to consider? Are there any limitations you need to know about?
  • What social media channels do you consider to be important for ABC Company and why?
  • What are your initial impressions of our social media presence?
  • How do you measure ROI for social media activities?
  • For efficient integration between our internal marketing and external service providers, what people, process and technology factors do you think are important to consider? Are there any limitations you need to know about?

RFP example scenario

Your company needs to acquire new accounting software. Beyond getting pricing and approach details, the RFP is a great place to get info on how you will work together. Ask how you can reduce risk, save time and save money. Here are some sample RFP questions to consider:

  • How will you approach the implementation of the software? What are your plans to ensure optimal adoption?
  • What steps can we pursue to control costs and limit cost overruns? How will you work with us to ensure we maximize value without increasing costs?
  • What risks to the timeline or budget do you see, based on your understanding of our organization? A high-level question like this gives you a sense of how much thought or effort they’re putting into their response
  • How are you monitoring and staying ahead of trends in our industry? What do you do to encourage innovation?

RFQ example scenario

If your organization needs to purchase new janitorial supplies, your RFQ may include the following items:

  • Multi-surface cleaner – Cost per ounce: $______
  • 13-gallon, 1 mil trash can liner – Cost per 100: $______
  • 1.2-gallon, .55 mil small trash can liner – Cost per 100: $______
  • Hand soap – Cost per ounce: $______
  • 8″ paper towel roll – Cost per 800 ft. roll: $______
  • Weekly delivery cost: $______
  • Net 60 payment terms: Yes or no

Regardless of which RFX you issue or respond to, RFP software can help. To see how you can transform all of your request and response processes to make your organization more efficient, effective and profitable, request a Responsive  demo.

Originally published April 25, 2021 — Updated June 15, 2023

RFP strategy: How to grow your business with RFPs

RFP strategy: How to grow your business with RFPs

Revenue generation

Does your business have an effective RFP strategy? When it comes to RFPs, organizations generally take one of two approaches. Either they respond to every RFP they receive, or they ignore them completely and opt out of the process. Unfortunately, neither option could be called strategic. One wastes time and the other ignores potential opportunities.

In the middle of these two opposite approaches is an RFP strategy that will improve your chances of winning while ensuring your time is used wisely. With some consideration, time and helpful tips you can discover how to use RFPs as a tool to grow your business.

In this blog, I’ll define what an RFP strategy is. Then, I’ll explore the flaws in common approaches to RFPs and why they work well. Finally, I’ll offer some tips to help you make your RFP strategy a success. With these things in mind, you can build a process that saves time, optimizes your proposals and empowers you to win more business.

What is an RFP strategy?

So, what exactly is an RFP strategy? An RFP strategy is how your business receives, reviews and approaches requests for proposals. In addition, it clearly defines goals and expected outcomes. Finally, an RFP strategy serves as a guide for decisions to bid or not to bid.

Factors to consider when creating your RFP strategy:

  • How many RFPs do you respond to in a year?
  • What is your RFP win rate?
  • On average, how much time does an RFP response require?
  • Typically, how much value does an RFP opportunity represent?
  • What percentage of revenue is a result of successful proposals?

These questions will help you define the role that RFPs play in your business. With that information in mind, you can start to build your RFP strategy by considering the results that could be achieved with small changes to your current approach. 

RFP strategies are often part of larger business development initiatives. For instance, Viewpoint, a computer software, created an RFP strategy for business development. According to Mark Vignolo, Viewpoint’s Manager of Sales:

“I’m not entirely sure that we are unique, but I can tell you that we definitely see our share of RFPs. One of the things I’ve mentioned during the sales process is, when somebody gets a 1000-question RFP, nobody’s happy to receive that.

But when an RFP comes in, you can’t say no. Really, it’s the gateway to getting involved in the sales process.”

With the goal of growth in mind, they adopted RFP software to streamline their process and enable their existing staff to leverage their proposal content library and collaborate more effectively. Their typical response time went down by 20-30 percent.

RFP strategy example

To illustrate, if Viewpoint were to define its RFP strategy, it might look like this:

Our company uses RFPs to win new business. The goal of our strategy is  to increase both the number of RFPs we respond to as well as our win rates. We will do this by increasing our team efficiency as well as improving the quality of our RFP content.

We receive RFPs directly from customers as well as through RFP databases and open bids. We increase efficiency by 20-30 percent by leveraging RFP software to automate RFP responses, ensure consistency and collaborate with subject matter experts (SMEs) and stakeholders.

If successful, business secured from RFPs will represent 30 percent of new revenue, a 15 percent increase over last year.

Why common approaches to RFPs don’t work

It’s no secret that RFPs are not well-loved. As mentioned above, businesses frequently adopt an extreme all-or-nothing policy when it comes to responding to RFPs. If either of these approaches sound familiar, it may be time for a better RFP strategy.

The shotgun approach: Answering them all

If you answer every RFP, you may find yourself thinking, “Why do I need an RFP strategy? It’s simple, an RFP comes in and we answer it. Then, we wait to find out if we won.” This reactive approach is unpredictable, chaotic and inconsistently rewarding. In fact, not being selective often results in a low RFP win rate, a burned-out proposal team and a whole lot of wasted time. 

The problem is that businesses that answer every RFP often don’t calculate the cost of the time spent creating a proposal. Subsequently, they neglect to weigh their investment with the likelihood of winning. 

Not only does answering every RFP mean that you’re wasting time, it likely also means that your RFP responses aren’t customized to the buyer’s needs. The results? At best, you don’t win the RFP. At worst, you make a bad impression and the potential customer remembers you for all the wrong reasons.

The take-my-ball-and-go-home approach: Opting out of the RFP process

On the opposite end of the spectrum is the second common approach to RFPs ⁠— not participating at all. Unfortunately, it’s a common situation: the deck was stacked against you. You’ve spent time researching, collaborating and crafting an RFP response, honing it until it was pure perfection, only to discover that there was no real chance of winning. Lo and behold, your work-of-art proposal was merely rounding out the required trio of proposals in a farce of due diligence.

Some businesses that have run into this situation one too many times, simply refuse to answer RFPs altogether. While it’s an understandable reaction, refusing to engage altogether means the business misses out on genuine opportunities for which they might have been the perfect fit. These organizations limit their potential for growth, miss out on insights that could be gained from RFP data and force customers to work outside of the proven RFP process ⁠— it’s an approach that few can afford long term.

If neither of these options sounds ideal, you’re right. There’s a better way, and it starts with defining an RFP strategy.

5 tips to make the most of your RFP strategy

1. Adopt a proactive RFP approach

When it comes to receiving RFPs, many businesses just wait for them to arrive in their inbox. However, if you’re looking to grow your business, being proactive pays. After all, you can’t respond to an RFP if you don’t know it exists. 

Encourage client-facing team members to ask questions about potential customers’ procurement process. Do they plan to issue an RFP? If the answer is yes, offer to be a resource for them as they create their RFP. For example, Cegid, a business management solution, created The ultimate guide for building an RFP for talent acquisition in 3 steps.

Because they offer this guide, they deliver genuine value for their customers. In addition, they position themselves as a leader in the industry and stand a good chance of receiving the subsequent RFP, packed with questions they wrote themselves.

2. Pair your RFP strategy with capture management

Capture management is the process of gathering insight, building a connection with a potential customer and strategizing how to win RFPs that are upcoming. The goal of capture planning is to put you in a favorable position long before the RFP is issued.

Using a capture management plan as a part of your RFP approach for particularly valuable opportunities increases your chances of success. If you’re interested in learning more about how to create a capture management plan, check out this blog: Capture management: The plan to win.

3. Be picky about which RFPs you respond to

As you create your strategy, improving your RFP win rate will likely come up. One of the fastest ways to give it a boost is to simply decline to bid on opportunities that aren’t a good fit or you’re unlikely to win. 

The decision to bid or not to bid should be based on five factors:  

  1. The big picture: Does this opportunity align with your business’s long-term goals?
  2. Capability: Is your business equipped to fulfill the RFP requirements?
  3. Profitability: Will the project be profitable?
  4. History: Do we have proposal content from a previous RFP in our knowledge library?
  5. Competition: Do you know who you’re competing against and can you win?

Remember, if you decide not to bid, it’s a good idea to clearly communicate your intention with the RFP issuer. In some cases, the issuer will respond, asking you specifically to provide a proposal and offering additional insight that might sway your decision. Not only that but the extra courtesy and communication will make you memorable and ensure you’re not excluded from future opportunities. 

4. Adopt RFP software to improve the RFP process and collect data

When it comes to execution of your RFP strategy, you may find yourself in need of a little help. RFP software centralizes the proposal process and streamlines it with RFP automation. When responding to RFPs, an RFP management system allows you to quickly access past proposal content, confer with SMEs and track proposal progress. Additionally, it enables greater collaboration, improved efficiency and data collection. It’s truly a game-changer. 

Speaking of data, if you’re not already tracking your RFP data including your win rate, start now. The benefits of capturing RFP data are numerous. Tracking your win rate is the best way to understand how you’re winning, why you’re winning and how to win RFPs more often. Additionally, with RFP data you can optimize your proposal process, predict RFP trends and quantify the value you deliver to your business.

5. Share your strategy with the business

RFPs inevitably require participation from people across your organization. So, it is helpful to define your team and bring them into your plan. A well-documented approach helps to guide all departments that interact with the proposal process from sales to legal. Certainly the better they understand the process, the more likely they are to participate effectively.

Finally, share your success stories. It’s not uncommon for SMEs and stakeholders to circle back with the proposal coordinator to ask, “Whatever happened with that big RFP we worked on?” While you may not need a full debrief for every opportunity, it’s important to close the loop. Celebrate wins and share lessons learned from lost opportunities. Always use the knowledge to continue optimizing and improving your RFP strategy.

Final thoughts

A well-defined RFP strategy can streamline your proposal process, help you win RFPs and make your team more efficient. Subsequently enabling you to respond to even more RFPs and win more business. As time goes on, the benefits compound and your RFP strategy will continue to pay dividends.

Request for qualifications: A guide to the other RFQ

Request for qualifications: A guide to the other RFQ

Selling & Enablement, Templates & guides

Depending on the industry you work in, you may be familiar with one or both of the procurement processes that go by the acronym RFQ. For many, a request for quotation may be more familiar. However, its counterpart, the request for qualifications is just as useful.

In this blog, I’ll focus primarily on the request for qualifications. But, to get started I’ll define a request for qualifications vs. a request for quote. Then, I’ll outline the common uses for an RFQ as well as the components of the document. Then, I will provide tips and best practices for writing and responding to RFQs. Finally, I will include some helpful RFQ examples. 

Tired of searching through spreadsheets, emails and previous responses to answer RFQs?
Request a demo of Responsive to see how you can cut response time in half.

A story of two RFQs: Request for qualifications vs. request for quote

Admittedly, there are a lot of acronyms in sales and procurement. However, RFQ stands for both a request for qualifications and a request for quote. Consequently, there is some understandable confusion. So, to start, let’s establish the difference between the two RFQs.

What is a request for qualifications?

A request for qualifications is a document that asks potential suppliers or vendors to detail their background and experience providing a specific good or service. The RFQ may also be called a statement of qualifications, or SOQ. Both documents focus specifically on a vendor’s skills and experience rather than pricing. Therefore, the response is not typically considered a bid.

What is a request for quote or quotation?

A request for quote or quotation is a document that details a buyer’s requirements and asks vendors to respond with pricing and payment terms. The focus of this document is primarily price, and often, the lowest priced bidder will win the business.

To learn more about requests for quotations or see RFQ examples and templates, check out this blog: What is a request for quote?

Now that we have the basics out of the way, we’ll explore the request for qualifications. So, below when you see RFQ referenced, it will stand for request for qualifications.

The RFQ’s role in the sales cycle

Who uses RFQs?

The request for qualifications process is common to the government sector. Most RFQs issued are for projects involving construction management, architecture, engineering and other professional services.

3 ways an RFQ is used

In most cases, this process precedes an RFP, but not always. Procurement professionals may issue the RFQ in three different ways.

1. Vendor selection for an upcoming, identified request for proposal

In this case, the procurement team has a project in mind. However, they want to send the upcoming RFP only to the most qualified vendors. The RFQ is sent to a large group and helps narrow the field of vendors for the subsequent RFP. 

Certainly, this two-stage approach allows for a shorter, more focused RFP. In addition, evaluating a handful of pre-qualified vendors is much easier for buyers than scoring proposals from dozens that may not be able to meet their needs.

2. Non-competitive RFQ to catalog vendor information for future procurement projects

Much like using vendor profiles, requests for qualifications are a helpful tool to organize important supplier information. In fact, some companies use RFQs as a standard part of their vendor onboarding process. Then, as future procurement needs arise, the most qualified vendors are selected to participate in the RFP. Having this information on hand makes the procurement process more efficient. Accordingly, it’s in a vendor’s best interest to respond to these requests for information.

3. Rapid vendor selection 

Occasionally, an RFQ replaces an RFP. For straightforward projects that require a specialized skill set, a company may issue a request for qualifications, evaluate the statements of qualification and move directly to contract negotiations with the most qualified vendor. 

In this scenario, the RFQ provides details about the project budget. This transparency assists in the go/no-go process for bidders, empowers faster contracting and ensures buyers that only vendors prepared to work within that budget respond.

How to write a request for qualifications

1. Outline your objective

Because a request for qualifications can be used in several ways, it is important to clearly state your intended outcome. Consider what outcome would make this RFQ a success. To do that, you may need to enlist feedback from stakeholders or executives within your business. What are the specific requirements for the project? Are there essential technical skills? How many years of experience or similar projects should a vendor have successfully completed?

The more context and detailed questions you can add, the better your responses will be. Not only that, but providing a thorough understanding of your needs will discourage unqualified vendors from responding, which will make your evaluation process easier.

2. Create your RFQ

With your list of requirements in hand, it’s time to create your RFQ. It can be helpful to create a template to work from to ensure you don’t miss any crucial components. If you have an RFP management system, leverage dynamic templates to group common questions together into sections.

3. Issue the RFQ

Now, it’s time to send it. Contact the vendors you’d like to hear from through an RFP consultant or directly through email. If you use RFP software, you can issue the RFQ digitally, communicate with vendors directly in the centralized platform and track their progress. In addition, you can answer questions and share the information with every vendor instantly. This helps to keep your RFQ fair and transparent. 

4. Evaluate the responses

Finally, the due date has arrived, now you’re ready to evaluate the statements of qualification you’ve received. Start by reviewing each document to see if the organizations followed directions and filled the RFQ out completely. If there are any gaps, you may go back to the vendor for more information or remove them from consideration. 

Next, it’s time to score the responses and statements of qualifications. Refer back to your source document for the scoring criteria and weights you established. Some questions will have straight forward yes or no answers, making them easy to score based on the desired answer. For subjective questions, it is helpful to engage your stakeholders to provide their input. Again, RFP software can help automate this process and empower easier collaboration with your evaluation committee. 

Once all the SOQs are scored, hopefully you have a clear set of front runners, or perhaps even a winner. Remember, even if you don’t select a particular vendor, RFQs can be useful to keep on hand for future procurement projects.

Essential components of an RFQ

  • Company information including business details and primary contact person
  • Project description with background information, desired outcome, scope and next steps
  • RFQ timeline noting submission due date, shortlist selection date and final decision date
  • Evaluation criteria and weighted scoring details
  • Submission instructions
  • Qualification questions and experience requirements
  • Contracting terms and conditions if applicable

Creating a winning response to a request for qualifications

Despite the fact that RFQs are generally shorter and more direct than RFPs and other RFXs, the response to request for qualifications process is nearly identical. 

1. Go/no-go

Responding to RFQs for which you are not a fit wastes your time and can negatively affect future transactions for which you might be a fit. Accordingly, it’s important to have a thoughtful go or no-go discussion.

Before determining whether your company is a fit, thoroughly read the specific requirements for the project. Are there essential technical skills? How many years of experience or and success do you need to have on similar projects? Does the project align with your company’s goals?

2. Have a kickoff meeting

Once you’ve determined that the project is a fit, host a kickoff meeting. In this session, you’ll review the RFQ, provide an overview of the response process, and assign roles, responsibilities and objectives.

3. Create the first draft

While an RFQ is different from an RFP, you’ll likely find some overlap in the questions asked. So, if you’ve responded to RFPs in the past that have many of the same requirements, you can use that content in your SOQ response. Customers who use RFP software, like Responsive, leverage their response content library to answer to 80 percent of the RFQ in minutes. 

4. Refine the second draft

Once you’ve inserted the answers for questions you’ve seen already, it’s time to tackle new or complex qualifications questions. Gather your SMEs and other stakeholders to customize answers and create new content for any remaining questions.

5. Review and revise

Did you and your team answer each question? Are the answers accurate and complete? Did you meet all the objectives and requirements? Is the response well-written and free from errors? Have you attached all the relevant documents?

6. Submit

Submit the completed response before the deadline to give yourself a cushion against technical issues. Confirm receipt and share with your team.

7. Save and audit the responses

If you’ve answered one RFQ, you’ll likely answer more. Get a head start on your next request for qualifications response by saving your responses. Add new content to central location to access for future RFXs. 

8. Debrief

The last step is to gather your team to capture process insights. Collaborate with your team to analyze what went right and what could have been better.

5 best request for qualifications samples

Highway project RFQ example ⁠— Colorado Department of Transportation (CDOT)

In 2015, the Colorado Department of Transportation issued this RFQ to identify qualified vendors for an upcoming highway construction project. Five teams provided their qualifications and a subsequent RFP was sent to four vendors who qualified. This RFQ is impressively thorough and provides lots of information.

Legal services RFQ example ⁠— City of Seattle

This non-competitive RFQ allowed the City of Seattle to create a roster of pre-qualified firms for upcoming legal work. The request for qualifications provides ample background information as well as clear expectations. In addition, the document outlines the available budget for legal services.

Graphic designer RFQ example ⁠— The City of Great Falls

When the City of Great Falls, Montana wanted to create a new logo for their Downtown Parking Program, they issued this request for qualifications. This RFQ example is brief and to the point. It includes a brief description of the project, requirements and submission instructions. Just the essentials and nothing more.

Architectural and engineering services RFQ example ⁠— Bedford County Public Schools

Seeking expertise in educational design, the Bedford County Public Schools issued this request for qualifications. The document provides evaluation criteria, guidelines for the SOQ and a form to fill out that guides the vendor through the requirements.

Call center RFQ example ⁠— City of Chamblee, Georgia

The City of Chamblee created this RFQ to find call center vendors equipped to provide a wide range of services. This request for qualifications example is helpful because it is cleanly designed and easy to read. Indeed, the expectations and project details are clear at a glance.

Just like other RFX documents, the request for qualifications can be a helpful tool for procurement teams looking to accelerate and optimize their RFP process. A quality RFQ response can be the foot in the door to future sales and business deals.

Request a Responsive demo to learn more about other RFX processes and how technology empowers responders.

The SME role explained: Subject matter expert definition and skills

The SME role explained: Subject matter expert definition and skills

People & Teams

A subject matter expert, often referred to as an SME, has deep knowledge of a particular topic. Within your business, they’re the authority on the subject. They’re the go-to person if someone has questions. And as such, the SME role is incredibly valuable. But it can also be complicated.

If you’re a subject matter expert, it’s probably safe to say that your time is in high demand. Your niche knowledge is needed by many departments. From sales to marketing to proposal development, SMEs collaborate on a wide variety of projects. 

Taking on an SME role comes with both opportunities and challenges. On the bright side, being a subject matter expert means you’ll connect with people from all areas of your business. This is a huge advantage for career growth. Afterall, the more relied upon you are as a subject matter expert, the more visible your value is to the company. On the other hand, due to the number of people and projects they’re involved with, workloads can be challenging.

In this post, I’ll define the term subject matter expert and explore the SME role. From there, I’ll outline the responsibilities, traits and key skills of a subject matter expert. Then, I’ll share how to become a subject matter expert.

Explore the SME role

What is a subject matter expert?

To start, let’s define a subject matter expert. Simply put, a subject matter expert is the go-to authority about a particular topic. The term is often abbreviated to SME (pronounced S-M-E or “smee”). It broadly refers to any person within your business who has specialized knowledge on a topic and provides that insight to others. SMEs develop their deep understanding of a topic over years of experience, research or study.

Often, the SME role contributes to cross-functional projects as needed, but it’s not their full-time job. For example, a product development manager may be your organization’s subject matter expert on artificial intelligence. However, that’s not their primary job responsibility. Of course, this isn’t always the case. In large organizations, providing insight and specialized knowledge to internal teams may be an SME’s sole focus.

Examples of SME roles and areas of expertise

SME role examples | Table of SME titles and areas of expertiseAs you can see in these sample SME roles, the areas of expertise typically align with the person’s title. Because the type of information and depth of knowledge required is different in each business, the number of SMEs will vary widely. Regardless, each adds value with their unique knowledge of a particular subject.

Why be an SME?

Admittedly, being a subject matter expert is a lot of work. So, why do it? There are some major benefits to being a domain expert. In fact, it’s a great way to accelerate your professional development. In the last few years, SMEs have become more valuable than ever. 

In am SME role, you can:

  • Raise your profile with peers in your field of expertise
  • Leverage your reputation to become a selling point for the company
  • Increase your worth to the business
  • Elevate your role and be a part of strategic decisions
  • Become a trusted advisor

Subject matter expert job description

Being a subject matter expert is all about balancing priorities. Not only are you responsible for your primary job functions, but you also contribute to other areas of the business. 

As you might imagine, subject matter expert responsibilities change from business to business and role to role. In most cases, domain experts work with  product development, marketing and sales most often. Indeed, an SME may have a hand in the business from beginning to end. You’ll see in the example below how an SME might collaborate to create, market and sell a new product enhancement.

Consult with and advise product development

The specialized knowledge an SME has is valuable. As a subject matter expert, your body of knowledge can have a huge impact on the growth and vision of the company. Working with the product development team, SMEs offer insight on strategic initiatives and projects.

For example, a software company may have an SME in IT who is a data security analyst. Before building a new release, the company’s development team would strategize with the data security analyst. Together they would ensure that the planned enhancements align with privacy and security best practices. Alternatively, the SME may recommend strategies to avoid risk.

Educate and strategize with marketing

How can you use your domain expertise to drive revenue? Can it be a differentiator between your company and the competition? When you have the right people in SME roles, their knowledge can help you win business. Indeed, the marketing team can use SME insights to create content that attracts new prospects. This expertise is essential to ensure messaging is accurate and appealing.

Using our example from above, the data analyst can help create a blog that explains the importance of data security for target customers. And, how the company goes above and beyond to protect it. The IT SME can provide information and strategize ways to attract and sell to specific industries. In this example, the SME in IT could explore ways to educate prospective customers in the financial, government and legal sectors.

Respond to RFPs and win business with sales

As the authority on a certain subject, the SME plays a big role in the proposal team. Working with sales or the proposal manager, you create RFP responses. This RFP content answers client questions, shares win themes and communicates value. As mentioned above, the subject matter expert themselves may become a trusted customer contact or differentiator that helps to win business. 

In our final example, the same data analyst — an SME in IT ⁠— helps to answer customer questions about the company’s data security protocols. They  communicate how their policies are different from the competition, and how they reduce risk.

4 subject matter expert skills

To be successful, a subject matter expert must cultivate key skills outside of their area of expertise.

Subject matter expert competencies should include:

1. Time management

With so many responsibilities, time management is top on the list of required skills for a subject matter expert. Balancing your workload, prioritizing and task management will be an ongoing challenge.

2. Teamwork

By definition, subject matter experts work with a lot of people throughout the business. Teamwork is crucial to success. In fact, a recent survey reported that 86 percent of employees believe poor collaboration is to blame for workplace failures.

Learning and practicing key teamwork skills will make your interactions more successful. For instance, focus on rapport-building, listening, empathizing, respectfully disagreeing, collaboration and expressing appreciation.

3. Communication

Along with honing your teamwork skills, you must be an excellent communicator. You’re the domain expert, so from time to time it will be a challenge to explain more nuanced concepts to the team. Be sure to take your time, communicate clearly and give context when possible.

4. Knowledge management

Even if you have an excellent memory, you’ll occasionally need to locate your previous work, sources or documentation. Locating the right information can be time consuming. Accordingly, a McKinsey study estimated that workers spend 20 percent of their time searching for information.

If your knowledge is scattered among emails, notes and proposals you may be doing yourself a disservice. Centralizing and applying knowledge management principals to collect, catalog and reuse information saves a lot of time.

Traits of a truly great SME

The subject matter expert definition will fit a lot of people within your business. However, the most successful SMEs share these common traits.

Educated and experienced
You don’t become a domain expert by accident. In addition to experience, SMEs have a deep knowledge of the subject through formal education or self-guided learning. Consequently, the best SMEs are lifelong learners.

Observant and inquisitive
A great SME continually explores new ideas and trends. They are incurably curious about the matter they specialize in. Their knowledge is always deepening as they seek out blogs, updates and conversations about their topic.

Social and engaged
Beyond studying and tracking trends, the best SMEs actively participate in events, forums and social media groups that discuss their topic. They network and engage in conversations with other domain experts who specialize in their area.

Freethinking and innovative
Leading subject matter experts explore new ideas. They think outside of the box and look for innovative ways to leverage their knowledge. People in the SME role carefully consider common challenges and find creative ways to solve them.

Perceptive and cooperative
A great SME must not only understand their area of expertise, but they must also understand how their knowledge impacts the business. They see the big picture and often work closely with other SMEs.

Helpful and articulate
Freely-shared (and easily understood) knowledge is a marker of a great subject matter expert. The best SMEs know how to articulate even the most complicated concepts simply and clearly. Helping others understand is essential.

Precise and principled
From time to time, a business consults with the subject matter expert hoping to validate a specific strategy or approach. While remaining positive and helpful, great SMEs also maintain an unbiased, factual approach. Occasionally, this means they must advise caution about a planned action.

How to become a subject matter expert

If working with colleagues, being a trusted advisor and learning more about different areas of your business sounds good, you may be wondering how to become a subject matter expert. In your role, you already deliver a great deal of value to the projects and proposals you are involved in. So, you can shift to become a subject matter expert by extending that value. Here’s how.

Identify and grow your expertise

The first step to become a subject matter expert is to identify what topic you’re uniquely knowledgeable about. Hopefully this is immediately clear to you. If not, start by thinking about your role. What do people come to you to ask about? Are there any work-related topics you enjoy learning about? How would expertise in a specific area deliver value to your company? 

Once you’ve identified your area of expertise, it’s time to dive in. No matter how niche, there’s assuredly a wealth of information about your topic available to explore. With a simple online search, you’ll find free resources, peer networks, forums and more about your topic. As you deepen your knowledge, consider how it applies to your work. Now, share your relevant insights when appropriate with your colleagues. Becoming an SME doesn’t happen overnight. Just be patient and persistent.

Make yourself available for sales conversations

It’s no secret that getting in the door can be a challenge for your sales team. But for you, a domain expert, it might be a lot easier. Ian Altman, a strategic advisor and keynote speaker, discussed the value of including an SME in the sales process saying: 

“SMEs provide a valuable resource to discuss industry trends, share best-practices, and delve into detailed discussions about how one solution might perform better than another. Whereas traditional sales professionals have noticed increased challenges in getting in front of customers, SMEs are welcomed into the room with open arms.”

Your knowledge could open the door for your business’s next big deal. Make yourself available to the sales team when strategic opportunities arise. With this in mind, be ready to talk directly with customers and share your passion for your field of expertise. There’s no substitute for human connection.

Communicate clearly and share your preferences

When you’re brought into a project, be realistic and transparent about your prioritization and workload. For example, when responding to RFPs with tight deadlines it’s important to communicate how the proposal team can support you and when they can expect your input.

In addition, proactively share your work process and preferences. If you handle your primary responsibilities in the morning and prefer to manage your SME role via email in the afternoons, let your team know. This insight will allow your colleagues to better understand how you can successfully work together.

Understand your role

Like many SMEs, you probably struggle with overextending yourself in an attempt to be helpful. Unfortunately, this well-intentioned habit can quickly lead to burnout. It is always tempting to lend your assistance when you see an opportunity to help. I recommend using a RACI matrix as a guide for project participation.

If you know from the beginning what role you play, you will be less tempted to volunteer for additional tasks. So, as projects come your way, remember and respect your role in the process. Be an expert in your area and trust others to be experts in theirs.

Offer feedback and be a part of go-no-go conversations

While you understand the excitement of sales, you won’t have time to waste on unwinnable opportunities. When a project or request for proposal is received that heavily intersects with your domain expertise, review it with the sales team during the bid or no bid discussion.

Use your knowledge to ask questions and proactively uncover problems or concerns. Granted, you might not make the final decision, but your input helps determine if the opportunity is a fit for your business. Your respectful and thorough feedback will go a long way to help educate others for future decisions.

Be the voice of reason

As the SME you must often set realistic expectations. If you pursue a new strategy or win a bid by overpromising, it rarely works out well. By delivering accurate information on a project or in a proposal, you set the stage for success. This approach protects the company from risk, establishes a reputation for honesty and builds a foundation for future growth.

Become a mentor

Help others develop their skills in your area. Keep your eye out for colleagues who show a keen interest in your domain. Sharing your knowledge and guidance to create more domain experts can be incredibly rewarding. As they deepen their knowledge, they can put what they’ve learned to work and help lighten your burden.

Do more with a centralized knowledge library

Eventually, you’ll probably field the same questions over and over again. From product development projects to RFPs, it’s wise to have easy access to answers and input you’ve shared before.

While some SMEs use spreadsheets or cloud-collaboration tools, our favorite tool for knowledge management is RFP software. 

With an RFP software solution, you can store, categorize, tag and reuse your most common answers. Then, empower your proposal and project managers to use this as a self-service tool. Using the software, they can select and customize your response, but give you final approval to ensure any updates are accurate. Storing knowledge this way ensures you add value to your business even when you’re not immediately available to answer questions.

Additional SME resources

The importance of subject matter experts cannot be understated. When internal and external teams recognize your expertise, knowledge and professionalism, they will want to work with you. As a subject matter expert, you can play a significant role in the sales process, product development and the business at large. 
 
If you’re interested in more resources about and for subject matter experts, start here:
 
5 tips to make proposal content management easy

5 tips to make proposal content management easy

Product & Best Practices

No matter what industry or role you work in, tracking down the right information at the right time is key to success. This is especially true for proposal managers and RFP teams working to meet deadlines. However, thanks to technology, centralizing information in a proposal content library is easier than ever.

With a proposal content library, the manual process of searching through emails, old proposals, and spreadsheets is over. Finding answers is now easily completed with a simple search. But, as most proposal managers know, to be truly useful, the business must practice careful RFP content management.

This post will explore the value of a knowledge library, the importance of maintaining and managing your RFP content and best practices to help keep your proposal process running smoothly.

Proposal content library basics

So, exactly what is a proposal content library? A proposal content library is a centralized location where RFP response content is stored digitally. In some businesses or industries, it is called a proposal content repository or RFP content repository. Alternatively, teams that also store responses to security questionnaires or due diligence questionnaires may use the more general terms, knowledge library or content knowledge library.

Most proposal content libraries are created in Word, Excel, Google Docs or an RFP software solution, like RFPIO, with knowledge management functionality. Information can be copied and pasted into the centralized proposal content repository or, in the case of RFP software, simply imported from previous proposals.

Knowledge libraries with collaboration capabilities deliver even more value. The ability to work together more closely benefits both proposal managers and subject matter experts. As a result, they bypass the time-consuming back and forth of email and achieve true collaboration.

A well-curated content library contains a wealth of company information and its value extends far beyond RFP response. Increasingly, organizations turn to their content libraries for all sorts of response needs, including HR departments, public relations, communications, legal, etc.

The value of an RFP content library

Before the rise of digital transformation, proposal managers had to manually search through old RFPs, emails and documents to find the answers they needed. As intranets and cloud-based solutions grew in popularity, centralizing and storing information in a proposal content library quickly followed.

RFP content repositories bring improved efficiency, transparency and accuracy to the proposal process. A business empowered with a well-managed, organized content knowledge library sees a lot of benefits.

7 benefits of a knowledge library

  1. Easy, quick access to the information required complete proposals
  2. Consistent terminology, tone and style in proposal content
  3. Immediate and continual access to subject matter expert knowledge
  4. Faster onboarding for new subject matter experts
  5. Clear definitions of team responsibilities for revising and updating content
  6. Sales team that is empowered to complete proposals with approved content
  7. Extended value to entire company offered by answering common questions

The importance of managing your content knowledge library

Finding information quickly is one of the most common challenges facing businesses. In fact, the International Data Corporation (IDC) — a global provider of market intelligence — released a study that shows a typical knowledge worker spends “about 2.5 hours per day, or roughly 30 percent of the workday, searching for information.”

To solve this problem, businesses have invested in digital solutions to help collect valuable information. However, as information has become easier to retain, the flood of data presents a new challenge. The IDC article goes on to say:

“Intranet technology, content and knowledge management systems, corporate portals, and workflow solutions have all generally improved the lot of the knowledge worker. These technologies have improved access to information, but they have also created an information deluge that makes any one piece of information more difficult to find.”

Much of the value of RFP software is delivered through knowledge management functionality designed to make life easier. The practice of knowledge management focuses on saving, centralizing and organizing valuable information. Not only does RFP software store key proposal content for future use, but it also empowers users to organize and search for content. Proactive knowledge management is a crucial skill for effective proposal management.

Proposal content management best practices

The efficiency of using an RFP content repository depends on how well it is managed. Certainly, without proper maintenance, it can become a cluttered, unorganized mess of information. In order to avoid this challenge, follow these knowledge library best practic

1. Add content to your proposal content repository strategically

How do you decide what goes into your knowledge library? Not every answer in every proposal or questionnaire needs to be collected and retained. You have to be strategic when building your proposal content library. Auditing content is an ongoing process, but beginning with best practices in mind will go a long way to keeping your RFP content repository clean and usable.

Avoid bulk uploading from old proposals

When creating your content knowledge library, it’s important to review the information you intend to include. Think of it like this: when you move to a new house, you don’t move the box of old cassette tapes and CDs gathering dust in your basement. Don’t bring things you don’t want to keep into your knowledge library.

Many RFP software solutions offer automated uploading of old proposals. On the surface, this option appears to offer a huge time savings. However, in practice, bulk uploading old proposal content creates a lot of unnecessary, out-of-date and duplicative clutter.

Analyze question intent to avoid adding duplicate content

From one proposal to another, there will certainly be similarities. In fact, in my experience, most proposals received by a business share nearly 60 percent of their content. These questions are a great place to start. Examine several proposals and identify core questions that exist in almost every proposal.

Take care to review several old proposals together, the language will differ but focus on the purpose behind the question and consolidate responses based on intent.

For example these questions have the same purpose. Each asks “who are you” however, each proposal might have a slightly different answer.

  • What is your company’s background?
  • Explain your company history
  • What does your company do and how long have you been in business?
  • Describe your company experience

Evaluate questions for future usefulness

Despite a large portion of similar information, some RFPs will ask questions so specific that the answer simply won’t apply to any future RFP you might receive.

Likewise, some RFPs are so customized to the company’s use case that reusing the content would take just as much rework as creating the answer from scratch. Evaluating questions critically is a key part of proposal content management.

Genericize your previous proposal content and add place holders

The last step before adding new responses to your RFP content repository is to remove any previous language, terminology or identifiers. For example, add placeholders like <>, <>, <> to stand in for specific information that was unique to the previous proposal. There’s nothing more embarrassing than sending a proposal with another company’s information still in it.

Because the amount of information created is constantly growing, managing what goes into the knowledge library is crucial. Evaluating the merit of content and deciding if it should be retained will avoid information overload.

2. Organize your proposal content library with tags

When it comes to knowledge management and keeping your proposal content organized and easy to search, nothing is more helpful than tags. Using tags adds key metadata to your RFP content, allowing it to be categorized. Tags are keywords and phrases you can associate to your proposal content. Then, when you later search for those keywords and phrases, you can isolate your search to just the tagged content.

Content tag categories

There are lots of ways to tag content. For instance, you may serve many different industries and find it helpful to tag responses accordingly — finance, healthcare, technology and so on. When you receive an RFP from a prospect in that industry, a simple search allows you to quickly access relevant proposal content.

Organizing RFP content by markets, however, might not make sense for your organization. It’s important to determine the organization method that would work best for your company’s employees. The important thing is to determine the categories that work for your users.

For example, you might choose to tag content based on:

  • Product lines
  • Internal groups that own the content
  • Security question categories
  • Geographic location

Tagging best practices for RFP content management

Use broad tags and limit the number of options

As you create tags in your RFP content repository, keep them fairly general. If too many tag variations are available, finding the exact one you need can become confusing. Limiting the total number of tags to less than 50 will keep your knowledge categorized and useful without being too segmented.

You also don’t need to combine tags to create highly specific categories that you’ll rarely use. For example, if you serve the healthcare and finance industries you may have proposal content in your library applicable to both. Instead of creating a new tag called “healthcare finance” it is better to tag it with both “healthcare” and “finance.”

Share your list of tags

Once you’ve established your core tags, publish the list. Then, when anyone in your organization needs to find information in the content knowledge library, they know where to start. Socializing your tags also has the benefit of validating your thinking and further defining tags. After all, what makes sense to you may not make sense to somebody else. Understanding the logic and justification behind tags will make your RFP content repository useful to everyone who needs it.

Review your tags regularly

It’s important to review your tag list regularly to make sure all of your tags are still useful. If your tags are well thought out and you have stored enough relevant proposal content, you should see between 10 to 20 records or more associated with each tag.

If you find an individual content record has more than four tags, you should reevaluate whether each tag is needed. On the other hand, if you identify untagged content, review it to determine whether the content is still useful. And if so, take a moment to add any relevant tags to ensure it can be found.

3. Give the right people the right access

You might want to share proposal content with certain users, but not with others. In some cases, providing access to the entire proposal content library may be an unnecessary distraction. How you grant access to your knowledge library depends entirely on where you manage it.

Version control and access in Word or Excel

If you’re managing your content repository in Word or Excel, your ability to collaborate with subject matter experts is somewhat limited. In order to collaborate with colleagues you may need to extract a set of questions from the knowledge library, create a new document with only the relevant info and send it over to your subject matter expert for review. Sending document versions through email can be difficult to track, so if you have an intranet platform it may be useful to share documents there instead.

Permission management in Google docs

Live editing available in Google docs makes collaboration easier, but permission management is still a challenge. Permissions are set at a document level so limiting access to your knowledge would mean creating individual documents for each subject matter expert. For Google sheets experts, there may be an available script to limit access by user by tab, but it’s far from a perfect solution. Google Drive’s search makes it possible to find content using keywords in multiple documents, but the process is cumbersome. It’s a time-consuming workaround.

User permissions in RFP software

RFP software makes setting user permissions easy. Using account hierarchies, you can easily ensure a user is only able to view and edit information that is relevant to their role. This empowers organizations to break down silos without putting sensitive client data into the wrong hands.

For example, if your company has multiple divisions, such as geographically separate groups, hierarchies and subaccounts can help you localize projects and users. Within each sub account, you can create additional subaccounts, continuing until you have a hierarchy structure that accurately reflects your organization. This empowers users to easily access all the data and information related to the sub account in which they’re searching.

In another example, if you’re a consultant who helps clients craft proposals, you can create a hierarchy structure to keep client work separate. When you set up clients as users in subaccounts, they cannot see activity in other client accounts.

4. Schedule regular content reviews

As your proposal content repository grows, implementing regular reviews will help things run smoothly. Old, unreviewed information opens you up to risk. Sending out-of-date information can compromise your chance of winning an RFP and damage your reputation.

As the proposal manager or sales person, you simply cannot keep track of every change throughout the business. Consequently, you won’t know when a change needs to be reflected in your response content. This is why proposal content management requires regularly scheduled updates to the proposal content library.

I recommend assigning subject matter experts the relevant tags to review on a regular basis. For most of your proposal content, reviewing once every six months is probably enough. However, for areas that change quickly, like security information for software a more frequent review cycle might be necessary.

Be sure to communicate expectations. It can also be helpful to encourage proactive updates when subject matter experts know changes have been made. And, finally, don’t be shy about following up and being persistent when proposal content reviews are past-due.

5. Teach key search skills

Once you have your proposal content library set up and organized, it’s time to make sure your team is getting the most out of it. Finding the right content often comes down to knowing what to look for and how to search for it. It seems obvious, but understanding how search works is an underappreciated skill. The ability to search is key to success, according to IDC.

“Increasingly, search has become one of the most frequent, vital tasks a knowledge worker performs.”

There’s a big difference between computer logic and how humans think. Using Boolean search logic will help you quickly find information in your RFP content library.

Boolean search basics

Most search engines leverage Boolean logic to find and narrow search results. Boolean search allows you to specify, group or exclude specific words using AND, OR and NOT functions.

AND search

AND logic only returns results that include all of the terms requested. This is useful when you’re looking for very specific information. For example, if you need answers for questions to respond to a potential client that provides financial technology, you could search for “finance AND technology.”

Proposal content management search skills for AND

OR search

OR will search for proposal content that has any of the search words entered. This is a great option when your key search term may have several synonyms. For instance, if you’re looking for responses that would fit for a banking client, you may want to search for “finance or banking.” Your search results will include any proposal content that contains either finance or banking.

NOT search

NOT searches for results that have one term but excludes another. This is helpful when you know exactly what you want to find between two closely related terms. For example, if you need to provide information about your company’s diversity, but don’t want to see results about HR recruitment policies. Searching for “diversity NOT recruitment” will yield the most relevant results.

Additional search options

In addition to AND, OR and NOT searching, you can combine the terms to further narrow results. You can also use quotation marks (“ ”) to request exact match for long search terms. And finally, you can use parentheses to tell the search engine which operation you’d like completed first.

For example, searching for “(banking OR finance) AND recruitment” will yield results that contain both banking recruitment and finance recruitment. Whereas “banking OR (finance AND recruitment)” will yield results that contain banking as well as results that contain both finance and recruitment.

How RFP software transforms proposal content management

Maintaining best practices for RFP content management is a challenge. However, RFP software makes the process much easier. The features of RFP software designed specifically to meet the unique needs of proposal managers and teams. Including everything mentioned above and more like, content importing, integrations, knowledge management extensions, tags, permissions, account hierarchy management and more ⁠— RFP software delivers huge value.

Discussing the value of their knowledge library, RFPIO customer Paul Maplesden from GEODIS said:

“The GEODIS Content Library refresh would have been much more difficult and time-consuming without the RFPIO tool. RFPIO features have made it much faster and easier for us to identify duplicate content and develop a strong approach to enhance the Content Library.”

To learn more about how RFPIO improves RFP management, learn more about our knowledge management solution or request a demo to see it for yourself.

How to write a letter of intent to bid: Tips, examples & template

How to write a letter of intent to bid: Tips, examples & template

Selling & Enablement

If you regularly respond to RFPs, you have probably encountered buyers who ask you to submit a letter of intent to bid as part of the response process. While this step in the RFP process is far from universal, it’s important to understand the purpose of the intent to bid letter. Additionally, you can use it as another positive touchpoint for prospective buyers.

Whether you’re responding to a buyer that requested a letter of intent and need guidance, or you’re simply looking for new ways to engage with buyers earlier in the RFP process, you’ll find what you need to know here.

First, in this post, you’ll learn the basics about the letter of intent to bid including what it is, who uses them and a few of their benefits. Then, I’ll offer some quick tips about how to write a letter of intent. Finally, I’ll share sample letters of intent to bid and an intent to bid template.

Just need the template? Download now.

What is a letter of intent to bid?

Letter of intent to bid definition

A letter of intent to bid is a formal way for prospective vendors to communicate their plan to submit a response or bid to a request for proposal (RFP). Often, a buyer requests or requires a letter of intent from interested vendors as part of the RFP process.

A small distinction: Letter of intent to bid vs letter of intent

The letter of intent or letter of interest, abbreviated as LOI, has other applications outside of the RFP and sales process. For example, job seekers, grant applicants and legal agreements may also use letters of intent. So, be sure to understand the context of the LOI request before responding.

Who uses the letter?

When The letter of intent to bid can be requested by an RFP issuer (buyer) or offered proactively by a RFP responder (seller or vendor). The document isn’t exclusive to any particular industry. However, you’ll find it most often in government, legal, education and construction RFPs.

When required by a buyer, the procurement manager in charge of the RFP is the person who requests, receives and reads the letters. On the other hand, when offered proactively, the letter of intent to bid is written and submitted by the proposal manager.

What is in the letter of intent to respond?

The intent to bid letter is usually very brief. Indeed, it follows the standard business letter format and fits on a single page.

Your letter of intent to bid should include:

  • The name of your company
  • Name of the proposal contact
  • The name or reference number of the RFP you’re responding to
  • A clear statement of your intention to submit a proposal
  • Your sign off and signature

In addition to the above, you may choose to include more information. For example, you may wish to offer a brief statement about why you believe you’re a fit for the business. You may also highlight your relevant experience or confirm that you meet or exceed the minimum RFP requirements.

In many cases, if this step is part of the process, the buyer will provide a letter of intent to bid template that outlines the information they require. You can see examples of this later in this blog.

When is the letter of intent due?

If an RFP requires vendors to formalize their intention to bid (or decline to bid), the deadline will appear in the RFP timeline. Typically, this step happens after vendors receive answers to any follow-up questions or points of clarification during the Q&A period.

On the other hand, if you’re sending an intent to bid letter as a courtesy (when it’s not required by the buyer) you have more flexibility. In this case, you should send the letter as soon as possible after you’ve done your bid/no-bid discussion and made a decision. Ideally, this is at least two weeks prior to the RFP deadline.

Benefits of the intent to bid letter

You may find yourself wondering why anyone would require a letter of intent to bid. Why add one more step to an already long process? Well, there are a few reasons why an intent to bid letter is a good idea.

1. Ensures sufficient interest and competition

Many organizations have procurement policies that require three valid bids before making a purchase. The letter of intent to bid enables buyers to ensure that a project will have sufficient vendor participation to proceed.

If a buyer doesn’t receive enough affirmative letters of intent to bid from vendors, they may reevaluate the project, even if they have a qualified, under-budget bid. They can extend the RFP invitation to additional vendors, find out why vendors chose not to respond or they can put the project on hold.

Essentially, the letter of intent saves a procurement manager weeks of waiting and hoping they’ll have the necessary number of bids when the RFP deadline arrives.

2. Defines and streamlines communication paths

The purpose of an RFP is to exchange information between buyers and sellers in an organized way. In an ideal world, the process would be straightforward. However, in the real world, it’s rarely that simple.

It’s not uncommon for a buyer to have a few updates after issuing an RFP. For example, there may be amendments to the requirements, changes in scope or clarifications of the RFP questions. In this case, the buyer needs to know who to contact.

Thanks to the letter of intent, they know exactly who to reach out to. Not only that, but the procurement manager avoids sending unnecessary emails to suppliers that have indicated they will not be submitting an RFP.

3. Enables a faster RFP evaluation process

After the intent to bid deadline, the response period begins. While you and your team write a winning RFP response, the buyer begins preparing for the RFP evaluation process.

Because they already know the number of participating vendors, the procurement manager can prepare more thoroughly. For example, they can set up proposal scoring and prepare guidance for stakeholders.

Faster evaluation means faster results. So the buyer can award the contract and you can win business faster.

Tips for how to write a letter of intent to bid

As we’ve discussed above, you can use the letter of intent to bid in two situations: either to meet the stated RFP process requirements or as a proactive courtesy to the buyer.

Sometimes, if a buyer requires an they provide a template to ensure they receive the same information from every vendor. In this case, simply fill out the provided document and resist the urge to add more detail.

The letter of intent to bid template is usually included at the beginning of the RFP or as an attachment at the end. However, if the buyer doesn’t offer a template or you wish to create a letter of intent to connect with the buyer, there are a few things to keep in mind.

LOI best practices

• After your decision to bid or not to bid, write and send the letter as soon as possible.

• It’s best to address the letter to the procurement manager or company contact specified in the RFP. Try to avoid a generic greeting like, “To whom it may concern.”

• Begin the letter by clearly stating your intention to bid and basic company information.

• Include contact information for the person who will manage the proposal process. This is the person the buyer should contact if they have questions, need more information or want to begin negotiations.

• After addressing the necessary information, consider including brief statement on why your company is the right fit for this opportunity. In addition, you could briefly mention past successes, differentiators, references and expertise.

• Remember, keep it short. Save the details for your RFP response.

• Avoid asking follow up questions, because they’ll likely get overlooked if you include them in the body of your LOI.

• Apply RFP response best practices to your letter: be concise, use active voice and review for grammar and spelling.

• Conclude your letter by expressing gratitude for the opportunity and offering any necessary assistance.

Letter of intent to bid samples

Now, if you’re considering adding an LOI step to your proposal process, you may want to see some real-world examples. Below you’ll find a few samples of letters of intent requested by a buyer. Then, you can compile your favorite parts to create your own template.

Customizable letter of intent to bid template

This letter of intent to bid template in Word offers quick instructions and customizable fields. Additionally, it follows the format and best practices mentioned above and can be used for any RFP response. Get a head start on your next letter of intent by downloading it now.
 
Letter of intent to bid template preview from RFPIO
 

Construction letter of intent to bid sample

This letter of intent template, provided by Hard Hat Hunter, is specific to the construction industry. It is very short and to the point with just the basics: the vendor’s information, the project name and when the buyer can expect to receive the RFP response.

Employment agency letter of intent to bid template

Contact information, the name of the RFP and an acknowledgement of the RFP criteria are included in this sample letter of intent to bid. Offered by Golden Sierra, it is tailored to an employment and job training agency.

Municipality letter of intent to respond form

In this letter of intent to bid example, from the city of Seabrook, New Hampshire, the city asks that all vendors respond. Consequently, the form allows vendors to select their intent to submit nor not submit a bid.

Ultimately, sending a letter of intent is just one more way to connect with and serve your potential customer. When competition is tough, every gesture matters and clear communication is crucial.

For organizations that use Responsive, creating consistent, memorable letters of intent to bid can be done quickly using templates. Automating this process is a great way to save time while also increasing your engagement with buyers.

6 easy tips to write a killer RFP cover letter

6 easy tips to write a killer RFP cover letter

Product & Best Practices

After weeks of work, you’ve finally put the finishing touches on your request for proposal (RFP) response. The proposal is a product of the hours you invested customizing past content, collaborating with subject matter experts, and refining your messaging.

Because of your efforts, the proposal is a masterpiece ⁠— creative, comprehensive and compelling. Consequently, you’re feeling confident. After all, your company should win this business — you’ve earned it. Now, there’s only one thing left to do … slap a proposal cover letter on top, submit it and move on to the next RFP.

But wait. Not so fast! When was the last time you read your boilerplate RFP cover letter? Like, actually read it. If you’re like many others, it’s been a while. Unfortunately, that means you might not be putting your best foot forward.

So, before you send off that RFP response, let’s take a closer look at your proposal cover letter and be sure it accurately represents your proposal. With a couple easy tips and a quick review, your cover letter will send just the right message.

In this post, we’ll explore what a proposal cover sheet is and why it matters. Then, I’ll explain what a cover letter includes, how to write a proposal cover letter, and a few sample RFP cover letters. Finally, I’ll share a proposal cover letter template you can download and customize to get a head start.

Get the RFP cover letter template now.

What is a proposal cover letter?

A proposal cover letter is a single-page letter addressed to a prospective customer containing high-level information from a prospective vendor. The letter precedes an accompanying RFP response or business proposal.

Alternative names for the proposal cover letter include RFP response cover letter, bid proposal cover letter, RFP cover page, cover page for business proposal, and other similar variations. No matter what it’s called, the cover letter is your chance to introduce your business and offer to a potential new customer. As such, you need to make it count.

Why a well-written cover letter matters

You spend hours working through the proposal process, so why should you spend even more time crafting an RFP response cover letter? The proposal cover letter is an oft-overlooked sales tool. Indeed, it’s a zero-cost way to get your message directly to the people who decide whether or not your proposal wins. Furthermore, the RFP cover letter takes very little time to compose and offers you one more way to stand out from your competitors.

If you’re like most businesses, your cover letter can probably be summarized like this: “Dear Mr. or Ms. Company ⁠— Thank you so much for this opportunity. Included in this proposal you will find our answers that meet the requested specifications. Thank you for your consideration.” 

While common, this isn’t a terribly compelling way to introduce yourself to a new customer that could help you grow your business. Your RFP cover letter provides a first impression to the proposal evaluators and decision makers reviewing your proposal.

Think of it this way: If you were going to present your proposal in person, how would you greet the buyer? You’d probably wear your best suit, walk confidently, put on a warm smile and share a confident handshake to make a memorable introduction. It should be the same with your proposal cover letter. Unfortunately, if your letter is anything like the example above, it’s like showing up in sweatpants and offering an unenthusiastic, mumbled greeting.

The RFP cover letter can also be used to:

  • Create or deepen the connection between you and your buyer
  • Reinforce your brand, values and expertise
  • Promote your key differentiators
  • Establish primary points of contact

No matter how you use the RFP cover letter and what you put in it, remember that the person receiving it is just that ⁠— a person. The quality of your bid proposal cover letter determines whether they read it carefully, skim it quickly, or ignore it completely. Generally, proposal cover letters are memorable either because they are embarrassingly bad or extraordinarily good. Make your cover letter memorable for the right reasons.

Proposal cover letter basics

The RFP cover letter should be included as a normal part of every proposal, but it’s just one component. Indeed, most proposals also include a number of other elements that will generally appear in a specific order.

Parts of a proposal

  1. Cover letter
  2. Executive summary
  3. Proposal
  4. Addendums
  5. Terms and conditions
  6. Supporting documentation (case studies, references and additional data)

If your left temple is throbbing just looking at that list, take comfort in the fact that your well-curated and maintained content library can do up to 80 percent of the work for you. 

Components of a cover letter

As the first element of your proposal, the cover letter is bound to be seen by a lot of people. So, it’s important to make sure it is the best possible representation of your company. But, how do you decide what to say? One of the biggest challenges when writing an RFP response letter is how to keep it short while also making an impact ⁠— remember, your cover letter should fit on a single page. To help you craft your message, focus on these five elements.

  1. Addressees
  2. Greeting and introduction
  3. Summary of RFP needs
  4. Your broad qualifications and differentiators
  5. Thank you and closing

Your RFP cover letter should:

  • Be the first page of your RFP response followed by your executive summary and proposal
  • Introduce your company to the buyer’s key decision-makers and any others reviewing or scoring your bid
  • Be conversational, genuine and confident ⁠— but it shouldn’t be an overt sales pitch
  • Offer an overview of your understanding of the company’s needs
  • Clearly state why your business is uniquely qualified to win the RFP opportunity
  • If possible, express your vision for the future partnership and how you can help the business reach its goals
  • Follow the customer’s instructions if they ask you to include specific information in the cover letter

What’s the difference between a cover letter and an executive summary?

When building formal RFP responses, this question comes up a lot. What is the difference between a cover letter and an executive summary? The confusion is understandable as the two documents share a lot of similarities. They are both short, introductory documents that precede your proposal. 

The primary distinction is that a proposal cover letter is an introduction to your company while the executive summary is an overview of your offer for a specific project. In addition, the cover letter should almost always fit on a single page while the executive summary may be two or three pages if necessary. Admittedly, the difference is subtle. While the contents may seem to naturally overlap, try to avoid repetition and ensure that each document provides unique information.

Beyond the basics: Six tips to writing a better RFP cover letter

1. Address it to the right people

Who is going to review your proposal? If you don’t already know, find out. Get in touch with the RFP contact and ask for the names of the key contacts who will weigh in on the decision. This may be a committee of people or a combination of procurement professionals, stakeholders and executives. 

If you start your RFP response letter with the standard “To whom it may concern” salutation, you’re blending in and sending a message. Unfortunately, this approach communicates that you couldn’t be bothered to update your cover letter template, didn’t do your homework, and don’t really care that much about winning the business. It certainly doesn’t reflect the hours of time you’ve likely invested creating the proposal that follows.

By specifically addressing the proposal cover letter to the key contacts, you make a quick connection and instantly improve the chances that they’ll actually read the bid proposal cover letter and your subsequent proposal. This attention to detail reinforces the idea that not only are you a good fit based on your qualifications, but you’re also invested in developing deeper relationships. You’re in it to be a strategic partner, not just another vendor. 

2. Keep it fresh and be human

Put yourself in your recipient’s shoes ⁠— You’ve just received dozens of proposals from vendors who more or less provide the same type of services. You are starting to sift through RFP responses that are admittedly, probably pretty dry. The initial review checking for proposal compliance is time-consuming, highly repetitive and gets old quick. 

So, if a cover letter starts with something like, “Thank you for the opportunity to earn your business,” it’s just adding to the tedium. It’s a classic and well-worn opening line. While it’s good to be humble and grateful, it’s far better to be unique and memorable. A post featured in APMP’s Winning the Business said, 

“… never start a cover letter with ‘thank you.’ It’s boring, and almost everyone does it. This seemingly respectful thank you does not help your organization to stand out or inspire your reader to keep reading.” 

The article goes on to recommend starting with something specific and complimentary about the business. This opener accomplishes two things; it quickly shows that this is no ordinary copy-and-paste proposal cover letter while reinforcing that you did your homework and recognize the business’s goals.

In an increasingly automated and efficient world, it’s easy to forget about the people behind the process. Even if you use RFP software to quickly complete the RFP itself, the RFP cover letter offers a rare opportunity to be human and genuine. 

3. Use formatting to catch their eye

Your cover letter only helps you win the business if it actually gets read by the right people. Just like using the perfect proposal format, the right cover letter format invites the reader to engage. So, make sure your cover letter is clean, visually appealing, approachable and not too dense. Remember that you’re trying to make an impression, not dive into every detail of your proposal.

Because your cover letter only uses one page, you have to be smart about how you use the space. There are three main places where you have the best chance to hook the reader: the first sentence, the center of the page and the closing. 

Opening
Nothing catches your eye like your own name. So, as suggested above, address the letter directly to the evaluator(s). Then, include the buyer’s company name in a unique and impactful opening sentence. 

Center
Make the most of the center of your RFP response letter using bullet points. Draw the eye directly to your biggest differentiators without specifically calling out your competitors. Include what you excel at like customer support, on-time delivery, cutting-edge features, value adds, scalability, customer growth and so on.

Closing
Use the final line to move the deal forward. Offer the prospect a clear and direct call to action (see tip six for more information and an example). For example, provide details about how they can move forward with you, request the information you need to speed up contracting, or share what comes next in the process. 

If you can engage a reader in any one of these areas, they are far more likely to take the time to read your entire cover letter. Ideally, it’s intriguing enough that they continue on to check out your executive summary and proposal as well.

4. Tell a tale and express your understanding

Have a success story with a similar client that could boost your credibility? Tell it, but be brief. Share how a partnership has been mutually rewarding, how you’ve delivered a great customer experience or how you’ve been able to proactively solve problems. This reinforces your understanding of their business and goals.

In addition to telling a story, you can use your proposal cover letter to express your understanding of their pain. Every RFP starts with a need, and you received the RFP because the company believes you can meet that need. So, consider building on that foundation.

The relationship between buyers and sellers is evolving. More and more, businesses are looking for a long-term partner, someone who will actively find opportunities to create wins for both parties. RFP issuers want value but they also want a vendor that is invested in their success.

5. Stay true to your brand

Your company was included in the bid process for a reason, so stay true to the persona, culture, values and tone of your brand. Just because the RFP process is formal, doesn’t mean your RFP cover letter has to be. If your company prides itself on being down-to-earth, use that style in all of your communications. 

A cover letter shouldn’t be a lengthy essay, but it should demonstrate that you understand the prospect and their needs. Include “we” statements that hint at common goals. For example, “We believe our XYZ application will play an instrumental role in partnering with you to implement phase two of automating routine customer service processes, freeing your team to focus on reducing churn rates.”

Make sure that the tone of your cover letter accurately represents your brand and builds on the relationship you’ve cultivated. Don’t confuse your prospect by approaching them as if they were a stranger or in an unrecognizable style.

6. Close with a call to action, contact information and an actual signature

While the cover letter should be friendly, relatable and genuine; it’s also still a part of the sale. As with any good sales communication, state what you want them to do next and who they can contact to follow up. 

Wrap up your RFP cover letter with a call to action like:

  • Please reach out with any questions you may have
  • We’re eager to show you more ⁠— when we can schedule a demo with your team?
  • Let me know if I can put you in touch with another customer for a reference
  • To accelerate the contracting process, please send your standard terms and conditions

And the final element in a winning RFP cover letter is an actual signature (either handwritten or digital). It may not seem like a big deal, but it’s a nice touch and one last way to show your investment in winning the RFP opportunity.

Who signs the proposal cover letter?

Notice I didn’t title this section, “Who writes the proposal cover letter?” The person who writes it and the person who signs it may not be one and the same.

If your proposal team is fortunate enough to have a dedicated writer, then have them write the letter based on input from the frontline sales rep. Whoever writes the letter must be fully informed of response strategy and have intimate knowledge of the proposal and executive summary. Strategy, voice and style need to be consistent across all documents (cover letter, executive summary and proposal).

Who signs it depends on a variety of factors. In most cases, the frontline sales rep will sign the proposal cover letter. They have the relationship, own the strategy, and likely conducted the discovery that informed the proposal. However, it’s not uncommon for an executive sponsor such as a VP of sales to sign. The thinking being that executive reviewers may appreciate seeing a proposal that’s been vetted by a fellow executive.

There are also those cases when the executive of executives, the CEO, signs the letter. There are two common scenarios for this play. One, the RFP may be large enough to represent a significant percentage of a respondent’s annual revenue. Two, the responding organization is concerned with appearing relatively small, and in an effort to improve its stature, seals the proposal with a CEO’s signature.

There’s definitely some gamesmanship at play here. Even so, the name on the letter will never overshadow the content of the proposal.

3 common mistakes to avoid

Beyond the mistakes of not including a proposal cover letter at all or writing one that’s too long, proofread your next letter for the following mistakes before sending it.

  1. Avoid repeating anything from the executive summary or proposal. Those documents need to live on their own, just like the proposal cover letter.
  2. Don’t waste space with your resume. Something like this … Responsive’s growing list of 1,800+ clients, including 65+ Fortune 500 organizations, continue to take advantage of our one-of-a-kind unlimited user licensing model, expanding their usage on the platform to scale organizational success. With Responsive as their team’s support system, every day they break down silos by facilitating collaboration and efficiency in their RFX response process … is boilerplate that can appear elsewhere in the proposal or not at all, given that it’s likely available to the issuer on your corporate website.
  3. If a broker is involved, thank them too. The proposal cover letter is also an opportunity to directly address the issuer. This can be particularly valuable when a broker is involved. Some issuers rely on RFP brokers to sift through responses to make sure only the best possible solutions get serious consideration. Ignore these brokers at your peril. While the response and executive summary will address the issuer and the problem at hand, the cover letter is where you can give a nod to the broker.

Acknowledging their involvement in the process and thanking them for the opportunity as well will at the very least alert all reviewers that you paid close attention to the RFP requirements.

RFP cover letter template

Even for seasoned proposal professionals, it’s a challenge to start a brand new bid proposal cover letter from scratch, so below you’ll find an example. Hopefully, it will give you a head start on your next great RFP response. 

RFP cover letter example document proposal cover letter Template available on responsive.io

Ready to start crafting your own RFP cover letter in this style? Check out this RFP cover letter template that follows all the best practices covered above. You’ll also find helpful instructions in the template so you can quickly customize it to meet your needs.

Proposal cover letter examples

Sample proposal letter – FedEx to State of Utah

If you only look at one other RFP cover letter sample, make it this one. This sample cover letter and accompanying proposal from FedEx is one of our favorites. Indeed, this request for proposal cover letter follows all the best practices. It includes:

  • A specific addressee
  • An engaging opening line
  • Excellent formatting and bullet points
  • A statement of experience
  • Simple, but recognizable branding
  • A real signature

Sample proposal cover letter – Insight Public Sector to Education Service Center (ESCO)

This proposal cover letter example introduces Insight Public Sector’s response to ESCO’s RFP for technology software, equipment, services and solutions. The letter fits on a single page, reaffirms the company’s qualifications, and uses colorful bullet points to draw the eye to the company’s primary differentiators.

Proposal transmittal letter example – SunPower/GSRP for Town of Nantucket

The RFP response letter focuses on the experience and financial stability of the two vendors partnering to win the business. In addition, the letter confirms the company’s ability to meet the specific qualifications set forth in the RFP for solar PV development for onsite energy generation.

RFP response cover letter sample – ISITE Design for Health Level Seven

While this cover letter uses the standard opening line, it’s scannable, brief and makes use of bullet points to highlight the company’s qualifications. In addition, the letter is addressed directly to the proposal evaluator. It’s a warm introduction for the web services strategy proposal that follows.

Helpful RFP response resources

Looking for more tools and information to help you write the perfect RFP response? Check the helpful resources below.

Guide to writing an executive summary

Do you know the difference between the executive summary and your RFP cover letter? Learn more in this blog that explores how to write an executive summary that stands out. 

Your personal guide to writing a winning executive summary

Proposal Manager Career Guide

Proposal Manager Career Guide

People & Teams

Being a proposal manager is unlike any other role. Indeed, if you think about it, the position is an exercise in opposites. For instance, proposal managers work with almost every department, giving them a big-picture perspective. However, when they respond to RFPs, they must pay attention to every little detail. In addition, the role is often exciting and fast-paced when creating a win strategy and composing a proposal. On the other hand, proposal managers frequently answer the same routine questions over and over again.

Consequently, the proposal manager role requires a unique set of skills. However, for those who can balance the responsibilities of the role, becoming a proposal manager is a rewarding job. It is a great career starting point for some, while others make it a satisfying life-long career. Regardless, proposal managers play a key role in their organization’s success.

In this blog, we’ll define what a proposal manager is, including their job description, responsibilities and key skills. Then, we’ll discuss proposal professional titles and their earning potential. Finally, we’ll offer advice for anyone looking to become a proposal manager as well as useful tools and resources for ongoing career development.

What is a proposal manager?

Proposal manager definition

A proposal manager is responsible for responding to requests for proposals (RFPs). They manage the proposal process including task delegation, response editing and submission.

In some businesses, the proposal manager may go by other titles including proposal coordinator, RFP analyst, bid manager and RFP manager. Depending on the size of the business, there may be only one proposal manager or many.

What does a proposal manager do?

The proposal manager is the main point of contact for incoming RFPs. They work with a proposal team composed of contributors from multiple departments. Most proposals will include team members in sales, marketing, business development, finance, legal, IT, and subject matter experts (SMEs) from various areas of the business.

Admittedly, there are a lot of duties and responsibilities that go into their work. But, put simply, the proposal manager is responsible for creating proposals that win new business.

Who does the proposal manager report to?

Generally, a proposal manager in a small- or medium-sized business reports to the director of sales, marketing or business development. However, in large or enterprise organizations, the proposal team likely reports to an executive in finance or revenue management.

Proposal manager job description

The proposal manager job description varies from one business to another. The duties change based on the size of the business, number of proposal team members and industry. However, they always contain a variety of responsibilities that contribute to the overall goal of winning new RFP opportunities.

As a proposal manager works to create compelling RFP responses, they may face some common challenges. Luckily, their unique skill set enables them to solve these challenges, improve efficiency and ensure success. Let’s explore each of these topics in more detail.

Primary proposal manager responsibilities

  • Facilitate discussions to bid or not to bid
  • Collaborate with the capture management team
  • Identify client priorities and win themes
  • Create and execute a proposal project plan
  • Conduct market and competitive research
  • Hold kick-off and debrief meetings
  • Act as point of contact for prospects
  • Gather and send follow-up and clarifying questions to the buyer
  • Manage the proposal team (anyone contributing to RFPs)
  • Ensure proposals and presentations are brand compliant
  • Report proposal progress to executive management
  • Submit final proposal for consideration
  • Maintain the RFP response knowledge base
  • Prioritize RFPs based on the likelihood of winning and value
  • Track RFP data and win rate
  • Be the administrator for the company’s RFP software

Common RFP response challenges

  • Tight deadlines and a lack of urgency from others involved in the process
  • Translating sales feedback and the capture management plan into actionable insights
  • Confusion during the proposal process
  • Disorganized or difficult-to-find proposal content
  • Slow responses from subject matter experts who juggle other responsibilities
  • Long hours as deadlines for important RFPs approach

Proposal manager skills

Anyone thinking about becoming a proposal manager should consider the necessary skill set. In addition to general business knowledge, proposal managers must master three key practices: knowledge management, proposal project management and data analytics. Furthermore, the ability to facilitate collaboration, encourage creative problem solving and navigate conflict are also valuable skills.

Additional proposal manager hard skills

  • Data tracking and analysis
  • Writing, editing and reviewing
  • Managing proposal software
  • Optimizing and managing processes
  • Researching and presenting

Helpful soft skills for proposal managers

  • Team leadership
  • Strong communication
  • Attention to detail
  • Organization
  • Prioritization of projects
  • Flexibility and adaptability

Proposal manager job description examples

Proposal and RFP manager job descriptions vary, depending on company size, organizational setup and industry. For example, if a job is in a small company in an industry that sells industrial bolts, RFPs might not be overly-complex and the proposal manager might be part of a sales team.

Software companies likely have a more complex response process, in which they have to prove security and regulatory compliance as well as document product differentiation, onboarding processes and so on. Many software companies, especially enterprise organizations, have dedicated response teams if not departments.

We’ve put together a couple of examples:

An IT firm in the Washington, D.C. area is looking for a proposal manager. Job responsibilities include:

  • Collaborating with business development and capture managers to determine whether to respond and the best approach
  • Developing compliance matrices and proposal section outlines
  • Analyzing RFPs
  • Finding relevant content
  • Managing the proposal process
  • Compiling data and report to management
  • Enforcing editorial guidelines
  • Reviewing proposals to ensure corporate and legal compliance
  • Manage the proposal database

An educational technology firm is looking for a government proposal manager. Job responsibilities include:

  • Analyzing RFPs
  • Gathering information
  • Developing proposals by assembling information, which may include, the project narrative, objectives, outcomes, deliverables and more
  • Building proposals on company proposal software
  • Analyzing losses
  • Managing company repository

Proposal roles and salaries

Hiring a proposal professional is certainly an investment for any business. However, the value that a dedicated proposal manager delivers is clear. Indeed, they bring order to the RFP response process, ensure better proposals and enable the business to answer even more RFPs.

When it comes to proposal management, salaries vary widely based on the industry, company size, location and level of experience and education. It’s also worth noting that many recruiters say that a culture fit, trainability and talent is just as important as experience. In addition, for those just starting out, there’s a clear path from entry-level positions to advanced titles and potentially executive roles.

Please note that salary ranges vary, depending on where the job is located, the industry and so on.

Entry-level proposal positions

Many proposal managers didn’t start out in the field. Often, proposal managers are internal hires plucked from savvy candidates in sales, marketing, or administration roles. These professionals may jump straight into their role as proposal managers, or they may begin in an entry-level role.

Proposal coordinator

As the title implies, the proposal coordinator is responsible for facilitating the proposal process. For instance, they work together with sales, product development, marketing and other departments to create a proposal that addresses the prospect’s concerns. Often, they are in charge of following up with internal contributors, finding previous answers and editing the proposal.

Proposal coordinator salary: $48,000 – $71,000

Proposal specialist

A proposal specialist is responsible for conducting research, articulating key differentiators and writing responses that address the customer’s needs. In addition, they request help from SMEs, customize answers to focus on the customer’s needs and ensure consistency and compliance throughout the proposal.

Proposal specialist salary: $50,000 – $76,000

Proposal writer

As you might suspect, the proposal writer is primarily responsible for a proposal’s content. They are experts at turning general ideas and concepts into well-constructed, polished answers. Indeed, they verify that each answer is complete and relates back to the stated needs and goals. The proposal writer is  particularly good at helping the buyer picture themselves as a customer and highlighting differentiators throughout the proposal. Finally, they ensure that the proposal tells an engaging story from beginning to end.

Proposal writer salary: $60,000 – $97,000

Advanced proposal titles

With a few years of experience and growth, entry-level positions may advance to a role with more responsibility.

Proposal manager

In addition to managing the RFP response process, the proposal manager also executes the organization’s RFP strategy. They also collaborate with various contributing departments, explore process optimization and proactively manage the organization’s knowledge library. Often, the proposal manager captures feedback on both won and lost opportunities and provides recommendations to the business.

Proposal manager salary: $83,000 – $135,000

Senior proposal manager

In organizations with multiple proposal managers, a senior proposal manager is responsible for leading special projects, taking on high-stakes RFPs and administering RFP technology. Additionally, they focus on high-level management of proposal projects. In this role, they typically direct a team including a proposal coordinator, proposal writer and graphic designer.

Senior proposal manager salary: $108,000 – $182,000

Executive leadership positions

Proposal director and vice president of proposal operations

While they are somewhat rare, there are executive proposal positions in large organizations. For example, you’ll find titles like proposal director and vice president of proposal operations. These roles lead multiple proposal teams divided by products or regions and provide insight that may influence business strategy. Typically, executive proposal professionals report directly to a chief revenue officer or chief financial officer.

Proposal executive salary: $159,000 – $280,000

Where to find proposal manager jobs

Whether you’ve just started your proposal career, or you’ve been in the industry for years, there are always new things to learn. Fortunately, the proposal industry is full of helpful peers willing to share their advice and experience. In addition, there are countless resources for ongoing career development. So, remember to make time to hone your skills and connect with others.

1. LinkedIn

Odds are, you already have a LinkedIn profile. The odds are almost as good that you don’t pay much attention to it. For most, LinkedIn isn’t a typical social media site, but it is a great place to showcase your resume, highlight your special skills (like an RFPIO certification), search job listings, and connect with people in your industry.

2. APMP local chapters

The Association of Proposal Management Professionals (APMP) is a worldwide organization for people who issue or respond to RFPs, RFQs, DDQs, security questionnaires and everything else that’s proposal-related. To be fair, though, most APMP members are on the response side.

APMP has 29 worldwide chapters with most on the eastern side of the United States. Both the international organization and its local and regional chapters host events designed for networking and learning about new technologies and best practices. APMP also has an active job board for proposal professionals.

3. Indeed

Indeed’s website says it’s the #1 job site in the world. We can neither confirm nor deny that claim, but the site has a massive list of job postings, company reviews and salary estimates.

A search for “proposal manager,” not filtered by location, shows more than 50,000 jobs. And, a search for “RFP” produces about 16,000 listings.

Advice, tools and resources for career development

4 tips for new proposal managers

1. Build a rapport with subject matter experts

SMEs play a major role in answering RFPs. Consequently, they are one of your most valuable resources. Accordingly, it’s important to build a connection with them and maintain a good working relationship.

To work effectively with SMEs, you must determine the best approach. Because SMEs juggle their own full-time role as well as helping with RFP responses, communicating solely through email is often inefficient.

Ways to collaborate with subject matter experts:

  • Conduct SME interviews and transcribe their answers into the proposal
  • Have the SMEs write answers and submit them to you for editing
  • Write answers yourself and send them all to the SME for review
  • Collaborate in real-time using proposal management software

2. Create customized templates

An efficient proposal manager must think strategically, which often includes taking intelligent shortcuts. Tools such as customized templates help eliminate many of the low-value tasks that hobble proposal managers who find themselves reinventing the wheel for every response.

To get started developing time-saving templates of your own, download our RFP toolkit.

3. Focus on the customer

As the proposal manager, part of your job is to be the customer’s advocate throughout the RFP response. As you review answers and build the proposal, ask yourself, ‘Does this information help the client? Is it relevant, necessary and timely?’

How to write customer-focused proposals:

  • Share your understanding of their needs in the executive summary and RFP cover letter
  • Ensure responses center around and address customer benefits and goals
  • Provide references, case studies and data that illustrate the results the prospective customer can expect

4. Invest time in your proposal content library

Finally, perhaps the most important thing a proposal manager can do to ensure success is to build and maintain a proposal content library. Far too many businesses waste time reinventing the wheel when they respond to an RFP. As a result, the process is slow and frustrating for everyone involved.

Proposal content library best practices:

    • Use the library to answer as many questions as possible before sending the proposal to SMEs
    • Store your knowledge library in a searchable system and organize your content using tags and hierarchies
    • Conduct regular reviews to update answers, remove duplicates and ensure content accuracy

Tools and resources for career development

There’s no doubt that proposal managers have a lot of responsibilities to juggle as they manage complex projects. Luckily, there are a lot of excellent RFP response tools and resources that can make the job far easier. Here are three resource suggestions for proposal professionals at any stage in their career.

Proposal software

As technology advances throughout many businesses, proposal management software experience is in high demand. Indeed, it is now common to see job descriptions that express a preference for candidates with the skills to manage these RFP software platforms.

Our pick: RFPIO

It should come as no surprise that our pick for the best proposal software is RFPIO. But we aren’t the only one who feel that way. RFPIO is the industry-leading strategic response management platform. RFPIO applies a holistic approach to solving common RFX challenges through best-in-class innovation, collaboration and automation. It leads the pack in integrations and its user-based model ensures scalability on a dime.

The biggest RFPIO benefits:

Professional association

Staying up to date on industry events and advancements is an important part of any successful proposal career. Consequently, membership in a professional association delivers benefits that are worth exploring.

Our pick: Association of Proposal Management Professionals (APMP)

The Association of Proposal Management Professionals is the leading professional association in the bid and proposal industry. The organization has a global reach as well as individual, regional chapters. Accordingly, they host frequent in-person and remote webinars, events and meetings. In addition, APMP offers countless resources for expanding your knowledge and exploring best practices.

Resources for APMP members:

Peer networking and new opportunities

When you have a question, are facing a process roadblock or looking for a new opportunity, peers in the industry can offer help. Generally speaking, the bid and proposal industry is friendly and welcoming to all ⁠— there’s always someone who is willing to help out.

Our pick: APMP Official Discussion Group

You don’t have to be an active APMP member to benefit from their wealth of expertise. With more than 21,000 members, the APMP Official Discussion Group on LinkedIn is a great place to crowdsource information, connect with other passionate professionals and keep an eye on trends and opportunities.

  • Problem-solve challenges by brainstorming with peers
  • Explore new proposal technology, processes and data analysis
  • Learn about new job opportunities

Networking for RFPIO users

Efficient RFX response is all about finding the process that works best for your organization. When organizations choose to automate their processes, more choose RFPIO than any other software. Perhaps you have questions that are RFPIO-specific, you want to network with other RFPIO users, or you’re hoping to find other opportunities where your RFPIO expertise will shine.

Our pick: RFPIO online user community

The RFPIO online community is a great place to share ideas and ask proposal- and RFPIO-related questions. The community is more intimate than the APMP LinkedIn group, so it’s also a fantastic opportunity to develop camaraderie and make friends.

  • Share information about proposal management trends
  • Learn about RFPIO updates and new technologies
  • Network with fellow RFPIO proposal professionals

Once you’ve landed your dream proposal manager job, RFPIO is here to help you prove your efficiency and productivity, and drive revenue for your organization. Schedule a demo to see how we can add value to your role.

7 career-boosting networking opportunities for busy proposal managers

7 career-boosting networking opportunities for busy proposal managers

People & Teams

Whether you’re happy with your job, want to explore options, or actively looking, networking is one of the best, if not the best, way of helping you achieve those goals. But is that easier said than done?

The proposal managers we work with are extraordinary. They are some of the hardest working and most knowledgeable people in their organizations, and like the rest of us, they have lives outside their careers. That doesn’t leave a lot of time for traditional networking opportunities, such as networking groups, cocktail parties, etc.

Time isn’t the only roadblock for proposal managers looking to expand their professional connections. Proposal management is rather niche, which is one of the things that makes it a great career path. Most companies need you, or at least someone like you, but how many people actually know what a proposal or response manager does?

Wouldn’t you rather network with people who know the difference between an RFP proposal manager and a proposal 💍 manager?

1. Join a social media group

With an average of about 17 minutes per month per person spent on LinkedIn, it’s fair to say that it’s far from the most popular social media platform. Still, more than 58 million companies are on LinkedIn, partly because of the wealth of talent looking to hear about new possibilities.

There are several groups for proposal industry experts, the largest of which is the Association of Proposal Management Professionals (APMP). The best part is the group is even open to people who aren’t members of the association.

If you feel you might get lost in the crowd of 21,000-plus members, consider joining Bid Specialists – Bid and Proposal Professionals for Winning Private and Public Sector Contracts. Its roster of just over 700 members includes professionals from all aspects of the proposal industry, including salespeople, lead managers, capture and support people, and so on.

If you are an RFPIO user, please join our LinkedIn user group. We also have a response management Slack channel. 

2. Reconnect with some of your favorite college professors

If your degree is in any way related to the proposal industry, your former college professors likely still have their thumbs on the pulse of the industry. They might even be aware of opportunities other alumni may have discussed with them.

Email them through their university email addresses, social media profiles, or blogs if they have them.

3. Join an online community for proposal professionals

Between those 11:59 p.m. work-from-home deadlines and frustration over SMEs who appear to be ghosting you, you might feel alone. You’re not. RFPIO’s customers and proposal managers have been asking us to organize an online community for a long time, and we finally did it!

For now, the online community is open to all RFPIO customers, although non-customers can browse and explore. It’s a place to find colleagues, establish mentorships, ask and answer questions, and even win badges! Best of all, you can make valuable connections who can provide tips for advancing in your current company or help you find a new job.

4. Show your thought leadership skills

Proposal manager and SME is a symbiotic relationship. You need them to help you craft the right answers, and they need you to help drive revenue. But have you ever thought that you are also an SME or thought leader?

You have skills and knowledge that are valuable to anyone who has, or wants to have, a career in proposal management. Demonstrate your expertise by writing an article or blog post in a trade journal, as a guest writer on a company blog (RFPIO occasionally features guest bloggers), LinkedIn, or Medium.

For the less introverted among us, offer your subject mastery on a panel, as a guest speaker, or if you have an especially compelling tale to tell, you could even offer to hold a Ted Talk.

Did I mention that potential employers could see your post or speaking engagement?

5. Ask your existing contacts

A now ancient shampoo commercial asked its users to each tell three friends about the restorative powers (or something) of the product. In turn, the commercial said, your three friends would tell three friends, and soon everyone will know about the shampoo.

You probably have one, two, or three people you used to work with. Ask them to introduce you to people, and then once you establish those relationships, ask your new contacts for introductions. Don’t just limit yourself to asking fellow proposal professionals. SMEs, salespeople, and so on also have connections to the proposal industry.

You may not get to know everyone in the proposal world, but you’d be amazed at how quickly the introductions can cascade.

6. Reach out to strangers

This one can be tough for many of us. Still, there’s no harm in connecting on LinkedIn, sending an email, or even calling proposal managers from other companies to introduce yourself.

If they’re receptive and live near you, you could suggest coffee or lunch.

7. Become a mentor

Rather than approach people with the idea that they can help you, offer yourself as a mentor.

It’s easy to forget the essential basics. Giving advice reminds you to stick to what works, builds your leadership and communication skills, and helps you get noticed. It’s also worth noting that mentor–mentee relationships aren’t always as clear-cut as they sound.

A younger mentee can help more seasoned mentors keep up with industry trends.

Of course, networking is about far more than job hunting. If you are looking for a place to make immediate connections who can help you in your current position, we invite you to check out the proposal manager online community.

See how it feels to respond with confidence

Why do 250,000+ users streamline their response process with RFPIO? Schedule a demo to find out.