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Deploy content governance that will take your breath away

Deploy content governance that will take your breath away

Content & Storytelling

I recently hosted a webinar called Building a Solid Content Foundation about how to set up a content review workflow. […]

Category: Tag: Content governance

Deploy content governance that will take your breath away

Deploy content governance that will take your breath away

Content & Storytelling

I recently hosted a webinar called Building a Solid Content Foundation about how to set up a content review workflow. Since then, it has occurred to me that there can be no content review without content governance.

This short article will provide some brief background on content governance, why it’s important, and how proposal automation and knowledge management software can help.

What is content governance?

Content governance is the framework and processes you use to create, store, and maintain your content. But before we dive too deep, let’s start with a bad joke and a Top Gun analogy…

What do you call it when an entire population is satisfied with its gubernatorial leadership? Content governance. Ha! I know, it’s terrible.

How is content governance different from content management and content strategy? I could just tell you, but that would be boring. You can find all sorts of places on the Internet that can give you the glossary version. We’re going into the Danger Zone.

We’ve been in a Top Gun mood around here. Anticipation around the release of Top Gun: Maverick is ramping up faster than that titular character’s need for speed. In a Top Gun analogy, content governance would actually be the U.S. Navy. Content strategy is “Top Gun,” or the Navy Fighter Weapons School (I hear it’s frowned upon to use Top Gun terminology while at the school). Here’s how it breaks down:

  • Content governance = U.S. Navy. This is the universe in which all organizational content exists, from its creation, storage, and access, to its moderation, and, ultimately, to its archival. All content is subject to the laws of the content governance universe.
  • Content strategy = Top Gun. There has to be a framework in place to create world-class content. Everything from rules of engagement to battle tactics to overcoming pushback must be taken into consideration when determining what to create when and for which targeted audience.
  • Content creators = Pilots. In case you’re wondering who the best is…well, it doesn’t really matter. Like the real Navy Fighter Weapons School, there is no room for ego. Within the parameters established under content governance in your content strategy and style guide (see below), content creators are free to do what’s necessary to connect with their audience.
  • Content management system (CMS) = Aircraft carrier and crew. It’s a team effort, and effective content cannot exist in a vacuum. Any successful content endeavor needs technology and subject matter expertise in its earpiece. You can think of the CMS as the execution phase of content governance, where theory is put into practice when buyer-facing content is created, reviewed, stored, and accessed
  • Style guide = F/A-18C/D Hornet (aka, the jet). Content governance only works when creators have guidelines to follow. They need a cockpit from where they can work their magic, otherwise they end up in a flat spin out to sea with content that is off-brand, off-message, and possibly off-putting to the buyer.

Why do you need content governance?

While content governance is often associated with marketing content, it’s time to think bigger, like sales content bigger. According to the April 26, 2021, Forrester blog, From Monolithic to Modular: Kicking Your Sales Content Engine into High Gear, “Because marketers produce more monolithic than modular content, 70% of sales reps spend between one and 14 hours every week customizing content for their buyers.”

Sales reps understand that their competitive advantage comes from personalizing content to customize a solution around buyers’ specific pain points. Releasing these content creators into the wild without any content governance is a recipe for disaster, in accuracy and efficiency.

4 benefits of content governance

I’m still adding to the list. Seriously, content governance is a huge benefit to all of my clients. Here are the top four:

  1. Better content: It’s always created with accurate information and undergoes peer review (none of us are adept at proofing our own work).
  2. Efficient workflows: When everyone knows their roles and content governance is being driven by technology, then the content runs through its lifecycle with less friction.
  3. Greater productivity: Automation, accurate content building blocks, and the democratization of content creation makes it easier for creators and reviewers to move faster.
  4. Improved outcomes: Breaking down monolithic content into buyer-focused customized content improves the overall buying and customer experiences.

How to create a content governance workflow

As is the case with most new process implementations, the pain is frontloaded. Trust me, the long-term payoff for proposal managers, sales representatives, content editors, subject matter experts, and all content creators is well worth it.

Conduct a content audit
You need to rein in out-of-bounds content first. Get your house in order by ditching redundant, outdated, trivial (deal- or client-specific), and off-brand content.

Identify content gaps
Now that the content bin has been cleaned out, you should have full visibility into what you need. Break it down by buyer need, not product need. According to the December 16, 2020, Forrester blog, Happy B2B “Contentukkah”: Spinning the Editorial Dreidel, “We encourage content creators to join forces and push back on the company’s tendency to sing the praises of its portfolio when it should be waxing poetic about its audiences’ challenges.”

Create a style guide
Specify the writing and graphic standards for content. You can go high level and just cover fonts and color palettes, or you can get down to a level of detail where you provide standards for individual content types (e.g., videos, presentations, data sheets, blog articles, etc.). Also, consider creating templates to make it easier to create that content that always has to be personalized according to your style guide.

Implement a CMS
Unless you want to go the manual route of spreadsheets and checklists, you’ll need a CMS for automation, auditing, and reporting.

How can proposal automation and knowledge management help with content governance?

Creating content on the fly—which is the preferred method for sales representatives creating content—can be challenging in a content governance environment rife with bottleneck risk. Manual processes are the biggest culprit, but an ill-fitting CMS can be just as dangerous.

Proposal automation and knowledge management software such as RFPIO presents a huge advantage to sales teams and other content creators because it breaks content down to its lowest common denominator: questions and answers. These are the building blocks of all content. When these accurate, curated questions and answers are accessible from anywhere, then content can be created from anywhere.

Beyond the advantage of creating content within your content governance model, proposal automation and knowledge management helps in three primary areas:

  1. Let the system drive your workflow. Assign content owners, establish content moderation teams, and set up content review cycles from an intuitive dashboard.
  2. Govern from a single, closed-loop system. Ditch the spreadsheets, checklists, and risk of human error. Once the workflow is established, you have an audit trail for every entry in your Content Library. You can also keep all collaboration in the system so that even emails to external collaborators can be monitored within a project.
  3. Robust reporting out of the box. Being able to monitor the health and hygiene of your Content Library is essential to adhering to content governance. Monthly and quarterly reporting to leadership gives them a window into the value of content governance, its efficiencies, and its ability to guide content creators to better sales outcomes.

Ultimately, content governance gets you that single source of truth. RFPIO makes sure you can provide the right content (sales, marketing, corporate, financial, solutions, etc.) to the entire organization.

If you’re interested in having RFPIO as your wingman, schedule a demo today!

How TOMIA improved global collaboration with bid response software

How TOMIA improved global collaboration with bid response software

Customer Stories

As a company that creates solutions for the world’s leading service providers, including some of the telecommunication industry’s largest groups, TOMIA defines its mission as enabling their customers to drive the future of connectivity through new technologies.

They’re also a company that takes compliance extremely seriously, which is why requests for bids are such an important part of their business model. Bids and tenders are their opportunity to demonstrate their expertise, professionalism, and commitment to security in the fullest detail—and clearly showcase why they’d be the best fit.

John Marcow, the Bid Response Manager at TOMIA—and a veteran of the industry, who’s responded to 700+ bid requests in his lifetime—knows better than most how important bids are to the sales cycle. “It doesn’t matter how good your relationship is. Sometimes you need to respond to an RFP if you want to win the deal.”

Before RFPIO, the TOMIA bid response process was highly manual. After receiving a bid request, John would paste the following table underneath each question:

He would then ask subject matter experts (SMEs) to search for their name and respond to all their assigned questions.

As one can imagine, this process not only left plenty of room for human error, it also lacked visibility John needed to keep RFPs on track. Since everything was answered in static documents on personal computers, John would constantly send emails to assignees, requesting status updates or reminding them of the due date.

Once John received all answered questions (often in the eleventh hour), he would proofread and polish each of the answers, and compile the responses into a single, cohesive document.

This process was tedious, time-consuming, and inefficient. The TOMIA bid response team knew there had to be a better way to respond to RFPs. So they turned to RFPIO’s AI-enabled RFP response solution.

Bid proposal software: Before and after
Before RFPIO:

  • Assigned questions to SMEs by adding a table to the Word or Excel document that includes assignee name, compliance status (y/n), and a place to write supporting information.
  • After receiving completed questions from SMEs, the documents would need to be compiled into a single cohesive document.
  • The bid manager constantly reminded SMEs to finish their assigned questions.
  • The bid manager had no visibility into project status. He had to manually reach out to SMEs via email to ask whether they had started working on their questions.
  • SMEs who wanted a question reassigned to someone else would ask thebid manager (John) to do so.

After RFPIO:

  • Questions are assigned in just a few clicks.
  • RFPIO automatically sends reminders.
  • The bid manager has full visibility into question status from the project dashboard.
  • Questions are reassigned by the SME in RFPIO.
  • Completed, cohesive responses are exported into the source file in a few clicks.

Improving collaboration and increasing efficiency with RFPIO

When the TOMIA team responded to their first RFP using RFPIO, it was hard to believe how much of a difference it made.

With RFPIO, John uploads an RFP to the platform and assigns questions or sections to subject matter experts. After that, the process is relatively hands-off—RFPIO will automatically send reminders to everyone who hasn’t answered their questions.

seamlessly collaborate by assigning tasks to collaborators in-app

John also has full visibility into project status from the project dashboard. He uses that information to send out periodic project updates to keep everyone informed and keep projects on track.

Identify project scope before starting any RFP

“RFPIO gives me full visibility into the entire process. And I’m able to easily collaborate with team members across the organization, from product to finance to legal.”

Getting stakeholders across the organization up and running in RFPIO

Since TOMIA implemented RFPIO in 2018, they’ve created user accounts for 25% of the company, even though most of them only use it for a few questions. But since RFPIO has an unlimited user license, they’re able to maintain their accounts for those moments when they do need to support RFPs.

“One of the best things about RFPIO is that it’s really intuitive. You don’t need much instruction to use it. Our SMEs are able to easily answer any questions they’ve been assigned with little to no training.”

When an SME has been assigned a question, they’ll receive a notification in their inbox letting them know their expertise is needed. They can either respond directly from their email, or open up the platform to respond there.

When they log into the platform, the first thing they see is the list of questions they’ve been assigned. They can click into the question to respond. Or, if they don’t know the answer, they can assign the question to someone else—or simply @mention them for help.@-mentioning makes it easy to collaborate on RFP projects

Overall, RFPIO has significantly cut response time and improved the bid response process. With RFPIO, the TOMIA team—with regional headquarters in the US, Israel, Luxembourg, and India—is able to collaborate with team members all over the world to craft compelling bids that win more business.

“I would absolutely recommend RFPIO to anyone looking for a better way to manage proposals. With RFPIO, we’re able to collaborate in real-time with team members all over the world. It has made a huge difference.”

Ready to streamline collaboration on bids and tenders?

See how RFPIO can help your team uplevel your bid response process and make global collaboration a breeze. Schedule a demo to get started.

Where’s the answer? Ask Slack!

Where’s the answer? Ask Slack!

Integrations

“Water, water, everywhere,
Nor any drop to drink.”
-The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, Samuel Taylor Coleridge

If I were writing the poem, The Rime of the 21st Century Proposal Manager, it might include the lines:

Data, data everywhere, Not a clue to find
As silos rise, I lose my mind.
I chase my tail. I chase your tail.
My efforts always seem to fail.
Chaos abounds.
My head spins round.
Where, oh where, does my answer lie?
In the depths of our silos, it seems to hide.

I’m no poet, wouldn’t you know it?

But I am a Senior Proposal Manager at Illuminate Education, Inc., and I am charged with taming our data sprawl problems using RFPIO. I started by creating a data map. By assigning collections, tags, and subtags, I can migrate from data everywhere, including…

  • Google Drive
  • Confluence
  • Drop Box
  • HubSpot
  • Website
  • Client Library
  • Resource Center
  • Individual PCs

…to a consolidated Content Library in RFPIO. At that point, a new $64K question pops up: Can I make it accessible to everyone in the company? I could add as many RFPIO users as I wanted at no extra cost. But introducing another new software platform to the team is a challenge. Not because I doubt the value; but because some people resist change—even if it helps. It’s a lot easier to call me than to learn a new process!

Enter RFPIO® LookUp, which makes the RFPIO Content Library accessible from Google Chrome, Microsoft Teams, and, most importantly for Illuminate, Slack. The LookUp for Slack is the wrecking ball I need to break down all of the data silos used across my organization.

All teams use Slack. We talk, ask questions, and collaborate with Slack. Now we can extend this engagement to include RFPIO proposal projects. Log into Slack, ask a question, and BOOM! There’s the answer. Using @mentions or inserting a tag using #hashtags, users find their answers. They can even do it from their phone! All activity is captured by RFPIO for tracking usage and uncovering retraining opportunities.

Slack questions are easy to add to our knowledge base. We simply grab the conversation from Slack and create a new Q&A pair. Our workflow delivers the new content to moderation for edits and enhancements. Once moderation is done, the content is available in the library.

Slack evolves into an on-demand knowledge base. Through Slack Bot, we eliminate the “I need an answer and I need it now” dilemma. As a self-service tool, management teams, sales, SMEs, customer support, and all Illuminators can get answers or content quickly. Fast answers. Quick responses. Improved quality. What more can you want?

While RFPIO® LookUp for Slack is a huge help for all your users, your sales team will be doing happy dances! To just type in a question on their phone or laptop while sitting with a customer, and get a trusted answer—well, that is huge.

Sales is your biggest challenge. They’re busy, short on patience, rely on others, and hate change. Training this team is a challenge. LookUp for Slack simplifies integrating sales into the RFPIO proposal process and exposes them to an Content Library knowledge base.

If you’re looking for more information about how I am implementing RFPIO® LookUp at IlluminateEducation, check out my RISE UP session! If you like detailed anecdotes, data maps, and user adoption hacks, you’ll probably get a kick out of it. Although, admittedly, I may be biased.

Building a portal to your company knowledge base from Slack is just the beginning of what RFPIO® LookUp can do. LookUp is also compatible with Google Chrome, Microsoft Word, Powerpoint, and more! Learn more here.

How Genpact transformed proposal quality with an access-anywhere knowledge base

How Genpact transformed proposal quality with an access-anywhere knowledge base

Customer Stories

Genpact (NYSE: G) is a global professional services firm that makes business transformation real. The company drives digital-led innovation and digitally-enabled intelligent operations for its clients, guided by its experience of running thousands of processes primarily for Global Fortune 500 companies across more than 30 countries.

One of the recent examples is the transformation of the BidPro (the bid and proposal team) team. The team was spending 80% of time on deals that represented just 20% of revenue. As is common across the industry, bids turned into fire drills and deal managers provided stock-standard responses rather than focusing on winning messaging.

The result? Poorly articulated value propositions. Inconsistent messaging. Low team morale. And disappointing conversion rates on deals they knew they should be winning.

There was no doubt that the bid-pro team was ready for a transformation. And one of the key catalysts of this transformation was content.

Here’s the story of how they did it.

Chapter 1: Building a strong content backbone

Content is at the heart of any strong proposal. While there were already different types of collateral available, proposal-specific content is a different ball game. It needs a differentiated approach. In addition to content “breadth and depth”, content also needs to be of the right quality.

By simultaneously broadening and deepening leadership-approved content, they were able to give bid managers the valuable content they needed to build out a standard proposal and could customize from there — improving the quality of the final submission, the way they always hoped to do.

The next big thing was ensuring content was available in multiple formats. 80% of their submissions were made in Microsoft PowerPoint, which meant the RFPIO library needed to be compatible with PowerPoint.

The Genpact team partnered with the RFPIO team to find a solution that could serve their unique needs. After multiple discussions and iterations, an optimum solution was agreed upon and the new capability was launched. With this, the proposal library became comprehensive, full of Q&A pairs, templates, boilerplates, infographics, and images.

Chapter 2: Making content easily accessible

Before RFPIO, the Genpact team was managing content on a different cloud-based system. Since this content catered to different use cases, finding the right content was not easy. They kept hearing the same feedback over and over again — nobody could find relevant content, content was dated, and searching for content was a pain.

RFPIO met their needs on both content management and search.

However, change is never easy. To simplify the process and provide a seamless user experience, the Genpact team implemented the RFPIO® LookUp subscription, giving the BidPro team direct access to the RFPIO Content Library via Microsoft 365 programs like Word and PowerPoint.

In addition, people outside the BidPro team can download template slide decks directly from the library. Then, they can create the storyline using boilerplate content (also stored in the Content Library) and customize it to the client’s specific use case.

Using RFPIO® LookUp, the Genpact bid-pro team can now download template slide decks directly from the Content Library. Then, they can create the storyline using boilerplate content (also stored in the Content Library) and customize it to the client’s specific use case.

By strengthening content quality and creating easy access to the Content Library via RFPIO® LookUp, bid managers now have immediate access to pre-approved content they can easily add to their proposals. As a result, proposal quality has improved dramatically.

Chapter 3: Increasing efficiency by 30% by empowering a team of high-achievers

Before RFPIO, the bid-pro team would repeatedly answer factual questions such as “What’s your address” and “What’s your D&B number”. As such, talented proposal professionals weren’t able to seize opportunities to advance their career.

“Since implementing RFPIO, we’ve been able to do so much more with the same headcount. We’ve increased efficiency by at least 30-35%. We’ve diverted the effort and time to more value-added activities, creating a win-win both for the organization and the team members”.
-Shashi K, Assistant VP of Content at Genpact

Bid-pro team members are no longer grinding to complete repetitive tasks. Instead, they’ve been able to grow into content professionals who are experts in the subject areas they’ve helped build-out. “Not only are they creating real value for deal managers, but they’re developing important skills to advance their careers,” Shashi said.

Another key benefit of RFPIO for a fast-paced organization such as Genpact is accelerating onboarding. With a rich repository of high-quality, pre-vetted content, new team members across the organization are able to create strong proposals without relying on their more-senior counterparts.

And like they say, the proof of the pudding lies in eating. The team is witnessing early success —over 90% of the content they’ve created is being used. Their content strategy is working. Going forward, they’re going to continue to use RFPIO’s built-in analytics to track how their team is using RFPIO® LookUp for Microsoft Office to gain more insight into how their content is being leveraged.

Epilogue: And the journey of excellence continues

In addition to the outcomes envisaged, this transformation has also been recognized by the industry. In 2020, they were recognized by the Association for Proposal Management Professionals (APMP) as “Best Team of the Year.”

And they’re not finished yet. As Sanjay Singh, Vice President, BidPro says, “And the journey has just about begun. The BidPro team is now planning to empower the entire sales team to create proactive proposals using standard content from the RFPIO Content Library. A new phase begins.”

And they’re not alone. According to the 2021 Benchmark Report on Proposal Management, of organizations planning to respond to more RFPs in 2021, 82% will also complete more proactive proposals.

Powered with strong content and a drive to succeed, the Genpact BidPro team is perfectly poised for the next phase of its transformation. At Genpact, the future is bright.

5 steps to healthy RFP collaboration between sales and presales

5 steps to healthy RFP collaboration between sales and presales

People & Teams, Product & Best Practices

Friction can be a good thing. With the right amount, sales and presales teams share productive exchanges, respectful pushback during disagreements, and shared admiration for jobs well done on all sides.

Too much, and those relationships can quickly flare up with resentment or burnout in an unwinnable blame game (“It’s presales’ fault for losing the RFP!”). Too little, and silos develop, making collaboration difficult and agility nearly impossible (“It’s sales’ fault for not not giving us what we need to create a winning proposal!”).

Sound familiar? It’s OK. Sometimes when the kids are bickering in the back seat you have to follow through with your threat to pull the car over right this instant. Breathe. In through the nose, out through the mouth. Namaste. Let’s move on.

How do you maintain that ideal level of friction? Glad you asked. I have five steps to help.

Before you skip ahead, remember that everyone in your organization is always working toward the same goal: Win conversions based on responses, whether they be reactive requests for proposals (RFPs) or proactive proposals designed to solve specific prospect or customer problems.

When your organization commits to the unified goal to win through proposals, then it’s just a matter of creating the best game plan to do so.

5 steps to improve collaboration between sales and presales

Step 1: Add transparency to RFP roles and responsibilities

Attempting to collaborate without transparency is a bit like playing the card game “Go Fish”: One person knows what they want, but they’re not sure where to get it. You can avoid this first by documenting all RFP processes. If you have a proposal manager or, better yet, a dedicated proposal team, then you can ask them for this information.

As soon as assignments are delegated to sales and presales teams, then make sure each team is aware of the roles for both teams. You’ll also want to include responsibilities that don’t fall under either sales or presales.

For example, if your responses consistently rely on polished product marketing documentation, then your resource is likely someone in the marketing department. Calling this information out will help avoid unnecessary blaming from either team when they know it’s neither of their faults.

If you use RFP software, then your platform can help promote transparency. I cannot speak for other solutions, but with RFPIO you can:

  • Give every sales rep and presales person access to the project dashboard.
  • Assign deliverables to respective teams to avoid confusion over who is responsible for what.
  • Provide a project timeline so both teams can keep up with RFP progress.
  • Monitor all deliverables to help identify bottlenecks.
  • Gather and contain all communication related to the RFP, including emails, Slack, Salesforce/CRM communications, as well as any alerts or messages initiated from RFPIO.
  • Store all questions, answers, and RFP content for unified knowledge management across every team working the RFP.

Step 2: Write the executive summary

Sales must lead the way. There’s no avoiding it. Sales is responsible for the customer relationship. Without their unique insight, presales is flying blind on the RFP. If sales wants to cross the finish line with a win, then it has to guide presales in the right direction. Back at the starting line, that means writing the RFP’s executive summary.

Write the executive summary first to help set the tone for the RFP. Again, RFP software can help here. After you write the executive summary, your RFP software can make an automated first pass at answering all of the questions based on the content in your Content Library. From there, presales will be able to review the answers under the direction that sales established in the executive summary. Sweet, fancy efficiency…

As the owner of the customer relationship, the salesperson should actually demand to write the executive summary. It explains the entirety of the RFP and sets up the narrative for the customer journey. If you have a proposal team, then sales can at the very least outline the executive summary so the proposal team can flesh it out and add polish.

“Sales owning the executive summary is extremely important, because it provides context and color into how the company will position itself throughout the RFP. From there, PreSales can bring insight into where the product or platform may fall short, and discuss a strategy on how to approach the response.”
—James Kaikis, Co-Founder at PreSales Collective

Step 3: Schedule a kick-off call

If you have a proposal team and documented proposal processes, then a kick-off meeting for RFPs may already exist. If so, make sure sales and presales are invited. If not, then take the initiative to include a kick-off meeting in your RFP response process.

Three of the main reasons you need this touchpoint are to:

  • Give all parties involved a chance to set expectations and clarify roles.
  • Exchange unique insights about the prospect, your relationship history, and how to differentiate your response from competitors.
  • Insert a Go/No-Go evaluation in your RFP response process to solidify team commitment to responding to a winnable RFP.

Step 4: Play an active role in responding to the RFP

Sales teams sometimes make the mistake of washing their hands of an RFP as soon as they hand it off to presales or proposal teams. From the standpoint of the customer relationship and the reasoning behind the RFP, the sales team is the SME! Just as SMEs for product, SLAs, support, legal, pricing, etc. are expected to contribute their expertise to a response, so too should sales be expected to contribute their expertise about the customer.

Sales-related answers and content can also be managed in the Content Library of your RFP software. That way sales can focus on the review process and personalizing content after the automated first pass takes place.

Step 5: Reflect on the results, win or lose

When you hear back from the issuer, come together as a team to reflect on how the RFP landed — win or lose. If you lose, talk about what you could have done better. If you won, talk about what you did well.

This win-loss review gives your team an opportunity to close the loop. It also gives you an opportunity to heap some well-deserved praise where it’s due. Sales knows that it cannot survive without presales. Sometimes presales likes to be reminded. There’s no better time to do so than after a win, when you can call out the outstanding job that presales did in composing the response.

You can also use this opportunity to make sure what you learned in the finished RFP is carried over to the next RFP. Win or lose, factoring in what worked and what didn’t will make it easier to determine the next Go/No-Go decision.

Good collaboration = good content

Winning proposals resonate with good content. And behind every piece of good content is the collaboration that made it happen. The better the collaboration between sales and presales, the better your proposal will be.

In our new proposal management Benchmark Report, we found that 75% of organizations plan on responding to more RFPs in 2021 than they did in 2020. The only way that can happen is if sales and presales are collaborating at a healthy rate of friction.

If your sales and presales teams need a collaboration tool to kickstart that healthy friction, then schedule a demo today!

3 strategies for a consistent and on-brand content library

3 strategies for a consistent and on-brand content library

Content & Storytelling

What do marketing and proposal teams have in common? They both want to demonstrate their company’s strengths in a way that is compelling and impactful. Despite this, proposal and marketing teams tend to manage their respective content in silos, with little collaboration between the two.

When you break content along team lines, messaging becomes inconsistent—or worse, inaccurate. That’s why the proposal team needs a champion who can bridge marketing and proposal teams to keep people aligned and content up-to-date. Who is that person at your organization? Maybe it’s you.

The good news is that aligning proposal and marketing teams isn’t as complicated as you might think. And I’ve already outlined a few simple strategies to get you started.

Replace walls with bridges

When teams become too focused on their tasks and deadlines, they inadvertently build walls around themselves. The higher these walls grow, the more difficult it is to stay aligned. As the self-appointed bridge between your organization’s marketing and proposal teams, it’s your responsibility to tear those walls down.

Kick off the collaboration by gathering the right brains in the same room, and setting up recurring cross-team meetings. Make sure everyone, on both sides, is clear about their responsibilities.

Next, make cross-team communication as easy as possible by setting up a designated channel in your communication platform of choice—be in Slack, Microsoft Teams, or Google Hangouts—where team members can go when they’re stuck or have a question.

Once you’ve established regular contact between marketing and proposal teams, they’ll be able to stay aligned on content guidelines and be ready for any changes coming down the line.

Your challenge is maintaining communication between the two sides. Keep collaboration simple. Ensure regular meetings keep happening. The more often the two sides are in contact, the easier it will be to communicate important deadlines, updates, or changes in content strategy.

Set regular review cycles

I like to think of brands as people. When you’re interacting with someone, it goes without saying that we expect them to sound and look the same throughout the conversation.

When customers are interacting with your brand, they expect a similarly uniform experience. Your company should look and sound the same, whenever your prospects are interacting with you, be it on your website, advertisements—or, yes, even proposals.

Proposals inconsistent with the rest of your organization’s content leaves customers with a tangled idea of what your company represents. And when you’re trying to demonstrate your value proposition, the last thing you want is to confuse your customers.

Luckily, we can fix this problem in just three words: Regular review cycles.

Beyond establishing an extended content plan, there is absolutely nothing more important to the long-term success of your content library than setting review cycles, content audits, and careful moderation practices.

Unsurprisingly, both of these elements also play a critical role in bridging the gap between marketing and the proposal management team.

Establishing a healthy review cadence allows your content experts to take a look at volatile or brand-centric content regularly, and creates the space to make any necessary edits before you submit your proposal.

Working Tip: If you’ve already set up review cycles in RFPIO, consider creating a separate cycle for marketing content, and add users from your team who will be plugged into the organization’s brand copy guidelines and priorities.

Stay aligned on content strategy

The cherry on top of excellent content is bringing everyone on the same page. Making sure both proposal and marketing teams are tuned-in to the overarching content strategy reduces miscommunication, misunderstandings, and inconsistencies.

Is there a rebrand on the horizon? Do taglines or other key pieces of brand copy change on a rolling basis? Are new products going to be released that will require additional content?

Understand your organization’s long-term content plan and be aware of any forthcoming copy and branding updates, so you can align proposal content with any changes coming down the pike.

Keeping a pulse on changes will ensure proposals are always aligned with your company’s mission and voice.

“Great things in business are never done by one person”. I’ll have to agree with Steve Jobs on this one. When proposal and marketing teams collaborate on content, messaging is consistent across channels. Proposals are more compelling. And everyone wins.

If you want to learn how RFPIO can help you keep your content organized, up-to-date, and on-brand, schedule a demo today.

How a recognition company doubled their win rate with excellent content management

How a recognition company doubled their win rate with excellent content management

Customer Stories

When the content manager at a global recognition company was asked about the most important part of a smooth-running RFP response process, they replied, “ensuring the most up-to-date and accurate content is never more than a few clicks away.”

Thanks to their well-organized content library, their response process is now a well-organized machine—but it wasn’t always this way.

Before implementing RFPIO, the proposal team spent the vast majority of their time searching for answers to questions they had already answered dozens of times before. This left minimal time to focus on the part that actually mattered: crafting compelling content tailored to each client’s specific needs.

They knew there had to be a better way. After a comprehensive market scan of RFP software, the team decided on RFPIO to help them catapult their response process to the next level. Since moving forward with RFPIO, they’ve noticed three key improvements to their response process:

Higher quality RFP responses with a content library that improves over time

Before using RFPIO, one of the RFP writers remembers that “there was this one answer in our library that had a typo. Each time I used that answer in my responses, I would manually correct the typo in the RFP, rather than in the main system.”

Because their previous content library was so difficult to update, it would quickly become obsolete—and writers couldn’t rely on it to find the information they needed.

When the RFP response team first saw RFPIO in action—and saw that updating an answer was simply a matter of clicking ‘edit’, typing, and clicking ‘save’—they knew RFPIO would make a huge difference in their process.

Now, the team has a specialized content manager, who manages the content library with an eagle eye. They carefully moderate each question-and-answer pair before approving it to the library, only approving answers that will create value for the entire team.

As a result, the recognition company’s content management system improves with each RFP they respond to—and they’ve found that when the entire team has access to the best content available, everyone is better off.

“When my team saw that RFPIO automatically suggests answers while you’re responding to an RFP, we were so excited. We weren’t doing anything like that—and we all knew, right away, that RFPIO would make a huge difference.”

Consistent, high-quality answers, in every RFP

Because their previous content management system was so difficult to update, content stored in the library was often out-of-date and inaccurate—and RFP writers couldn’t rely on it to respond to their RFPs.

Instead, they would put the four most recent RFPs they’d completed on one screen and the current RFP they’re responding to on another. If they couldn’t find the answers they needed in their previous RFPs, they might ask their neighbor. If that didn’t work, they might email an SME.

With this inefficient process, finding an answer to a single question could take days.

Now, the RFP team knows that the content stored in the library is the most accurate and up-to-date content there is.

Furthermore, the team can upload an RFP into RFPIO and respond to it without leaving the software. As they’re responding to each question, the library automatically suggests the most relevant answer.

Easy access to a reliable single source of truth, combined with the AI-enabled search engine and recommendation tool, has empowered the RFP response team to quickly respond to commonly seen questions—giving them more time to focus on what really matters.

RFP software helped tailor RFP responses to each client’s specific needs

The content manager on the team has a philosophy about RFPs: 80-85% of a given RFP is boilerplate content. The remaining 15-20% is where you really have the freedom to make something new or write something adapted to a client’s specific needs.

But before implementing RFPIO, the RFP response team felt like they were spending most of their time hunting down answers to repeat content—leaving minimal time to focus on compelling win messages.

Because they were spending so much time looking for information, the proposal team often wouldn’t be able to submit each RFP until right before the deadline.

This all changed after they started using RFPIO. In the last year, they submitted RFPs an average of 1-2 days early. Added together, that equaled an extra 114 days for the year—time the team could spend crafting messages tailored to each client or working on other projects.

Over the last year, they also increased the number of projects they worked on by 10 percent—and doubled their premier client win rate (win rate for clients over a certain dollar amount).

RFPIO has empowered the proposal team to knock out the repeat questions and empower their team to do what they do best—craft compelling messages that help their organization win more deals.

“RFPIO has given us more time to craft compelling win messages and work on other projects. In the year after implementing RFPIO, we’ve doubled our premier win rate, while also increasing the number of projects we worked on by 10%.”

Streamlining the response process meant winning more deals

One of the writers on the team remembers that it used to feel “like every project we were working on would just be down to the wire.” With RFPIO, the RFP response team is able to approach each RFP with purpose—resulting in more compelling proposals and less stress.

And in the RFP world—defined by tight deadlines and high stakes—a less stressful process can really make all the difference.

Schedule a demo to see how RFP software like RFPIO can remove the stress from your process and help you win more deals.

How RFPIO enables Progress to collaborate across a global team

How RFPIO enables Progress to collaborate across a global team

Customer Stories

Jonathan Read is a sales engineer at Progress, a company that enables customers to deliver modern, high-impact digital experiences. A self-described “do-er” and “hater of inefficiency”, he does everything possible to streamline complicated processes.

At Progress, sales engineers like Jonathan are responsible for responding to RFPs. Before automating their response process, a sales engineer would complete an RFP by answering each question one-by-one. Without a technological solution to support their process, Jonathan estimated a single RFP might take up to six hours to complete.

He knew there had to be a better way to respond to RFPs—and he was determined to find it. And so was Gary Clink, the Head of Global Technical Enablement.

Gary and Jonathan teamed up to implement a solution that would enable their sales engineers to quickly create sales proposals and make company knowledge easily accessible to everyone across the global organization.

They decided that RFPIO was exactly what they needed to push their response process to the next level. With RFPIO, the team saw three key improvements to their response process.

Breaking down knowledge silos with a content management system

Under Progress’s previous response model, the most up-to-date product information was siloed in the brains and hard drives of certain individuals. The absence of a referenceable content library meant that anyone who needed to find a certain tidbit of information would have to reach out to those individuals directly.

That’s why the biggest thing that stood out about RFPIO was the consolidated Content Library and the ability to extend user licenses to as many people as they’d like, both inside and outside the organization.

While the Content Library itself streamlined the RFP process by storing previous RFP answers in one place, the unlimited licensing model opened up a vast, searchable knowledge base to both employees and external partners.

This significantly accelerated the employee and partner onboarding process, because employees and partners could simply search for the answer they were looking for in the Content Library—rather than tracking down the right sales engineer who could answer their question.

As security risks escalate, and as proving compliance has become necessary for both acquiring new customers and retaining existing ones. Progress began leveraging RFPIO for answering DDQs (due diligence questionnaires).

Gary noted that, “Although we adopted RFPIO initially to help co-ordinate and respond to complete RFI and RFPs across the breadth of our company portfolio (which it continues to do brilliantly!), we found that, particularly in light of complex trojan hacks within our competitors’ solutions, that more and more companies want to confirm corporate security compliance.”

RFPIO enabled Progress to answer the questionnaires as well as develop and maintain their customer base.

“RFPIO not only simplified the whole process of answering hundreds of complex questionnaires for us, allowing us to build a comprehensive library of standard answers to regulatory questions – speeding up response times and ensuring consistency, but also became a key differentiator during renewal cycles and negotiations – critical to customer retention and attraction.”

Collaborating across a global team using advanced collaboration tools

Jonathan knew from experience that when an RFP contained questions that required input from more than one team, it was challenging to know who was best-equipped to respond—especially considering Progress’s team is scattered in countries all over the world.

With RFPIO’s advanced collaboration tools, legal teams, financial teams, and other subject matter experts can easily contribute to RFPs. All responders like Jonathan have to do is @-mention the person or team they need help from directly on the question itself—allowing teams to collaborate within the tool and not in lengthy email chains.

Enhanced collaboration and access to a single source of truth are already improving Progress’s response process. Shortly after implementing RFPIO, a sales engineer in Australia—who had only recently started at the company—was able to collaborate with sales engineers in Bulgaria and product managers in the United States to complete an RFP in just a few days.

Building a multilingual knowledge base

As a global organization, Progress receives and responds to RFPs in multiple languages. For example, if a German-speaking prospect engages with a German-speaking sales team and issues an RFP in their language, the prospect would be unpleasantly surprised if all the answers came back in English.

With RFPIO, Progress can layer a single answer in multiple different languages, enabling their global team to store sales content in their own language (and the language of their prospects), so they can easily respond to sales queries and other RFPs.

Additionally, as a company with a multi-product portfolio, Progress wanted a response management solution that could create separate content collections for each of their different product types.

This feature became unexpectedly useful in the midst of a global crisis when Progress began receiving many questionnaires requesting assurance that Progress could continue to fulfill their SLAs. To navigate this crisis, Progress’s legal team worked to populate a new collection with standard (legal-approved) answers specific to the crisis so the rest of the team could quickly and consistently respond to these inquiries.

A faster way to respond

Jonathan has wanted to fix the RFP process for about a decade and RFPIO was exactly the efficiency solution he was imagining.

A few weeks ago, a partner representative approached him with an RFP they were very behind on and needed to submit the next day. In the past, Jonathan says this would have been an all-night session for him. With RFPIO, he and one other marginally technical person were able to respond to all 70 questions in less than two hours.

When asked how he felt about his RFPIO experience so far, Jonathan enthusiastically remarked, “RFPIO has changed my work lifestyle in the things we can do and repeat. And it’s so great that the RFPIO team is so flexible with the product and finding new things we can do with it—we can’t wait to keep going with this thing and push it to new limits.”

“With RFPIO, one other marginally technical person and I were able to respond to all 70 questions of an RFP in less than two hours. Before, this would have been an all-night session for me.”

Ready to democratize knowledge across your organization?
Schedule a Demo.

How an effective content management system keeps your remote team productive

How an effective content management system keeps your remote team productive

Content & Storytelling

This is the second post in our series #StayConnected, introducing tips, tricks, tools, and features that help teams complete proposals quickly and efficiently, even when they’re not sharing a physical space. Read the first blog here: Keep Your Proposal Team Focused With These 5 Project Management Features.

Your proposal is due tomorrow morning—and here you are scouring through excel sheets to find the answer you know is in there somewhere.

If this sounds like you, you’re not alone. A McKinsey report found that employees spend nearly 20% of their time looking for internal information or tracking down colleagues who can help with specific tasks.

That’s why successful proposal managers focus on establishing an effective content management system—the less time you spend searching for content, the more time you have to craft compelling messages.

According to the 2019 RFPIO Responder Survey, 82% of proposal managers said the most important way they’ve improved their RFP response process is by managing response content all in one place—and 89% said that the Content Library was their favorite feature.

We’ve gathered everything we know about how proposal managers use content management systems to successfully complete proposal projects with a fully remote team. Read on for insider advice and best practices for keeping your remote team productive and connected.

Empower your team to access content from collaboration tools they’re already using

To make the most out of your content management system, give as many people access to it as possible (RFPIO’s unlimited user licensing model makes this easy).

Giving your entire company access to your Content Library not only opens a vast, searchable knowledge base to employees and external partners—but also makes it easy to bring in subject matter experts to answer technical questions about your products and services.

Take this one step further by integrating your knowledge library with collaboration tools your team is already using, including Slack, Microsoft Teams, and Google Hangouts. Rather than logging into a separate application to search through your content library, empower your entire team to access a rich database with a few clicks of a button, from wherever in the world they are.

Enhance your content management system with intelligent search

After you’ve uploaded all your response content into your system, you may end up with several thousand question-and-answer pairs. Instead of asking your response team to comb through this massive amount of content using endless iterations of CTRL + F, expedite the process with intelligent search.

Similar to a Google Search, when you use intelligent search to locate an answer in your response library, the most relevant answers will appear first. Relevance is calculated based on a number of factors, including star rating, number of times used, and date updated.

Additionally—unlike a standard CTRL + F search in a document or spreadsheet—the results will include variations of your search term. For example, a search for “correspond” will return Q&A pairs containing “correspondence” and “corresponding”, as well.

When your team isn’t spending time hunting for answers, they’re able to focus on crafting compelling messages—and help your organization win more deals.

Automate content auditing to keep your knowledgebase accurate and up-to-date

Maintaining an accurate library ensures the best version of your content is ready before the proposal arrives, empowering your remote team to quickly respond to RFPs under deadlines.

The best way to make sure your content stays accurate and up-to-date is through regular content audits.

The most productive proposal managers do this at least once a year, and usually every 3-6 months. Of course, each organization is unique—if you experience frequent changes with pricing or product specifications, you may need to audit your content bi-monthly, monthly, or even weekly.

These teams often lean on proposal automation software to automatically trigger these regular review cycles, sending out reminders to their organization’s specialists—including product management, sales, finance, legal, and IT teams—to double-check content they’re responsible for.

“Content management is the most important part of our RFP response process. We have processes and review cycles in place to make sure our content is always up-to-date. That way we can efficiently respond to RFPs when we have a deadline.”

Lauren Daitz

Sr. Manager, Proposal Department, HALO Recogntion

In a recent article, McKinsey reported that employees who spend less time traveling or commuting and have a better work-life balance are likely to be happier, more motivated, and ready to mobilize in extreme situations.

At RFPIO, we’re helping proposal teams adapt to a fully from-home work environment, by looking at remote work as an opportunity to be taken advantage of, rather than as a challenge to be overcome.

Click here to learn more about how RFPIO can help you optimize the opportunity of working with a fully remote team—and help your team stay connected and productive.

3 RFP content management tips to help you dominate

3 RFP content management tips to help you dominate

Content & Storytelling

What exactly does good content management look like in the RFP world? It’s a trifecta of resources, data, and process.

Good RFP content management means preparing the best version of your content alongside your internal process to accelerate success. RFP responses are groomed in such a way that the content is compelling and fresh. Content is organized, so your team responds quickly and accurately.

By properly maintaining RFP content, you can:

  • Build confidence in your response process.
  • Gain the advantage when you’re under a tight deadline.
  • Save time and get back to what you do best.

The ultimate result of good RFP content management? Winning new business. The trick is to continually improve internal processes. That starts with investigating the RFP content management efforts you have in place today.

1. Define your RFP team

A successful RFP content management strategy begins with allocating the right resources—and defining roles and responsibilities so everyone is crystal clear about their commitment.

Process

Misalignment is common within organizations. Responders tend to ramp up too quickly with a shiny solution like RFP software, diving right into the next project without a dedicated process.

Discuss the overarching RFP content strategy with your team. If you’re using an RFP management solution, several factors need to be taken into consideration. A tool, even an intelligent one, is only effective if the response team is maximizing its capabilities with a grounded RFP response process.

People

The common thread with good RFP content management involves ownership and accessibility. Identify owners early on in the process and divvy up responsibilities among a set of core admins.

An internal contact will be the first line of defense with questions, while another admin will handle moderation workflow to ensure content in the Content Library is being cleaned, amended, and deduplicated. A common mistake for teams is assigning too many moderators—don’t overmanage, just manage the content well.

Your SMEs (Subject Matter Experts) are also owners of specific sections of an RFP response. With RFP software, an admin can assign content to the correct SMEs so they can avoid viewing parts of the proposal that don’t concern them. Managing content is a happier time for everyone if they have this level of accessibility.

RFP Response Process Steps

2. Organize your RFP content

Organizing your RFP responses and projects make collaboration better across teams and departments.

Many companies want to make sure that every Q&A pair is present, but you can end up with several thousand responses. Even with search functionality in RFP software, quality inevitably decreases when you have too many Q&A pairs living in the Content Library—and accessibility is affected as well. So it’s important to strike the right balance between quality and quantity.

Project naming

Within your proposal management solution, a standardized naming convention for projects is very helpful for busy teams. A good way to go is “date_issuer_product name.” Whatever you decide, make sure it works well for your organization and that admins are consistent with the naming structure.

Tagging

Tags make searching easier for your team to access the right information. Like project naming, tagging content is also personal to each company. Tagging responses by industry is a favorite for sales teams, since they can find specific content for the targeted industry they are working with.

Rating

Last but not least, star rating is a great feature within RFP software that helps you manage your content effectively. This is your way to manually influence the recommendation engine within the Content Library. Once you have culled your responses down to a more reasonable set of 200 Q&A pairs, rating allows you to further refine your Content Library until you have the top 20 responses.

3. Future-proof your content

To future-proof your content, you need to keep content up-to-date and continually share knowledge within the organization. It’s time to dig into two of the most overlooked parts of an RFP response process—content audits and succession planning.

Content audits

Keep your content fresh and clean by performing regular content audits. Every organization is unique, but we recommend quarterly reviews of your Content Library. If you experience frequent changes with pricing or product specifications, then you’ll audit your content bi-monthly, monthly, or even weekly.

For those with RFP software, enable Content Library moderation and customize alerts to your preferred content audit cadence. You’ll receive a friendly email reminder when it’s time to clean house.

If you don’t have RFP software—and your Content Library exists in a spreadsheet—you can still be diligent about content audits as long as you refer back to Tip #1. Make sure you have resources allocated to manage your content.

Succession planning

Succession planning is often overlooked by companies, but this is a big one. Do you know who is next in line to manage your RFP responses?

Find out now rather than later, in case your RFP content “gatekeeper” suddenly moves on. It happens, and you want to be in a position to keep your RFP process moving forward so you don’t miss out on opportunities.

Another process to standardize is training. Although RFP response software is intuitive and doesn’t require special training, there’s still something to be said about having everyone on the same page with content audits and tagging practices, etc. Comprehensive training safeguards your RFP response process as your organization evolves, and team members come and go.

82% of our customers said managing response content all in one place is the primary way RFPIO helps them achieve success. It’s your turn to dominate with RFPIO.

RFP content library methods that make life better for all

RFP content library methods that make life better for all

Products/Features/Solutions

By now we’ve all heard that old adage—content is king. In the context of RFPs, RFIs, and security questionnaires, the higher quality your content…the more efficient your responses will be.

Your RFP content library is really the heart and soul of your response process. Without one, your team lacks quick access to company information that fuels the chaotic operations of RFP projects.

While having an Content Library to store responses is tremendously important, so is how your organization tends to that content.

Let’s make life better for your response team by exploring a few methods for fine-tuning the hub of your entire RFP process…the Content Library.

Why clean up your RFP content library?

Think of your RFP content library as your bedroom closet. Seasons change, so you have to swap out shorts for sweaters—clothes go out of style or they wear out.

Thousands of Q&A pairs that aren’t culled periodically will affect your team in the long run. Instead of a hole in your favorite t-shirt, it’s a hole in your workflow. And folks, that’s a lot harder to fix.

It never fails that panic and excitement come with every RFP, where all questions need to be answered as efficiently and effectively as possible. The added pressure, of course, lies in the outcome you are aiming to achieve of winning new business.

When you’re under the gun, you want to have peace of mind and feel confident in the historical data resting in your content library. So, just like you clean out your closet at home…it’s time to take inventory of your RFP responses.

Treat RFP content with the same respect

Responding to RFPs involves a ton of content management. This is something many responders don’t realize, because they don’t relate the two.

Content is the culprit, but a necessary one across different stages and departments of every modern organization. Oddly enough, there are many shared challenges proposal teams face that marketers already know.

content management process

Source: ClearVoice

When 1,000 marketers were asked to reveal content challenges related to process, well over half said “time” was an issue. Yet, the remaining marketers were divided among management, planning, and communication with content.

Sound familiar? It does to us too. Because lack of time is the result of an inefficient process. Managing an RFP content library well can dramatically save your team hours when an RFP is due.

Ownership is worth noting here. Just as you would have someone owning all the content for marketing, the same rule applies to your RFP content. Make sure you identify the content manager for RFPs—whether that’s a proposal manager or someone in marketing.

Small organizations often have one person who drives the RFP response process and takes full ownership of the content. Larger teams typically require multiple people to handle content management variables.

Content audits for a slick RFP response process

Great. Now you know a bit about why you need to clean up your RFP content and who will run the show.

A key thing to remember is that quality RFP responses win deals. Even the most captivating content will collect dust in your library if it’s buried under a mess of stale, outdated information.

To avoid this all-too-common bottleneck in the RFP process, content audits are necessary for proposal management teams. At a minimum, audit your content annually. Better yet would be to perform an audit twice a year. Best of all, we recommend quarterly audits.

“84% of organizations still use a manual process to manage RFP responses.”

Really, it depends on bandwidth and how much content you have on-hand in your Content Library. The point is…make sure you take the time to audit. We find the quarterly cadence works best for a lot of teams, because it’s not overkill for a busy team-of-one or a team of many.

Consistent content audits will keep quality front and center, so deciding on cadence is truly one of the most important steps in this process. From there, you can decide on the criteria for sorting through your RFP responses. (Helpful questions can be found right here to help guide you through an RFP content audit.)

Neat ways RFP software helps you manage content

While it’s possible to organize RFP content with a well orchestrated system of spreadsheets, technology wins by a longshot when it comes to boosting productivity. RFP software allows you to centralize content for a stronger process from start to finish.

It’s up to individual teams to maximize their success by leveraging features that work best with their process. Here are a few methods that make managing content easier in RFPIO:

Tagging responses accordingly

Tags make finding responses a breeze, and they might be named: Company, Benefits, Security, etc. If you’re the content owner, check that these tags make sense to everyone on your team so they can quickly find the right content.

Assigning cntent to owners

This feature clarifies ownership to ensure content stays in top condition, such as performing regular content audits. Avoid assigning 200 questions to one person to monitor by divvying up responsibility to relevant owners across the organization.

Viewing Content Library report

This report shows you the health of your RFP content library. Seeing top owners is helpful in understanding your team’s workload—and when you need to call in support. A timeline allows you to review cadence from last year and know what’s coming up in your pipeline. That way when you’re scheduling those important content audits, you know what’s on your plate.

Your RFP content library deserves a little love from time to time. These are just a few ways to improve your RFP content library to have a successful year. As always, do what’s best at your organization.

Your personal guide to writing a winning executive summary

Your personal guide to writing a winning executive summary

Templates & guides

Your executive summary is the most important part your RFP response. That’s right, it’s not the technical sections or competitor differentiators. It’s the executive summary.

Think about it. Your executive summary is the first company info anyone reads after they skim the cover letter—and it might be the last. It’s like the book cover of your RFP, and like a book, it will be judged.

Recently the RFPIO team checked out APMP’s on-demand webinar, Making it Count: The Effective Executive Summary. It was an eye-opening presentation by Dick Eassom, Vice President at SM&A and past APMP CEO, which made us rethink our own strategy with RFP response.

Today we’re going to share a few takeaways from the APMP webinar. Whether you’ve been around RFP response for a while—or you’re just taking the proposal reins at your organization—this is a rundown on what you need to know about executive summaries to win more opportunities.

What is an executive summary?

An executive summary is a short section that gives a quick overview of important information. In the context of an RFP, an executive summary addresses the prospect’s problem, the prospect’s desired business outcomes, and the vendor’s recommendation for solving the problem and achieving the outcome.

The executive summary is designed to help a prospect decide whether or not to move forward with the proposal—and so it’s critical you get it right.

Why spend time writing an executive summary?

To pull together an RFP response, we know it takes a grand effort by any sized team. The turnaround for RFPs is typically a quick one, so it’s common for businesses to cut corners to save time…especially when that deadline is Friday and you can’t bear to work another weekend.

Dick Eassom shared a great analogy in the APMP webinar that can help us relate to the importance of the executive summary in our RFPs. He said this:

“If you’re buying something, like a service for your house, you’re not necessarily going to pick by price. You’re going to pick the contractor that has the lowest risk—that will get the job done well and on time.”

The executive summary is an opportunity to show our organization in the best light, to demonstrate that we understand our customer’s problems and that we can solve them. It is also a way to highlight how we are better than our competitors, which is not normally something we would discuss in public or social media.

good executive summary

To summarize an executive summary, it’s our offer to the decision makers. The best executive summaries get to the point without the fluff, while speaking effectively to the buyer’s needs.

Which team members write the executive summary?

There is a “should” and a “will” when it comes to RFP response management. Meaning, there are certain team members who should handle the executive summary, but the reality is that the proposal manager will probably end up leading it.

Ideally business development and sales teams should own the executive summary and be supported by SMEs, proposal teams, and senior executives. Due to the hectic schedules of sales—and the deprioritization of RFPs—this task will often be pushed off until the last minute or skipped altogether.

executive summary tips
Fortunately, all is not lost if you are the spirited proposal manager that ends up taking ownership of the executive summary. If you manage your proposals with an RFP software solution, you can easily assign the sections to your team in the order you need them completed.

rfp review process
Your process for the RFP executive summary will look similar to other sections of your RFP response:

  1. Proposal Manager – provides project clarification and involves necessary team members
  2. Sales/Business Development – writes the first draft after understanding the project needs
  3. Subject Matter Experts (SMEs) – offers expertise and adds value to the response
  4. Marketing – polishes content and ensures messaging is aligned with the organization
  5. Senior Executives – gives final review and sign off

When is the best time to write the executive summary?

Commonly the executive summary falls victim to the rushed deadline that comes into play with RFP response. Many organizations will put off the summary until the very end, either because they prioritized other sections or it slipped through the cracks when nobody took ownership.

However, in the APMP webinar, Dick Eassom had a different timing strategy for completing the executive summary. It shouldn’t be the last thing you’re writing, it should be the first—right after you have developed a win strategy as a team.

request for proposal content

The biggest issue with tacking on the executive summary long after completing the other RFP sections is that you will lose a lot of the impact. An executive summary should be the guiding light for your proposal that shapes other sections in your RFP response—not the other way around.

It deserves time and attention, rather than being an afterthought. By prioritizing the executive summary in your process, you’ll build a foundation than anchors the rest of your RFP and makes it stronger.

How long should an executive summary be?

Summary is the key word here. The executive summary needs to be concise and engaging, something that resonates with your audience without being lengthy or repetitive. This is another reason why rushing this part of your RFP response just won’t do.

How do you write a winning executive summary?

You’re trying to win the hearts of your prospects to win a new business. They will notice when something is thrown together, and they will walk away. Spend time developing a win strategy to align your team, then you can define a win theme that answers the question they’re really asking: What’s in it for me?

win themes rfps

Here are some important things to keep in mind to optimize your executive summary:

  • Be relevant to your audience: Personalized messaging is more impactful than a boilerplate version you reuse with every RFP.
  • Know your differentiators: Specify benefits that are appealing to that company alone, versus a features checklist that can be found on your website.
  • Back up your claims: Answer the “so what?” with data that proves the benefits, and skip blanket statements and fabricated metrics that will discredit you.
  • Use simple language: Speak with a clear, relatable tone in your responses that is free from overused jargon or techy lingo that nobody understands.
  • Follow instructions: Give only what is asked of you—no more, no less—to show that you cared enough to listen, and that you’ll be a better long-term partner because of that.

The executive summary has many moving parts. With improved team collaboration, you have the power to rise above the inefficiencies at your company. As with any RFP response, having a solid process in place will save your team time and help you create a higher quality response with more winning potential.

Hit the pause button and rethink your executive summary approach as something that deserves to be prioritized. Try completing it first and see if treating it as the guiding light makes your entire RFP more effective.

Pssst…here’s an RFP executive summary example to help you land your next deal.

How to write executive summary

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