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Response management made simple

Response management made simple

Selling & Enablement

When an organization seeks you out, it’s flattering. Your product or service is getting noticed. While everyone in your organization […]

Category: Tag: Response management platform

Response management made simple

Response management made simple

Selling & Enablement

When an organization seeks you out, it’s flattering. Your product or service is getting noticed. While everyone in your organization deserves tremendous kudos for the recognition, receiving an RFX is just the beginning.

Responding to a request for proposal (RFP), request for information (RFI), request for quotation (RFQ), due diligence questionnaire (DDQ), security questionnaire, or more generically, an RFX, requires a well-honed process that highlights your organization’s professionalism.

Please excuse the hodgepodge of metaphors, but brush off your lapels, sharpen your pencils, and put your best foot forward. It’s time to respond.

What is response management?

While RFXs are as individual as their issuers, they all have one common element: a deadline. An RFX might have hundreds or thousands of pages. In addition to pricing and product-specific questions, you might see questions about company history, culture, finances, the onboarding process, and so on.

The final proposal will require detailed and accurate answers, a clear and engaging narrative, and (usually) multiple stakeholders from throughout the organization.

Response management is the process of making that happen. Or more technically, it’s about understanding, defining, and publishing a full process. As with other projects within your organization, it includes establishing workflow, roles and responsibilities.

Who is responsible for response management?

Often, RFXs arrive through an organization’s CRM. From there, it might go to a response or proposal team, a single response manager, or a salesperson. Enterprise organizations are more likely to have dedicated RFX response teams than small businesses.

However, even full-time response teams will need help from subject matter experts (SMEs) throughout their organizations. As a response manager, it’s your responsibility to ensure that everyone has access to the project as a whole, or at least their part. Each stakeholder must understand their expectations.

Owning the response management process

A response manager might not be part of the C-suite. They might not head up a department, or even have a dedicated supervisory role. When they receive an RFX, however, the buck stops with them.

Before delving further, we should back up a bit. The response manager’s role begins long before an RFX arrives and ends long after it’s out the door. Truth be told, the process is most efficient when it’s ongoing, regardless of whether the response manager is facing a deadline or not.

Evaluate processes

If you’re a runner, you might stretch before your daily five-mile run. During your run, you may track your heart rate, pace, and distance on a smartwatch. Afterwards, you might enjoy a deeper stretch and eat a healthy meal.

Or, if you’re like most people, you start your work day awakened by an alarm. Then, in no particular order, you might brush your teeth, workout, shower, dress, perhaps put on makeup and style your hair, maybe drink a cup of coffee, and have some breakfast. You might also commute to your office.

Once you get to work, you probably turn your computer on, check your email, agenda, Slack channel, and so on. Maybe you queue up some favorite work playlists and see where you stand on your goals. At the end of the day, you shut everything down and head home. Once every week, month, quarter, or however your company sees fit, you might see productivity reports.

If you notice in my two examples, the primary activities, running and working, are really only implied. The rest are processes. None of the processes mentioned above offer quantifiable productivity, although the smartwatch certainly tracks productivity. In both cases, the hypothetical people could argue that without their processes, they would be far less productive.

In each case, the processes are :

  • Repeatable – On an individual level, we call the processes “routines” or “regimens,” which are by definition repeatable.
  • Scalable – Planning a longer marathon training run or working from home for the day? Both processes can easily adapt.
  • Specific – Run five miles every day, wake up at the same time, arrive at work on time, and so on. All of these are specific milestones.
  • Measurable – Both processes include quantifiable goals.

Without processes, a company’s accounts payable (AP) department could wreak fiscal havoc. A poorly defined onboarding process could lead to confusion and employee dissatisfaction. Insufficient RFP response processes will result in a poor win rate, diminished morale, SME frustration, and threaten company buy-in.

So, let’s talk about establishing response management processes.

Establish an accurate organizational knowledge base

The best way to get an SME on your side is to do as much of the work as possible before calling them into the process. The best way to alienate an SME is to ask them to constantly repeat themselves. That’s where a well-maintained and accurate organizational knowledge base comes in.

If your company is like most, it’s siloed. Perhaps you have two knowledge bases, an internal one (such as company wikis, products, services, marketing collateral, archives, and so on) and an external one (sales-based content). It’s not even unheard of for a response department to have its own knowledge base built from previous proposals.

For efficiency’s sake, one knowledge base is certainly better than two or more. However, you need to be sure that proprietary information doesn’t end up in a customer proposal or private HR records in a company email.

As with the overall process, the knowledge base should be:

  • Repeatable – If you record answers to commonly-seen questions, SMEs will only have to double-check accuracy.
  • Scalable – Your knowledge base should have the ability to grow with your company.
  • Specific – Are you able to provide access only as needed? Does your system help you find relevant information?
  • Measurable – Who uses it? What goes in it? The better you can measure its worth, the more likely you will have company buy-in.

Eliminate repetition

Repetition isn’t always bad. Knowledge base repeatability helps prevent SMEs from having to repeat themselves, but you also want to eliminate repetition–which can lead to confusion and dated or inaccurate responses–within your knowledge base.

To help avoid repetition, define and document your layout. Use collections, response headers, and how you classify and organize your content to define your knowledge base’s layout. Make sure everyone is on the same page by documenting everything.

When you spend hours staring at a screen, you might lose objectivity in defining and documenting. There’s a term in IT called “rubber ducking.” Essentially the concept is that if you’re stuck on something, explain it to the duck. Expressing the problem out loud helps take you out of your head for a moment.

If you walk through it from an outside perspective, it makes it easier to see. Lay out the process and walk through it. For example, “I get this from sales, and then send it on to someone who does their part.” So, if you’re stuck, rubber duck it.

Additionally, it’s much easier to see when it’s visual. Identify redundancies and where things might fall through the cracks. Don’t be afraid to go analog at first, such as arranging index cards on the floor.

Automate responses

At RFPIO, we believe in reusing and recycling content as a step toward saving the environment and hours of a response team’s time. Odds are, the RFXs sitting in your inbox right now contain multiple repeat, or near repeat, questions.

Leveraging artificial intelligence to find past responses to similar questions will show your team, especially your subject matter experts (SMEs), that their time matters.

Define roles, responsibilities, and the process, by starting with intelligence that is already in your knowledge base. Ask what you can do in your process that isn’t necessarily affected by other people.

Improve SME collaboration

Often, SME relationships feel one-way, at least to them. Put yourself in their shoes when you’re looking at your process. What are their touch points? When do they hear from you—is it only when you need something? If so, they’ll feel used.

Understand what’s on their plate. Get their feedback and use it when you can. Talk about and offer help with tight deadlines. Ask for things like customer success stories that you can use now or in the future. They might know about the roadmap in their department to help tell the company story. They are also invested in the process. Keep them updated.

Be specific

It’s human nature to make assumptions about what an RFX is asking. If, for example, a prospect is looking for a specific product or service that you don’t have, don’t respond with another one. Not only do you risk alienating the potential customer, it will skew your data.

For example, let’s say you sell a cloud computing platform and many of the RFXs you receive ask for an application security product you don’t sell. If instead of responding that you don’t have the product, you respond with your application’s security protocol, the data could be misconstrued within your company to show that there’s a sudden interest in your application’s security protocol when in reality no one asked about it.

Scale response capacity

If your company is like many, the demands on your response team might be light at the beginning of the year, but by the time Q4 rolls around, you barely have time to grab a cup of coffee.

You can free up at least enough time to get a cup of coffee, and maybe even lunch, by standardizing and automating what you can.

Response software that tracks activity can quantify how long things are taking and help you determine when you might need additional resources. It’s also worth noting that RFPIO’s pricing structure automatically scales by charging by the project rather than being locked into a specific number of users.

Measure growth and continuously improve

Help maintain company buy-in by quantifying your system’s value. Feed innovation with concealable and actionable data such as tracking sales and product lifecycles. You should also periodically review the overall process as a company to see where you stand on your maturity roadmap.

  • Were your responses submitted on time?
  • Were your responses accurate?
  • Did you lose anything in a competitive or compelling space?
  • What else can you do to improve your process?

Once you have armed yourselves with data, enact incremental changes as you discover them. However, too many changes at once lend themselves to risks and red flags.

With RFPs, you’re dealing with direct customer and market requests. Share with the company, specifically marketing and product. Go through RFPs and RFIs yearly to see what else you might offer customers and market trends. Have those conversations before the next year’s roadmap is created. Respond to the question at hand and pay attention to the questions when creating a roadmap instead of the answers.

RFPIO can help you drive revenue growth with a smarter response management solution

When the focus is on responding to an RFX, it’s easy to forget that the ultimate goal is to drive revenue growth, not just fill in the blanks. Fuel your revenue-generating engines with:

Repeatability

RFPIO saves time and work at every stage of the response process.

  • Intake – Receive RFXs through your CRM or directly through RFPIO.
  • Content Library – A typical RFX contains very few original questions. RFPIO’s Content Library leverages machine learning to help you automatically fill in up to 80 percent of the document, freeing your key stakeholders to focus on unique content and other revenue-generating opportunities.
  • Export – Export your response to a customized template or the customer’s preferred format

Scalability

Today’s workload is going to look very different from tomorrow’s, next month’s, next quarter’s, or next year’s. RFPIO scales with you and provides actionable insights to help your company intelligently respond to changing demands.

Tracking – Track how long projects are taking to help determine when you need to rev up or cut back on resources.
Pricing – Licensed-based pricing models limit you during busy times and are a waste when things slow down. RFPIO allows for unlimited users on each project and only charges for the number of projects you have going at any given time.

Reporting

Response teams are at the forefront of market trends and advanced analytics helps companies address competitive weaknesses and make informed decisions to shape the future. RFPIO provides annual, quarterly, monthly, and project-level reporting with just a few keystrokes. Built-in reporting metrics include:

  • Project type – How many of your projects are RFPs? How about DDQs?
  • Project stage – How many requests have you received? Where are you on each one?
  • Time to completion – How long is it taking you to complete projects?
  • Content Library usage – How often is your Content Library being used? How is it being used?
  • Auto respond usage – How many total questions? How many did the Content Library identify and how many were automatically responded to?
  • Win/loss analysis – How many and what kinds of bids do you win? What areas need improvement?
  • Near limitless customization options – Create your own reports in your desired layout.

*Next Action*

You’ll respond to more RFXs in less time and improve your win rate with RFPIO. However, RFPIO is more than a response project management tool; it’s a sales enablement platform, a company knowledge repository, a virtual librarian that points any user to relevant content, and a 24/7 on- and off-site statistician and data analyst.

Talk to one of our specialists. Take a free ride to show you how RFPIO is a turbo-charged revenue-generating machine.

Win more bids by scaling your response management process – part 1

Win more bids by scaling your response management process – part 1

Selling & Enablement

You have probably heard the expression that you can’t win if you don’t play. The business equivalent of not playing is failing to respond to an RFP. You might ask what that has to do with you and your response management team. After all, your team responds to every RFP that comes their way, right?

Playing to win requires more than filling in the blanks, however. It requires updated and defined RFP response processes to maximize efficiency and accuracy while saving time and company resources – all with the ultimate goal of winning the bid!

This article will discuss the revenue-driving and resource-saving Association for Proposal Management Professional (APMP) best practices for updating and defining your organization’s response management process.

End-to-end processes help future-proof your RFP response flow.

Organizations that consistently follow a defined business development process win more business and use fewer investment resources. ~ Association of Proposal Management Professionals  

If your company is anything like ours, and I’m sure it is, you have dozens, if not hundreds, of distinct personalities and work styles. You also have attrition, onboarding, PTO, etc. Yet surprisingly, you rarely devolve into chaos.

Why is that? It’s because you’ve established defined processes. So if, for example, a client calls with questions for their customer service rep who’s out of the office, your CRM will arm everyone else in the department with the information they need to answer the questions.

CRMs are great at helping define processes, and so is RFPIO.

Do you have a defined response management process?

If you won the lottery today, would someone be able to pick up your job tomorrow? How fast will it take your replacement to ramp up?

According to the APMP, every organization should design its own end-to-end process suited to its organization and customers.

Sure, we’d all like to feel indispensable, but if we are the exclusive key holders to critical processes, we’re doing a huge disservice to our companies. I would even argue that the best employees, at least those whose values align with their organizations, are transparent about their work processes.

In turn, the best-run organizations have processes to ensure that when an RFP manager takes a day or week off, or even leaves, it won’t derail responses.

If you have a defined process, have you recently reevaluated your processes?

If there’s one thing you can count on, it’s change. Just a little over two years ago, remote work was relatively rare. Then, everything suddenly turned upside down, and we all needed to adapt.

Guess what? We did, at least for the most part, and the world didn’t implode. I don’t think it’s a giant leap to say that defined processes kept the economy humming, despite unforeseen challenges. Defined processes certainly helped keep RFPIO thriving, but only because we regularly reevaluate them.

In the software industry, especially in SaaS, things change quickly. At RFPIO, we have to be agile. As our customers’ needs change, so must we. When the market or regulatory environment changes, we have to adapt. That’s why we have new releases almost monthly.

**It only takes about 15 minutes each month to learn about the new features.**

Of course, defining your processes requires more than updating software. Do you regularly interact with your subject matter experts? Do you ask them for feedback on your Content Library? If you don’t, your subject matter experts may be frustrated, but they may start to feel heard by opening the door to collaboration. Also, they’re a potential wealth of ideas.

After speaking with the experts, bring your Customer Success Manager into the fold. Ask them about the challenges they have run across. They might have solutions that they’ve previously been reluctant to mention.

How to identify a response management black hole

In an ideal world, we’d have months to respond to each RFP. But, unfortunately, that’s rare. Often, we have two weeks or less. I’ve even seen two days! But, thankfully, that’s also rare.

How often does this scenario happen: The RFP landed in your inbox just days before it was due, but you saw that it was issued weeks earlier!

Obviously, two days is an extreme example. A more common scenario might look something like this: The RFP was issued two months ago. It sat somewhere, untouched, for weeks. Then, just as you were confident you were on track for all your deadlines, the RFP lands on your lap, and it’s due by the end of the week.

The fact is, you can’t win them all. So when buried under an avalanche of response deadlines, many companies choose to triage, or employ the bid/no-bid strategy, where you bid the RFPs with the higher win rates and let the less viable opportunities go.

But what if the RFP that sat in the pipeline for weeks has a high win rate? What happened to the RFP during those weeks? Where is that black hole, and how can you plug it? Let’s see if we can help you identify the problem(s) and help you create a bid/no-bid strategy with this attached downloadable worksheet.

In the second of our two-part series, we’ll explore the tools RFPIO provides to help scale your response management process and, of course, win those bids!

In the meantime, let us know if you’d like to learn more about RFPIO and how we can help you scale your response management process.

Your guide for selecting the best business proposal software

Your guide for selecting the best business proposal software

Selling & Enablement

If you’re a business that creates proposals, presentations, and responses to RFPs, RFIs, and requests for bids/tenders, it’s time to take a serious look at business proposal software.

Why should you invest in AI-enabled proposal software? Because proposals are mission-critical revenue generators for companies who prioritize them and optimize their response process.

Add technology to the mix, and you’ll be unstoppable. Business proposal software provides quick access to proposal content, simple ways to collaborate, and built-in project management features that make it easy to keep proposals on track.

If you’re ready to automate your RFP response process to save valuable time and increase revenue, you’ve come to the right place. Keep reading to find out how business proposal software gives small businesses like yours a competitive edge.

In this blog, we’ll cover:

What is business proposal software?

Business proposal software is a cloud-based program designed to help businesses develop proposals, presentations, and responses to RFPs, RFIs, and bids/tenders. It can also be used to respond to security questionnaires (e.g. VSAs, CAIQ, SIG), create proactive proposals, write SOWs, and manage company knowledge.

The key to business proposal software is that it simplifies the proposal creation process with a few core functionalities:

  1. Storing and organizing internal knowledge

Just like the mitochondria is the powerhouse of the cell, a content library is essential to any good business proposal software.

The content library consolidates subject matter expertise in one place. Then, the next time a new RFP opportunity pops up in your inbox, you’ll be able to tackle commonly seen questions in one fell swoop.

The more efficiently you can respond to RFPs, the more time you and your team have to work on other projects—be it building relationships with customers, creating sales collateral, or responding to more RFPs.

Consolidate RFP content using rich text editing

2. Keeping projects on track

RFPs and other business proposals are often the most collaborative activity an organization undertakes. When you’re working at a small company, it’s possible that everyone at your organization will be involved, in part, in a response to an RFP.

When your team adopts business proposal software, it means you’ll no longer be managing proposals via email, Teams, Slack, or spreadsheets.

Most business proposal software comes with built-in project management features, including:

  • Importing RFPs onto the platform in Word, Excel, or pdf format
  • Assigning questions and/or sections to key collaborators
  • Automated reminders
  • Sequential review cycles
  • Exporting to source file
  • E-Signature

3. Seamless collaboration

In addition to project management features, business proposal software also streamlines collaboration with in-app commenting and @mentioning.

When all proposal-related conversations are in one place, you can make sure your organization stays aligned on proposals (and declutter your inbox in the process).

seamlessly collaborate by assigning tasks to collaborators in-app

When you’re ready to evaluate vendors, be sure to demo the various platforms. You’ll want to find something that’s powerful enough to suit your needs, but intuitive enough to make sure your small team can get ramped up in no time.

4. Make data-driven decisions

Top-notch business proposal software comes with built-in dashboards and analytics, giving you the insights you need to minimize risk and enhance efficiency.

If you do it right, data-driven management helps sales teams sell smarter. It can also provide insights into how proposal teams can identify—then either avoid or plan around—process challenges, such as resource management challenges, reduced ROI, missing deadlines, and inefficient content development.

Make data-driven decisions

5. Integrate into your existing tech stack

The final component of business proposal software is the ability to integrate into your sales tech ecosystem.

Since responding to RFPs is a key part of the sales process, it’s critical that the business proposal software you choose is able to smoothly integrate into your tech stack.

This is especially important when working on a small team that doesn’t have the bandwidth to manually update your business proposal software to work in-sync with your CRM, like Salesforce, Microsoft Dynamics 365, or Hubspot.

Benefits of business proposal software

Business proposal software can be an absolute game-changer. Instead of spending your time on menial tasks—like tracking down RFP answers in emails and old drafts—business proposal software makes it easy for proposal managers to achieve success.

“Auto Respond is absolutely brilliant. We click on it and RFPIO answers about 80% of an RFP in a few seconds.”
-Paul Taylor, Vice President of Solutions Engineering at Crownpeak

Read the full story —>

Here are real results we’ve seen from customers after automating their response process with business proposal software:

Calculate your ROI here to see how much time and money your team could save with business proposal software.

calculate your roi to see how much you could save with RFP software

Calculate your ROI

How to select the best business proposal software

As you’re making your decision, here are some software selection steps you can follow:

1. Meet with your team

Before you commit to an annual subscription to business proposal software, schedule a meeting with any stakeholders in the proposal process. This includes subject matter experts, sales reps, and bid writers.

Leave the meeting with a clear understanding of the main goals you hope to achieve.

Your final list could simply be a bullet list, like:

  • Improve collaboration on business proposals without relying on color-coded Word docs
  • Consolidate answers to common RFP questions in one place, so SMEs aren’t answering the same question over and over again
  • Create visibility, so leadership can easily check on proposal status

2. Do your research

Once you determine key goals for your proposal program, you need to prioritize business proposal software features. Divide features into two columns—”must-have” and “nice-to-have”.

If you want to make it easy for everyone to get up-and-running in the tool, an intuitive user interface might be a “must-have”. If your sales team lives in your CRM, an integration with Salesforce or Dynamics might be “nice-to-have”.

3. Read customer reviews

Just like you might check Yelp before you head to an unfamiliar restaurant, reading through reviews from verified customers on platforms like G2 should absolutely factor into your decision making process.

On G2, you can also sort reviews by company size, user role, industries, and region—so you can find reviews from users just like you.

Here is a screenshot of comparing four of the most popular business proposal software solutions:

Select the best business proposal software

Check on the full comparison on G2.

4. Understand the product and services

Once you’ve narrowed down your list of business proposal software providers, schedule a demo to see the solution in action and meet the team you’re considering partnering with. Bring your priority feature list, along with a list of questions you want answered.

What is the best business proposal software?

Short answer: There is no “best” business proposal software. There’s only the best business proposal software for you and your team. 

This being said, the decision to implement business proposal software shouldn’t be taken lightly. You’ll want to make sure the software you choose helps you, your proposal team, your sales team, and everyone at your organization achieve your goals and save time.

Here’s a list of the four top business proposal software:

RFPIO

RFPIO was created in 2015 by three founders who believed that Natural Language Processing (NLP) could permanently change the way businesses respond to RFx, security questionnaires, and other high-value external responses. Today, we are proud to be the trusted partner of more than 200,000 users across the globe. We support organizations of all sizes, from fast-growing start-ups to large multinationals doing business in dozens of languages. We’re people who value family, growth, new hobbies, and self care, and enjoy helping our users have more time and energy for such things. Our office community spans from Coimbatore, India, to Leawood, Kansas, to our corporate headquarters in Portland, Oregon.

Loopio

Loopio was launched in 2014 with the belief that responders “should never have to choose between quality and speed.” Loopio’s platform uses automation and collaboration tools to help companies create faster, more effective responses. They believe that every company has the opportunity to turn RFPs from revenue blockers, into a competitive advantage. Loopio is headquartered in downtown Toronto, Ontario and has a satellite office in Vancouver, British Columbia.

Ombud

Ombud’s name is derived from the Swedish word Ombudsman: an individual who represents the interests of another individual, while investigating and addressing requests between the individual and the broader organization. Founded 2011, Ombud seeks to bring “context and collaboration” to their customers’ sales content, helping them streamline processes around RFPs, sales proposals, Statements of Work (SOWs), and Proofs of Concept (POCs). The company is headquartered in Denver, Colorado.

Upland Qvidian

The history of Qvidian dates back to 1977 when Dr. Tom Sant founded the Sant Corporation in Chelmsford, Massachusetts. By the 1990s, Sant and his company grew to be leaders in both proposal software and strategy, with Sant authoring a book entitled Persuasive Business Proposals in 2003. In 2010, Sant Corporation merged with another proposal company called Kadient, to form Qvidian. In 2017, Qvidian was purchase by Upland Software, a public company with software offerings that include cloud-based fax services, telecom expense management, computer-telephony solutions, and IT finance management. The company is headquartered in Austin, Texas.

Answers to frequently asked questions about business proposal software

We hear common questions from proposal teams at small businesses every day. Below we’ve answered these questions to help you feel more at ease with RFP software implementation and learn a few ways to improve your RFP response process along the way.

What should my proposal team look like?

If you’re a small organization, you might have 1- or 2-member proposal team, or sales reps could be responsible for creating their own sales proposals. Either your proposal team or your sales rep should own the proposal process, and reach out to subject matter experts on other teams (e.g. product, engineering, security, marketing, legal, etc.) for help on specific questions.

How do you write a good business proposal with software?

Writing a good business proposal starts with a strong process. Business proposal software simplifies that process, making it easier to collaborate with an extended team. With automated processes for scheduling, collaboration, and completing wide swaths of massive RFPs using answer libraries, you can blaze through the first pass of a response faster than working without software.

Here’s a quick overview of how you can write a good business proposal with software:

  1. Qualify the bid — Check data from past similar RFPs. What took weeks without RFP software may only take hours with it. All things being equal, is this RFP winnable?
  2. Understand requirements — Let the tool create a checklist of open items based on what remains after the automated first pass conducted at intake by your Content Library.
  3. Answer commonly seen questions — RFP technology consolidates all your previous Q&A pairs into an intelligent Content Library, so you can automatically respond to repeat questions in just few clicks.
  4. Assign due dates and tasks to key collaborators — Assign each RFP question or section as a task to individual collaborators from the project dashboard in RFPIO. They’ll then receive a notification from where they’re already working (e.g. email, Slack, or Teams).
  5. Assign questions for review and approval — Simplify the review and approval process with automated reminders and cues across multiple platforms.
  6. Polish — From intake, work within a branded template and support answers with approved content that’s always up-to-date according to the SME in charge of that content.
  7. Proofread — Still important, but working with already-approved content will decrease how much you have to proofread.
  8. Submit to issuer — Push send from RFPIO or your integrated CRM

How does business proposal software support my process?

Business proposal software supports your proposal process and makes it easier to manage your RFP project and review everything in one place. With the right software in place, you’re able to assign tasks to authors and reviewers, assign content owners, and keep content organized and up-to-date.

If you’re a 1- or 2-person proposal team, software helps you provide enterprise-level support to your sales team. If you’re a sales rep responsible for managing your own RFPs, software helps you automatically respond to commonly seen questions—so you can focus on building customer relationships and closing deals.

How does business proposal software provide efficient collaboration?

Since fewer people are involved in the response process at smaller organizations, each person’s time is extremely valuable. Proposal software gives you the ability to share information across various platforms. Content and assignments are seamlessly integrated into one platform, without the need for cumbersome reformatting, converting, and importing/exporting tasks.

How do I get started with business proposal software?

Joan Dolence, Proposal Architect at Finastra, recommends that proposal teams plan for RFP software implementation, just as you would with any new technology you bring into your business. Do the prep work and housekeeping before jumping in. Then, teach everyone how to use the proposal software by managing each proposal like a project.

How long does it take to implement business proposal software?

The answer everyone hates: It depends. If you’re a small team with a lot of bandwidth to upload and organize your content, you could be up-and-running in less than a month.

But the more bells and whistles you add on—things like integrations with Salesforce, Slack, or SSO—the longer it takes. The more users you have, the longer it takes. The more complicated your process is, the longer it takes. The less bandwidth your team has to upload and organize your content, the longer it takes.

Is business proposal software really worth it?

In our 2021 Benchmark Report: Proposal Management, we learned that organizations leveraging RFP-specific technology respond to 43% more RFPs than those who don’t. We also discovered that organizations not using RFP software instead used, on average, nine solutions to compose their RFPs, compared to only five for those with a dedicated RFP tool.

One study found that workers estimate switching between apps wastes up to 60 minutes of each day. By consolidating proposal management processes into one place, you and your team can stay focused, aligned, and on track.

Strengthen your business proposals with the right software

The only thing missing between you and your next winning proposal is the right software. If you’re ready to uplevel your business proposal process, schedule a demo of RFPIO today.

How small proposal teams can provide enterprise-level support to sales

How small proposal teams can provide enterprise-level support to sales

People & Teams, Sales Enablement

Few people know this, but the working title for “A Tale of Two Cities” by Charles Dickens was actually “A Tale of Two Teams.” The opening line was supposed to be: “It was the best of times (with RFPIO), it was the worst of times (without RFPIO), it was the age of wisdom (for sales teams supported by RFPIO-powered proposal teams)…” and so on. Alas, Dickens’ publisher suggested changing from “Teams” to “Cities” at the last minute. True story.

What I believe to be Dickens’ original intent was to point out that there’s a huge disconnect between what the optimal proposal team structure should be and the reality of resources available. The idea of having a team of dedicated capture specialists, writers, and SMEs that exist to support proposals is more myth than reality.

If you’re a proposal team of one or two—or none if proposal responsibilities fall under a duty bullet point in your sales or marketing leadership job description—then how can you do more with less?

More specifically, how can you support sales as if you had a roster full of star proposal free agents responsible for RFP capture, contract management, proposal production and management, subject matter expertise, pricing, and writing?

In “A Tale of Two Teams,” your team without RFPIO spends time:

  • Chasing down subject matter experts (SMEs) for responses
  • Badgering with constant reminders
  • Manually segmenting large RFP documents
  • Searching for previous content
  • Gathering RFP requirements
  • Tracking down supporting documentation

Your small team with RFPIO spends time:

  • Aligning with sales and marketing on positioning
  • Improving formatting and design templates
  • Developing persuasive language
  • Defining strategy
  • Gathering more information and context on clients, products, and previous conversations
  • Building graphics and visual aids
  • Personalizing messaging
  • Managing content

With RFPIO, your team focuses on developing more effective proposals while sales spends more time on revenue-generating activities. Using the features described below, I’ve worked with small proposal teams that can answer at least 40% of a proposal with auto-response capabilities, gain back 20% more time overall, and deliver proposals 1.4 days ahead of deadline, on average.

Set up your project dashboard immediately

When an RFP takes flight, you don’t want it flying blind into a fog bank with no instrument rating. Visualize early-stage projects with Analytics for better resource planning and forecasting. Light up your dashboard with insight into:

  • How many sections are there?
  • How many questions need answers?
  • How many authors will you need?
  • Answers to questions like these help make a project feel “real.” You can get a toehold and see what progress is going to look like.

Make an initial pass at the questions using a combination of auto-response and intelligent search. Then go back and refine content. Leave questions marked as unanswered so sales or SMEs can review and confirm, but start tracking sections you’ve started. Even if the proposal team is not running the show—because we all know that sales is—you can gain a sense of control by using the Analytics that RFPIO provides.

Keep the Content Library fresh

I’ve said it before and I will probably never stop not-saying it, there’s never any real great time to organize content because we are all always busy. But to ensure that auto-responding and intelligent search zero in on only the most relevant targets, library management is a must. We don’t have a dedicated manager, so we lean heavily on Tags.

As you work on projects, start importing content. Start standardizing it, adding tags, and defining owners as it’s imported. We have a standard set of tags—we block users from adding tags to try to limit tag sprawl—that we use to classify content as it’s imported for each project. This makes it easier for me when I’m wearing my library manager hat to update content when I have the time (I aim for once a week). We also use Collections and Custom Fields capabilities to help with library management.

Let the system be your cat-herding ranch hand

I use the phrase “herding cats” too often, but it’s a shared feeling among proposal managers. System-generated notifications help with cat herding because you don’t have to be the one cracking the whip all the time. Let the system chase them down. In RFPIO, system-generated notifications chase sales, SMEs, or whomever down automatically without me having to do anything.

Often, the reason content hasn’t been submitted or reviewed is because the owner simply forgot to click the blue “Submit” button. In other words, they might not even know that they’re still on the hook for the content because they believe they already submitted it! System reminders from a non-judgmental AI help preserve my relationships with colleagues. I don’t want them thinking that they sent content and I lost it, doubling up their work. This way, the system says that if it’s not in RFPIO, then it didn’t happen!

@-mentions improve #collaboration

RFPIO isn’t social media, but it does incorporate a standard social media feature to streamline collaboration: @-mentions. @-mentions allow SMEs, sales, and senior management to be notified via their communication platform of choice (e.g., email, Slack, Microsoft Teams) and then reply in-line without having to log into RFPIO, saving time and making it more likely that you’ll get an answer.

This is especially valuable when you need input from multiple contributors. With @-mentions, you keep the conversation going without constantly having to reset for each contributor. The challenge here is to get non-RFP team members to use @-mention. They can be slow to adopt.

I love flags!

Color-coded flagging may sound simple, but it’s one of my favorite features of RFPIO. I customize flags to help visualize strategic content. They help us quickly identify key things that need to happen for an RFP, and then make it easier to navigate those items across sections. Perhaps the best part is that there’s a lot of satisfaction in watching those flags disappear as items are completed. One step closer to project completion!

4 ways small proposal teams can support sales

  1. Make a habit of getting every RFP/Security Questionnaire/RFI into RFPIO immediately (light up that dashboard!).
  2. Assign a team member to be the “first-pass” SME before assigning outside authors and reviewers (utilize auto-response and intelligent search).
  3. Assign an owner to each piece of content and enable regular reviews. The more you can organize at the outset, the less time you have to spend squeezing an SME for details on major changes to a new product you just learned about before they go on vacation.
  4. Dedicate someone (maybe it’s you, lucky!) who engages with sales and SMEs on a regular basis. The consistency will help build relationships and trust with go-to collaborators. Proper care and feeding of SMEs will keep your projects running smoothly.

Add more value to sales and the organization as a whole

RFPIO has converted our organization from reactive to proactive when it comes to sales support and RFP responses. A short anecdote…

During a week in which we had three RFPs in-flight, one of which was a three-day turnaround, two sales management team members and our two-member proposal team were able to spend an hour on the phone to discuss some critical changes to the way we wanted to communicate our overall organizational capabilities based on trends we were seeing in the marketplace. There is no way that conversation would have happened if we hadn’t already been ahead of schedule thanks to RFPIO.

If empowering your proposal team to do more with less is a priority, then check out my webinar below for more details on how we use RFPIO. Ready to add some girth to your small team with RFPIO? Schedule a demo today!

What is a security questionnaire?

What is a security questionnaire?

Products/Features/Solutions

If you Google the term “data breach,” you’ll see daily reports of personal information leaked into the cybersphere, often from companies that believe their security systems are impenetrable.

Generally, their systems are (nearly) impenetrable, so how do all those bad actors access valuable customer data? You might be surprised to know that in many cases, they snuck in on the backs of 3rd- and even 4th-party vendors.

According to the HIPAA Journal, 55% of healthcare organizations suffered 3rd-party data breaches in 2021.

Additionally, a Gartner survey showed that:

  • 88% of boards see cybersecurity as a business risk rather than solely an IT problem
  • 60% of organizations replied that by 2025, they might only engage in business with companies who have demonstrated proper cybersecurity practices

To ensure proper cybersecurity practices, organizations issue security questionnaires, which are lists of generally yes/no questions addressing vendors’ security protocol.

Some security questionnaires may even want to know about your vendors’ vendors—also known as tier 3 vendors. Security questionnaires will also ask for certificates of proof as issued by the regulatory agency or security authority.

Why do companies issue security questionnaires?

“Security leaders are under a lot of pressure to show quick wins while knowing full well that everything they do will be heavily scrutinized and challenged, and ultimately, they will pay the price for things that are not under their control.” ~ Yaron Levi, CISO at Dolby

You may often hear that cybercriminals are savvy. Indeed, some are clever hackers who deliberately target specific companies that collect a lot of sensitive data. One such example is the big box chain unfortuitously, at least in this situation, named Target.

In most cases, however, cybercriminals owe their success more to tenacity than skill. Like a car thief tugging on every door in a parking lot, cybercriminals look for openings to penetrate vulnerable systems, at tremendous cost to their victims.

In 2022, the average cost of a data breach is $9.4 million per incident. That figure doesn’t take hidden costs into account, such as:

  • Increased insurance premiums
  • Credit rating hits
  • Operational disruption
  • Decreased customer confidence
  • Loss of contracts
  • Loss of intellectual property
  • A devalued trade name

Safeguarding your systems means ensuring that bad actors can’t access company or customer data through 3rd-party vendors, which is why 2 out of 3 companies require proof of safety compliance from their software vendors.

What’s in a security questionnaire?

Security questionnaire topics vary between organizations and industries. You may have to answer questions about the following:

  • Application security – Do you have an up-to-date SSL certificate?
  • Audit & compliance – Are you compliant with California’s CCPA and Europe’s GDPR?
  • Protection Regulation — Are you GDPR compliant in addition to other compliance requirements?
  • Business continuity – Do you have systems in place to continue operations during an outage?
  • Disaster recovery – How long will it take to notify customers of a breach? How will you address the breach?
  • Change control – How do you roll out emergency change control, such as security patches?
  • Data/information security – What are your security guidelines?
  • Data privacy – How and how often do you backup your data?
  • Encryption management – Do you use encryption or cryptographic techniques in your systems?
  • Governance & risk management – Do you have records of security events?
  • Human resources – Are employees trained in security protocol?
  • Identity & access management – Do you offer single sign-on (SSO)?
  • Physical security – How do you secure your physical assets and ensure on-premises privacy?
  • 3rd party management – 4th-party breaches happen. How do your vendors vet their vendors?
  • Vulnerability management – How do you conduct vulnerability analyses?

Types of security questionnaires

Not surprisingly, security questionnaires are not cookie-cutter documents. Depending on your industry, your prospect’s industry, and rapidly growing InfoSec risks and changes, you could see multiple types of security questionnaires in your inbox.

Here are the most common:

CIS Critical Security Controls (CIS First 5 / CIS Top 18)

The Center for Internet Security (CIS) is a non-profit organization that aims to safeguard organizations of all kinds against security threats.

A CIS Critical Security Control questionnaire lists 18 (previously 20) “Controls,” or prioritized sets of actions, that industries should take to protect their systems and data from cyber-attacks. The Controls include questions about managing your network and assets, protecting data, training employees to guard against threats, etc.

Consensus Assessments Initiative Questionnaire (CAIQ)

The Consensus Assessments Initiative Questionnaire (CAIQ) is a security questionnaire provided by the Cloud Security Alliance (CSA). The objective is to assess the security of your cloud service provider if you store data on the cloud.

A CAIQ is substantially longer than the modest 18 questions in the CIS questionnaire. In their questionnaire, the CSA asks multiple questions about your infrastructure as a service (IaaS), platform as a service (PaaS), and software as a service (SaaS) offerings.

The questionnaire, a series of yes/no questions, is typically customized to the customer’s specific needs and use cases.

ISO 27001 questionnaire

The ISO 27001 questionnaire was developed by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) and the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC). The questionnaires are sent to 3rd-party vendors to assess the information security of their IT systems and data processes.

The ISO 27001 is one of the best-known and most widely used security questionnaires and includes questions about how your organization uses resources and tools.

The questionnaire covers topics related to your vendor relationships, conflict resolution processes, contractual security requirement enforcement, how you monitor 3rd-party services, and whether you audit 4th-party risks. Additionally, the issuer typically wants to ensure their ability to audit your systems and processes.

Standardized Information Gathering questionnaire (SIG Core & SIGLite)

The Standardized Information Gathering (SIG) questionnaire, created by Shared Assessments, assesses risks across 18 domains, including IT processes, resiliency, data security, privacy, resilience, and more.

There are two types of SIG questionnaires, including the standard SIG Core questionnaire and SIGLite. The SIG Core questionnaire includes about 850 questions for a deep dive into a vendor’s security processes. The SIGLite has about 330 questions for a higher-level view of the vendor’s controls.

SIGLite is often the first security questionnaire. Once the prospect is comfortable with those answers, they may follow up with a SIG Core.

California Consumer Privacy Act questionnaire (CCPA)

On January 1, 2020, a law went into effect in California called the California Consumer Privacy Act. The law is designed to provide transparency, protect consumer privacy, and provide them with choices in how their information is collected and shared.

The CCPA applies to companies that conduct online business in California, have annual revenue exceeding $25 million, possess personal information from more than 50,000 people, and earn half their revenue from selling personal data.

If your company resides outside of the State of California, it might not matter. The law is considered extraterritorial in that it applies to all companies that meet the criteria, regardless of state or continent.

CCPA security questionnaires are not standardized, but CCPA questions could be part of a more extensive security questionnaire. Alternatively, you might receive one specifically tailored to California regulations.

General Data Protection Regulation questionnaire (GDPR)

Before California enacted the CCPA, the European Union passed its own data-handling law called the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).

The GDPR is similar to the CCPA in that it’s also extraterritorial. The GDPR, however, has no minimum criteria. It applies to all online organizations, including non-profits, that collect and process data from EU residents.

One significant difference between the two regulations is that while the CCPA allows people to opt-out of sharing their data, the GDPR requires that people opt-in. Companies must also provide EU residents with information about how they retain data and why they’re collecting it. Users can also withdraw their consent at any time.

The EU has a checklist that can serve as a security questionnaire. As with the CCPA, you might see these questions or similar as a stand-alone security questionnaire or as part of a broader one.

National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST SP 800-171)

In the United States, no federal laws begin to match California’s or the EU’s regulations. Still, the federal government has stringent laws surrounding government data handling.

The National Institute of Standards and Technology is part of the US Department of Commerce. It’s also one of the country’s oldest physical science laboratories. More recently, they’ve been a leading force in IT security.

With the help of large tech organizations, NIST created a set of guidelines designed to protect data. While NIST compliance isn’t mandatory, it is required of all contractors and subcontractors that work with the federal government.

NIST standards are considered best practices for most organizations, even those that don’t do business with the government. NIST compliance questionnaires cover topics such as asset management, governance, risk assessment, access control, data security and so on.

Payment Card Industry Data Security Standards questionnaire (PCI DSS)

The Payment Card Industry Standards Security Council (PCI Security Standards Council) created standards to protect consumers from credit card fraud. The guidelines are primarily for B2C businesses, but it’s also essential for purchasers to know that their 3rd-party vendors handle credit card transactions responsibly.

The PCI Security Standards Council’s list of questions for vendors asks about overall security, where information is stored, vendor integrations, onboarding procedures, etc. You might see the list on its own or as part of a more comprehensive security questionnaire.

What you need to successfully respond to security questionnaires

No one—okay, almost no one—likes filling out security questionnaires. They’re long, tedious, boring, and there’s no room for creating a compelling narrative. Unfortunately, setting security questionnaires aside isn’t an option. Refusing to submit one can force your organization to lose a deal or even an existing customer.

Security questionnaires have dozens to thousands of questions about how vendors handle growing security risks. Similarly to a request for proposal (RFP) or due diligence questionnaire (DDQ), a security questionnaire is time-sensitive and requires input from multiple stakeholders.

Not only should you have systems in place to protect your data, but you should also have procedures for responding to a security questionnaire.

Effective knowledge management

Security questionnaires are legal documents. Beyond just answering “yes” or “no,” you will need to prove compliance with documentation. An effective knowledge management system puts answers and documentation at your fingertips.

RFPIO’s AI-enabled recommendation engine can automatically suggest answers to up to 80% of an RFP’s queries. Imagine what it can do for a straightforward, repetitive document like a security questionnaire.

Seamless team collaboration

A security questionnaire response team can include dozens of people. An organization’s response manager might be in charge of completing the document, but they will need help from risk management, IT, sales engineering, information security, operations, HR, and/or accounting.

RFPIO’s pricing model is unique among response management applications and rare among SaaS companies. Instead of charging a per-user license fee, RFPIO provides unlimited access to users by charging per-project.

Maintained accuracy

If you indicate on a security questionnaire that you are compliant, it had better be accurate. Misrepresenting security compliance could lead to litigation.

A knowledge management system should be your single source of truth, which is especially important for security questionnaire responses. RFPIO’s Content Library is a single repository for all your company knowledge and documents, including security compliance certificates.

Driven by machine learning, the Content Library provides auditing tools such as reminders and reports so you can be confident that everything in your library is accurate and up-to-date.

Automation at scale

The road to information security is long, windy, rocky, and once you think you’re there, the destination moves. As standards are created, cybercriminals find ways around them. If an organization waits for new standards before updating its protocol, it might be too late.

Security safety calls for resilience which can mean adding to tech stacks and hiring additional information security personnel.

RFPIO’s automated processes grow right along with your needs. The Content Library is limitless, and adding new users is as simple as assigning permissions.

Project management

It’s imperative that you issue security questionnaire responses on time as well as accurately. RFPIO’s project management features clarify responsibilities, assign manageable tasks, and produce reports to ensure everything is going as planned.

Once you’ve issued your response, trend analytics is like a post-game wrap-up that tells you how the project compared to similar projects and how many resources were used.

Finish security questionnaires faster with RFPIO

A report by Whistic revealed that salespeople spend an average of 6.8 hours a month answering security questionnaires. And, 54% of responding companies said they’d lost deals because they couldn’t complete the questionnaires on time.

RFPIO helps organizations prove compliance at record speed, giving back more time to security teams so they can focus on higher-value work. If you’d like to learn more about security questionnaire software for fast, efficient, scalable, and accurate security questionnaire responses, give us a shout.

Unify your revenue team with a response management platform

Unify your revenue team with a response management platform

Products/Features/Solutions

The rise of the revenue team continues and mid-size organizations are leading the charge. When it comes to revenue responsibilities, the lines have become blurred between marketing and sales departments. Now, the rest of the organization is responsible for contributing to revenue as well.

The response management process is a key revenue-generating initiative for growing companies. To succeed, all of these teams need to work effectively together. A response management platform is here to unify your revenue team and position your organization for growth.

Response management opportunities for mid-size companies

Responders at mid-size companies are team members who respond to business queries like RFPs (Requests for Proposal), security questionnaires, and DDQs (Due Diligence Questionnaires). They both contribute and manage this process, often in addition to their primary job responsibilities.

With response management at mid-size organizations, roadblocks fall into two distinct buckets…

1. They lack X – Commitment, knowledge, an internal champion, support outside the organization

2. The cost of X – Services, resources, operations

Knowledge is a powerful asset for any organization, especially a mid-size organization where you have a combination of specialists and generalists with a multitude of experiences and backgrounds. These resources are valuable and cost the organization.

If a subject matter expert (SME) moves on from your organization, they take a wealth of company knowledge with them. This leaves your response team at a great disadvantage as they lose an important resource that contributed to the process.

Once these internal roadblocks are recognized, they become opportunities for improvement. A response management solution like RFPIO offers a collaborative atmosphere, turning teams into tribes.

Mid-size revenue teams keep the ship afloat

Revenue teams operating under a CRO (Chief Revenue Officer) are becoming increasingly common within B2B organizations. Rapidly growing mid-size companies have set the standard for modern revenue teams. All other companies, from startups to enterprise, are playing by the rules set by revenue teams at mid-sized organizations.

A revenue team involves anybody who is contributing to the revenue of the company. This seems like a broad definition, because it is. It doesn’t go as granular as negative revenue, even revenue, or positive revenue—it’s revenue in general.

Revenue teams might include managers in customer success or accounts working side-by-side with executives like a CFO or CRO. In mid-size organizations, marketing teams and sales teams (including sales ops and sales enablement) are considered part of the revenue team as well.

Similar to keeping a ship afloat in the sea, revenue takes contributions and effort from everyone. To bring in revenue and maintain revenue, it’s essentially an “all hands on deck” situation. Being that responding to RFPs and security questionnaires is a predictable step in the sales cycle, this process needs to be rock-solid for mid-size companies to achieve their revenue goals.

How a response management platform offers support

Let’s reinforce the two challenge buckets for responders at mid-size companies for a second. You’re experiencing a lack of commitment, knowledge, an internal champion, and/or support outside the organization. On top of that, you’re dealing with the cost of services, resources, and/or operations.

Other revenue teams have been in your shoes too. But, they saw those challenges in their response management process as opportunities and made that process easier with RFPIO.

Uniformity and accuracy

RFPIO’s Content Library is the bread and butter for response teams. This knowledge repository brings uniformity and accuracy to how a company represents itself in any business query response.

Teams across the organization will benefit from a centralized access point to company information. It goes beyond sales enablement, enabling anyone who needs to efficiently find up-to-date content to get the job done. The use cases are pretty endless.

Edit and enhance

RFPIO Lookup takes the strength and capabilities of the Content Library a step further. Rather than being inside the platform, you quickly search for the response with a Chrome extension.

Let’s say you call in a field person to answer a security questionnaire, who doesn’t work inside the response management platform. They use RFPIO Lookup to access the knowledge repository from their browser to select accurate, technical responses. Instead of creating content from scratch or hunting down previous responses, now that person has extra time to edit and enhance the response.

Ease and visibility

RFPIO’s integrations are well-loved by revenue teams. Store all of your content inside the response management platform, using cloud storage integrations with your favorite cloud storage solutions (Google Drive, One Drive, Dropbox, Box, and Sharepoint). Collaboration is necessary for any response management team—Slack and Microsoft Teams integrations simplify communication.

Salespeople operate business as usual with RFPIO’s CRM integrations (Salesforce, Hubspot, Microsoft Dynamics, Pipedrive, PipelineDeals). If you’re a sales operations manager, you need to provide visibility into how you’re winning RFPs and DDQs to the C-level team from time to time. Within Salesforce, you can easily run these reports.

Alexandra Maddux

“At Smarsh, we believe our proposals set the stage for an ongoing partnership and raise the bar on what it means for a vendor to exceed expectations. In 2018, the sales enablement team submitted nearly 30 more RFPs/RFIs compared to 2017 and is expecting the same trajectory for 2019. RFPIO allows our team to juggle upwards of 10 projects at a time, in tandem with maintaining the required level of organization to be successful and quality we demand, all while collaborating within the platform across 5 different time zones.”- Alexandra Maddux, RFP/Sales Support Coordinator

When you have a group of responders working together to achieve the same revenue vision, not only is this less stressful, this positive mentality impacts the company’s overall success. Your revenue team will become more unified in achieving that vision with a response management platform. It’s a win-win for everyone.

So…what are you waiting for? Book a demo of RFPIO to unify your revenue team.

5 tactics for developing brand consistency in response management

5 tactics for developing brand consistency in response management

Product & Best Practices

Today’s buyer is very selective when the time comes to purchase a product or service. Buyers not only expect more from brands, they also like to know what to expect. Why is every Target store set up the same? Why does McDonald’s feel familiar no matter what country you’re in? Because those well-known companies have mastered brand consistency.

Organizations that get this know that creating a consistent user experience helps customers and clients easily find what they need. Brand consistency is the foundation for a positive user experience because it delivers a sense of comfort and familiarity. This concept applies to B2C and B2B organizations—small, mid-sized, and enterprise.

Brand consistency is a key factor in the ultimate success of your response management process, whether you are submitting an RFP (request for proposal), SOW (statement of work), security questionnaires or other form of proposals. Let’s dig into several ideas that will help you create a more consistent brand experience throughout the sales process.

Brand consistency techniques for better response management

The average revenue increase attributed to always presenting the brand consistently is 23%. Establishing brand consistency within the response management process allows companies to scale faster.

To build a cohesive brand experience in your response management process, everyone involved in responding to business queries should be aligned by a strategy. Brand consistency is a technique. And like any technique, it takes dedication to master it.

1. Create a messaging framework.

You have a messaging framework for all other marketing content. Your response management process should be treated with the same approach. Often this is not the case, as marketing teams fly into the process much later during review and finalization of the deliverable.

Every marketer should be prepared to put out fires, but that means being prepared well before the fire begins. Proactively create a one-page messaging strategy for each type of business query your team responds to. To serve as a reminder, be sure to include the goal of what your content hopes to achieve at the very top.

2. Optimize your most repetitive responses.

RFP issuers typically ask similar sets of questions, with perhaps a few variations or wild cards along the way. There is no need to create content from scratch every time you respond to a business query. In fact, reinventing the wheel with responses leads to brand consistency challenges.

Repurposing content is perfectly acceptable, assuming you go the extra mile by tailoring the response to address each prospect’s goals and needs. You know the repetitive questions already. Spend time perfecting these responses, so they are optimized and ready to go. And audit this content quarterly, versus setting and forgetting.

“Successful branding yields benefits such as increased customer loyalty, an improved image, and a relatable identity.” – TSL Marketing

3. Standardize information with brand guidelines.

Brand guidelines act as the North Star in standardizing all of your organization’s communication efforts. Yet, typically the response management process tends to go rogue and operate outside these guidelines your marketing team has painstakingly developed.

Contributors from multiple departments respond to questions in an RFP, using their favorite fonts. Headers and lists are mismatched—and you end up with a huge formatting mess. Keep your cool and remember that responders like SMEs and salespeople aren’t nearly as connected to the brand as you are. Make sure responders have a copy of brand guidelines and that they understand how to implement them in everyday situations.

4. Store all content in an accessible location.

Knowledge sharing in our content-driven world is becoming an increasing challenge for organizations. Cloud storage solutions can only do so much. Everyone has their own way of organizing folders and files, leaving a maze of content to navigate.

The best way to create a “grab and go” option with company information is to keep it accessible in one location—preferably an Content Library in a response management platform. An Content Library stores brand-approved content, allowing responders to quickly hunt down information through searches or filters. And, you get to have a much better handle on brand consistency.

5. Automate your response management process.

Responding to business queries is a notoriously time-consuming activity for you and other contributors. Automating with strong technology really opens the door to a repeatable and scalable process.

A response management platform like RFPIO automates everything, helping teams cut their response time by 40%-50% on average. Even if responders get wildly creative with formatting, you can export into a custom branded template in seconds then perform a quick sweep of the document. Automation frees up your time to produce the highest quality deliverable possible—and, of course—move on to other priorities on your to-do list.

Brand consistency holds a ton of value in steering your approach to response management. How you present these sales documents to a prospect influences whether a potential client becomes your future client…or your competitor’s client.

You already know that people who love your brand then become advocates for your brand. Creating a positive feeling through content that is “on brand” has the power to build relationships and earn trust. It’s time to cultivate a positive brand experience with your response management process too.

Achieving brand consistency is a cinch with RFPIO. Schedule a demo right here and we’ll get you all set up for success.

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.