"Given how easy it is to produce a first draft — and how good that first draft is — our writers have the time and energy to add the value that will impress the agency and their client."
Bryce Kositz
Proposal Content Specialist at Frontier Communications
The gist
Frontier Communications is a major provider of internet, Ethernet, and phone services to residential and business customers across 25 states. Its Alternative Channels team is responsible for responding to nearly 1,000 RFPs annually, many tied to state and local education (SLED) contracts supported by federal E-Rate and rural healthcare funding. These opportunities are time-sensitive, high-stakes, and highly structured, which made their former manual proposal process unsustainable.
With sales engineers demanding change and leadership raising revenue expectations, Frontier turned to Responsive to overhaul its content management and RFP workflows. Better proposals, faster turnarounds, and seamless collaboration soon followed, resulting in a drastically reduced churn rate and the team outpacing revenue expectations this year by 30%.
The rundown
Frontier’s response challenge
- Frontier’s RFP process relied on a cloud storage drive to manage content, leading to version control issues, outdated responses, and inconsistent proposal quality, which ultimately impacted revenue and response credibility.
- Many State, Local, and Education (SLED)-funded schools and hospitals issue templated RFPs borrowed from other institutions. They often include questions that don’t apply to Frontier’s services but still require responses, making it challenging for Frontier to clearly convey its unique value.
- A 12-person, fully remote team manages nearly 1,000 proposals annually, the majority concentrated in a compressed E-Rate season when proposals must speak for themselves due to strict communication rules.
- Inconsistent proposal quality and operational inefficiencies contributed to high churn, with Frontier losing a significant percentage of contracts each year under mounting competitive pressure.
Impact and results
- Beat revenue goals and reduced churn: Higher-quality, more personalized proposals contributed to the Alternative Channels team exceeding revenue goals by 30% and cutting churn by 86%, from 30% to 4%.
- Doubled productivity without adding headcount: With Responsive, the Frontier RFP team doubled its proposal output per team member, spending significantly fewer man-hours to achieve better results.
- SLED-dedicated sales team: The success of Frontier’s RFP operations led to the formation of a dedicated SLED sales team, strengthening pipeline strategy and boosting RFP win rates.
- Fast, tailored proposals: Responsive content management and templates enable proposal writers to quickly generate customized, region- and product-specific responses that meet strict SLED compliance and expectations of issuing organizations and their third-party agents.
Tight timelines, inconsistent content, and missed opportunities
Nearly 60% of proposals handled by Frontier Communications’ Alternative Channels team come from SLED-funded schools and hospitals: a key market where rural institutions use federal funding to upgrade their IT infrastructure. But during the hectic E-Rate funding season when these RFPs are issued, schools and hospitals are prohibited from communicating with vendors. This restriction means proposals must do all the talking, placing the full weight of persuasion and relationship-building on the RFP response — with no support from sales once the process begins.
But the team’s existing proposal management system couldn’t keep up. Without a dedicated content manager, the RFP team was left to govern a shared cloud drive, manually searching for content then copying, pasting, and formatting responses for each of the 1,000 annual proposals. It was a slow, error-prone process that made consistency and quality difficult to achieve.
Further complicating the process, many public sector organizations used third-party agencies to manage RFPs. These agencies often controlled vendor evaluations, meaning Frontier’s proposals had to appeal to two audiences: the agency acting as a gatekeeper and the ultimate decision-makers at the issuing organization.
The team also faced:
- Disconnected content and poor version control
- Locally saved files that went out of sync
- Manual formatting that slowed production
- Rigid RFP structures that made customization difficult
- Siloed collaboration across writers, SMEs, and sales
These inefficiencies had real consequences. Up to 30% of contracts were lost annually, often because generic, outdated proposals failed to convey Frontier’s value. Writers were stretched thin, sales engineers were frustrated, and leadership needed results. Frontier turned to Responsive for a unified Strategic Response Management (SRM) platform that could bring content, teams, and workflows together to transform “RFP season” from a chaotic scramble into a strategic advantage.
A centralized system that changed everything
Responsive gave Frontier the structure it needed to scale proposal operations without sacrificing quality. With a unified Content Library, writers could easily find and reuse approved, accurate responses instead of piecing together content from scattered files. The platform’s content management and custom template capabilities ensured every proposal reflected industry and product-specific nuances, whether it was a school district in California or a rural healthcare network in Ohio.
“Leadership gives us revenue goals, but it’s my goal to make the team a little happier by putting in less hours, and Responsive really manages that for us.”
Bryce Kositz
Proposal Content Specialist at Frontier Communications
Writers now launch proposals directly from Salesforce alerts. By selecting the appropriate product and industry, Responsive automatically populates templates with relevant content, including required regional elements like state-specific infographics. This has made proposal generation dramatically faster and more consistent.
Key improvements include:
- Faster first drafts generated with just a few clicks
- Auto-filled templates based on SLED and agency requirements
- Accurate, always-current content with centralized control
- Simplified collaboration between writers, SMEs, and sales
With Responsive in place, proposal writers no longer waste time on formatting or chasing down approvals. They focus on crafting strategic, persuasive responses that reflect Frontier’s value.
Elevating the SLED strategy
Responsive has proven especially valuable in navigating the complexity of SLED contracts. These RFPs are tightly structured, may be managed by a third-party agency, and governed by compliance rules that leave little room for traditional sales engagement during the active bidding season. As a result, proposals must be comprehensive, convincing, and fully self-contained.
Responsive enables the Frontier team to build tailored templates based on each third-party agency’s typical requirements — drawing from what’s worked in past engagements. When an RFP is managed by a known agency, the team uses that agency-specific template to go beyond simply answering the stated questions. They proactively include the additional information the agency is likely to screen for, delivered in the style and format that aligns with their preferences. This not only saves time but improves Frontier’s chances of making the short list.
Winning more and reducing churn
Responsive helped Frontier reconfigure how proposals contribute to the customer experience. Instead of rushed, generic responses, clients now receive timely, tailored proposals that reflect Frontier’s professionalism and commitment.
“We had a couple of very big wins come through that were somewhat unexpected; Responsive helped a lot with both of them.”
Bryce Kositz
Proposal Content Specialist at Frontier Communications
That shift led to a dramatic reduction in churn from 30% to just 9% and helped the Alternative Channels team exceed revenue goals by 30%. The RFP team’s success with Responsive also justified the formation of a dedicated SLED sales team. That group now focuses on relationship-building and pipeline development throughout the year, confident that the proposal team can deliver polished, persuasive submissions when the RFP window opens. “They’re often some of the better performers within the company,” Bryce said.
With a dedicated SLED sales team working alongside an RFP team powered by Responsive, Frontier has exceeded revenue expectations and slashed churn even further, to just under 4%.
Less time, greater productivity
Productivity has doubled without added headcount or overtime, and internal teams are more aligned than ever before.
- Maintained output with less effort: RFP team doubled output per team member without adding hours
- Happier teams: Writers, sales engineers, and SMEs now work in sync
- Stronger pipeline: The dedicated SLED sales team thrives on clear collaboration
- Better win rates: Proposals land with more impact and more frequency
“The more we use Responsive, the less time we spend in the platform, but the more we’re able to produce,” Bryce shared. “And it’s definitely helping us win more.”
