Winning RFPs: It is all in the Pre-work

The Request for Proposal is the bane and boon of many businesses. Yet, this has become the heart of revenue opportunities in the consulting world. Your job is to convince the hiring and funding authority that you:

1. Understand the problem.
2. Can solve the problem with the lowest risk.
3. You have the most well-rounded team.
4. You have the processes or technologies as well as the experience.
5. Have excellent references or a team with stellar credentials.
6. Price the deal in alignment with the client

Even when deals are not competitive, you create an RFP response or Statement of Work that outlines who, what, where, when, and how. It’s essential for you and the client. Expectations need to be set for all parties. 

Before you write a proposal

This is an assumption for a mid to large-size company bidding on more important deals. So how do you prepare your team to win?

Avoid proposals (as much as possible) and develop your deals. Your goal is to sell your understanding of the problem rather than your solution. Everyone can come up with good to great solutions or products. Once we have those, it is human nature to try and fit them into as many situations as possible.

However, consider this.

If you demonstrate that you understand a problem set, particularly a complex one, several things happen. 

• First, you build credibility and demonstrate domain (E.g., consumer retail banking accounts) competency. Third, you provide evidence that your expertise is timely and an industry issue that requires a solution. For example, the industry has problems with churn.
• You can then dialog with the client about their needs. Use active listening before you ask clarifying questions. You are building empathy and demonstrating EQ.
• Finally, you earn the right to tell your story. That story will spread.

Develop your solution along the lines of the problem but not so rigidly that it cannot flex for nuanced situations. 

In larger consultancies, there was much prep work to get us ready. I remember joining one of the large offshore companies before they became well-known. “You come from a Big Five background. Those places are proposal factories; how do they do it?” It was a good question, and I wouldn’t say I liked my answer. We had teams of people to collect proposals, teams to write them, and SMEs (Subject Matter Experts) to enhance them. There wasn’t a smooth handoff between teams in every instance.

We needed everyone to contribute equally and from a place of strength to build winning proposals. It took a year.

• Looking at RFP responses collectively, there were recurring themes.
• Each needed to tell a unique story.
• Estimation varied widely from proposal to proposal.
• Not everyone could tell a great story, either written or during orals. 
• We needed specialists to compete with other firms.
• Pricing was inconsistent and came from a place of weakness. 

Teach Everyone to Fish

Our approach was broad rather than focusing on growing a small team to respond. We took a “teach everyone to fish approach.” While some people had a more excellent aptitude, everyone had a seat at the table and was invested in the solution, estimation, and deal pricing. A series of processes, tools, and roles were developed. I spent a few months traveling to our different centers aligning and training people.

The outcome of that year was an excellent process, a better than 70%-win rate, a happy team, and many sleepless nights on the road. 

Here is an outline of a process that’s worked well across companies. It scales up or down. 

1. Every proposal has a win theme.
2. This is the intersection of answering the problem, the solution, the process, and why we were uniquely qualified to deliver the deal with success. This guiding principle is referred to in every part of the response. 
3. All stakeholders contribute.
4. Everyone is trained to contribute to their section with standardized methods and estimation tools. Everyone reads the proposal and has a say. 
5. Have you built a relationship with the client, and is the account team involved? Knowing the client stakeholders, buying preferences, and company needs are essential. If you don’t, perhaps you know some of their partners. If you don't ask questions, the answer is always “No.”
6. We built technology Centers of Excellence out of this need. Finally, we could point to specialists who lived, dreamed and breathed some competency.
7. The primary issue with large (20,000-hour) software projects is the ability to estimate accurately. Therefore, we developed and acquired off-the-shelf tools to factor design, delivery, and testing complexity.
8. Planning and status meetings to review the proposal.
9. One person quarterbacks
10. Coordinate all the efforts and use a planning tool to organize when and by whom sections will be done.
11. Rewrite sections, so it all reads in one voice.
12. RFP components
13. Our understanding of the problem
14. State our understanding of the business, problem, and desired outcome clearly and unambiguously. If we don’t agree with the client, there is no way to deliver a good solution.
15. Have you had detailed conversations, with recaps, with the stakeholders? If not, how do you know their expectations? 
16. If we don’t have a clear understanding, propose a Discovery phase. Then reframe the problem and solution.
17. The Solution.
18. Phases
19. Break out all the components with well-defined boundaries. How does one flow into the next?
20. Ensure that the problem is fully solved and that there is a clear line from A to Z.
21. Your Team – written as “The client’s team.”
22. Often overlooked is a summary of the critical people delivering the work, their relevance, experience, and relationship to the work.
23. Summary of Deliverables
24. Another one-pager that pulls together all the interim work products and when they are due.
25. Success metrics
26. How are success and completion measured? Without clear measures, “When delivered, this site processes 10,000 orders every hour 24x7.” You can finish the work but disappoint the stakeholders because it doesn’t meet their spoken or unspoken expectations. Take as much space and time as necessary to get this right. 
27. Timeline and deliverables
28. A project plan with high-level milestones. It tells the client when they need to be involved.
29. Assumptions and Dependencies 
30. What assumptions do you need? All materials are delivered one week before the project start. Regulatory requirements stay fixed during the project. Document them. I will project a proposal outline with some of my favorites in the Slideshare link.
31. Why Us?
32. The written form of the winning theme. Outline the reasons for this team, this solution, and where we can point to success in one page. 
33. Pricing.
34. Deal pricing is its own art and science. One of my former bosses was the master of giving away the small stuff. This merits a long discussion and knowing the customer’s buying habits.
35. Each slide earns its place in the response. 
36. Some proposals are dozens of pages. For example, clients who receive 20 bids (times sixty pages) will likely need to remember many details. Your response should be as long as necessary but no longer. 

Finally, know when to say no. Some proposals cannot or should not be won. If the requirements and foundational materials cannot be clarified, be prepared to walk away. That’s one of the reasons I can claim a higher success rate. 

This was meant as an overview; every deal is nuanced. Please leave your thoughts and comments below.