Finally a reason to get excited about RFPs!

RFPs SUCK!

A conversation with Tom Searcy

I was thrilled to have the opportunity to hook up with Tom Searcy, and to read his new book, RFPs Suck! I know that just about all of you agree with this sentiment.

To quote Tom, "As sales professionals, we want the sales process to be about relationships, trust building and problem solving. How does an RFP process line up with those ideas, if at all? The answer is: Poorly. However, with the increasing complexity of business as well as the pressures of corporate governance, RFPs are becoming an increasing part of the sales process for opportunities bigger than 6 figures. Like it or not, if we want to do big deals, we have to learn how to win in the RFP process."

Tom, what are the three most common mistakes sales reps make when answering RFPs?

1. Answering them at all - Companies who answer RFPs as a standard business process answer way too many of them. Their belief is that it is a numbers game and they just play. We know that 72% of the Fortune 500 companies when surveyed admitted they sent out their RFPs even though they had already selected their provider. To be successful in the RFP process, you have to discipline yourself to answer very few - and know why.

2. Writing as if there were one reader - RFPs readers are typically a team of 3 or more. They are from different disciplines and at best they only skim the areas of the RFP that are not in their own discipline. When you write an RFP response, if you have key information, you have to be redundant and bake it into many responses in the same RFP.

3. Not weighting their answers - I see so many RFPs where a company will cut and paste a 2-page answer about their company's history and then give a 3-sentence response on a question about "Why should your company be chosen?" The RFP questions are not of equal value and your reader is only so interested. Choose the questions for the heavy answers wisely and trim the fluff.

And so, Tom, what are three best practices that you see used by sellers who consistently hit high win rates with RFPs?

1. They commoditize their competition - In most businesses, 90% of what makes up the business value is uniform across the top end of the competitors. Admit it. Then tell why the 10% that is important to the customer is exactly where your expertise is. The losers put superlatives into every category of their response trying to win on every front- not possible and it hides your best value.

2. They tell a story and pick a theme - The RFP document is not just an antiseptic transfer of information, it is a story about what makes your company unique. This story also previews to your reader what working with your company will feel like. Tell that story so that it transfers emotion and creates a picture of the future experience.

3. They focus as much on the safety of selecting them as their value - RFPs are designed to help companies avoid making bad decisions. This means that they need to know that if they include you in the finalist list or select you as the winner that they won't have made a mistake. Addressing the 4 C's of stability, Competency, Consistency, Credibility and Customization, will make your reader confident that they are not making a mistake.

Finally, Tom, what advice would you offer my readers?

1. Develop a filter that weeds out most RFPs before you start - In my book, RFPs Suck!

I go through a dozen red flags that really indicate whether or not you have much potential of winning an RFP before you ever put your first pen to paper. The list includes:

No succinct objective
No defined budget
No access to the end buyers for questions
Boilerplate Purchasing document
Too many invitees
Excessive creative requirements (drawings, designs, prototypes, samples)
Rate card requests

I recommend that you create a filter that gives you clear early indicators as to whether or not any investment of time or energy is worthwhile.

2. Bake your winning 2-3 compelling advantages into every answer - An RFP is broken into sections for the readers. The readers rarely read the entire RFP, so they are only going to pay attention to your message, whatever it is, in their section. By choosing what the 2-3 highest level advantages that you bring to the RFP, you can then make certain that they are written into every part of the RFP. It's a bit like a politician- regardless of the question asked, the politician turns the topic back to the issues he or she wants to talk about.

3. Write at a high school level - A false belief is that because we are writing a response to a rather sophisticated RFP that the people reading it are all equally well versed in our disciplines, or for that matter, the needs of the project. Often times, the people reading the RFP are only slightly connected to the project. They may be IT people, finance staff or senior executives across many disciplines. By writing at a high school level, I mean that you need to take out the jargon and many of the TLAs, (three letter acronyms), that make your answers confusing or indecipherable.

Tom Searcy, author of RFPs Suck! has about $1.6 billion in successfully won RFPs over the course of his career. He has developed a process that helps sales professionals, who read his book and attend his workshops, be more effective and successful at the entire RFP system www.huntbigsales.com.