For many businesses, responding to requests for proposals (RFPs) is a regular occurrence. Every RFP is a sales opportunity that can contribute to business growth. The success of each proposal hinges on its execution. If you respond to RFPs, you already know that proposal management requires a diverse set of skills. Identifying and honing each skill can quickly help improve your proposal process and your win rate.
Delivering on a Proposal Request
You write a solicited proposal when a perspective buyer formally request solutions from your company. The RFP identifies the buyer’s current problem and needs in specific terms and requires you to solve the problem in whole or in part.
RFP’s can be simple and small – a few pages that identify a need and ask for a solution and relatively broad terms – or they can be complex and large – hundreds of pages of precise requirements, often in the form of nested questions. Bidders must read the RFP carefully and be able to look out for requirements meant to disqualify careless, would-be suppliers.
The most important aspect of responding to an RFP is that you clearly read it from beginning to end, note all statements and even hints of need, and build your proposal to clearly respond to every one of them. Our goal is to comply with all your customer’s requirements and express how your company goes beyond those requirements to help meet its business goals.
- Responding to and ensuring the company meets the requirements your customer identifies
- Structure your proposal exactly as your customer instructs
- Adhere to all the formatting and packaging guidelines that your customer specifies
- Stay within the page limit your customer sets
- Build a compliance matrix to show your customer where in your proposal you respond to a requirement
