CFandango

Account Executive

Qualifying an RFP

One of my accounts published a RFP for services that my company provides (B2B enterprise software), and I'm trying to gauge whether this is worth pursuing. Curious how folks have approached qualifying RFPs before committing intent to participate? Do you ask for insight into other vendors that are participating, budget, etc? What's a good way to go about it?

My experience in the past has been clients are usually tightlipped once they've issued the RFP. I wanted to see if anyone has experience properly qualifying to ensure it's worth putting in the time and effort to participate.

☑️ Qualification Calls

📃 Procurement

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16 comments

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UrAssIsSaaS

Arsonist

SaaS Eater

Take all of the time you could potentially invest in the RFP and allocate it to prospecting new companies. Much better use of your time.

I know this doesn't answer your question directly but you're probably just being used as a bargaining chip against their current user. I would just invest the minimum amount of effort to get your foot in the door and go from there.

CFandango

Executive

Account Executive

They only looped us in a couple of weeks before the RFP was published, and refused to meet to provide any scope prior to it being published. No insight into budget, which is most concerning. This will take way more than 30 minutes to respond to and will require a big investment of resources on our part.

CuriousFox

WR Officer

🦊

Then I'd politely decline.

TennisandSales

Politicker

Head Of Sales

100% decline.

CFandango

Executive

Account Executive

Going to try and get a qualification conversation going first, if they say nay, will likely decline

TreTime

Catalyst

Account Executive

Decline. They are fishing for more companies to make this seem like a non-bias process.

Pachacuti

Politicker

They call me Daddy, Sales Daddy

strikes 1,2, & 3 right there

UrAssIsSaaS

Arsonist

SaaS Eater

they are not going to grant you that, feel free to ask but from there just move on. This shit is never worth it.

CoorsKing

WR Officer

Retired King of the Coors Knights

If you were not talking to them before it was published and/or you didn’t help write it, don’t bother. You are the “due diligence” cannon fodder.

Pachacuti

Politicker

They call me Daddy, Sales Daddy

I use a "3-strike” rule:

If you haven't been tracking the RFP - strike 1

If you don't know budget - strike 2

If you don't know decision makers/process - strike 3, etc...

If it takes you like 30min to respond, then sure - go for it. Otherwise its a waste of your time, let it go.

TreTime

Catalyst

Account Executive

You typically win less than 10% of RFPs you submit bids for.

If you have 0 communications with the client before the RFP - your odds go even lower. Usually that means your competition was already in the door and helped them map their RFP criteria.

You could place a quick call over to a primary contact for the RFP to check on the BS-ometer just to your DD, but don't overextend your company's time/effort in a response.

NotCreativeEnough

Big Shot

Professional Day Ruiner

are you already engaged with some of the contacts related to the RFP? Do you have an established relationship with them? If so, it's worth reaching out to them to discuss further. Especially if you have past performance in this account and the RFP is pertaining to something you offer. They may have issued the RFP specifically expecting a response from you. If you've never had a conversation with any of the decision makers and they have no clue you or your product exist though, I would stay away. Typically once an RFP goes out they've already been discussing with several vendors and this is just the formal step they have to go through to actually make a purchase from one of them.

CFandango

Executive

Account Executive

They reached out to us asking if we want to participate, so they’re definitely familiar with our company and product. But they haven’t been forthcoming with information since that initial reach out to let us know there’s an RFP coming out. The biggest concern is we have zero insight into budget here. They could be looking at some low cost vendors and our price is amongst the highest in the market. How do I qualify for price when they provided zero insight into budget

NotCreativeEnough

Big Shot

Professional Day Ruiner

the main thing here is you need to get in front of who is actually doing the purchasing. Typically with rfp's the point of contact is just someone who writes up the documents, sends out the awards, etc. The people who are doing the technical evaluation are the ones that are usually the actual buyer and have some insight they can provide. good luck getting the contract admin to give you that info though, you'll probably have to do some cold outreach to people who fit the right job titles within the company to try and find them yourself.

Justatitle

Big Shot

Account Executive

RFPs are a complete waste of time 98% of the time. The majority of companies that issue them do so to remain in compliance and then when they don't get responses they pressure and say "we were hoping for a larger response" They already know who they want to go with, it's to keep procurement happy

JustGonnaSendIt

Politicker

Burn Towns, Get Money

A few things I typically consider when evaluating an RFP:

- Is this a strategic or opportunistic focus area for my company?

- What are the requirements? Is this something where we know we win?

- Do we see any influence in the requirements from working with another vendor to shape them?

- Do we have any influential partners that we could respond with?

Before responding, I typically request a call to discuss the RFP process (what step is this? how many are there? timeline? how will we be notified? etc...). I also typically request that people that can speak to requirements attend that call, or we have a separate call with them.

RFP's are resource-intensive to respond to for most organizations. It's important to qualify very carefully if it's worth investing in.

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CFandango

Qualifying an RFP

16 comments

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