RFPs continue to be the primary way to evaluate and choose vendors in nearly every industry from healthcare and government to construction and education. So now more than ever it is time to focus on making sure RFP responses are of the highest quality in order to remain competitive. Here are a few tips to win more business with your RFP responses.
Prioritize
Make sure you meet the minimum qualifications for the opportunity to determine if responding is worthwhile. Take a look at your win-rate with the requestor to help prioritize RFP opportunities ensuring you can focus on the RFPs with the best potential.
Utilize the FAQ Period
Ask questions to ensure you fully understand expectations and you can tailor your responses appropriately. Don’t leave it up to interpretation if you’re not sure what the requester meant by a certain question or requirement.
Centralize your Content
Weed out old, obsolete responses and work to organize content in a way that makes finding the right answers easy for everyone on your team. This is the number one way to help your team take on higher volumes and improve quality.
Refresh
Take a look at stale content that hasn’t been updated in a while. Sit alongside the SMEs and ask questions. Make sure you’re including the most up-to-date information in your response and try to find ways to adapt the response to current industry trends. Review winning RFP responses and ask for feedback on RFPs that didn’t result in a win. Use what you learn from these experiences to improve your library.
Second-Eye
Spell-check is a great tool but it won’t catch everything. Set time aside before the deadline to review your work then have a peer review your work to catch anything you may have missed. If you’re on the project by yourself (which many of you are) then leverage Grammarly. It’s the best $$$ spent for sentence structure and spelling. By building a final review into the workflow, you ensure a polished and perfect final product.
It might seem intimidating and time-consuming to implement new processes and checkpoints, but as with most things, getting started is the hardest part. Let Catapult show you how to get started improving your RFP responses today.
