The Dreaded RFP Response

Dreaded RFP Response

As a vendor or supplier of product or services, one of the biggest challenges you have in today’s marketplace is finding the time to respond to all the information requests you receive from your customers in any given week. Your responses need to be professional, representative of your organization, accurate and detailed enough to ensure you are shortlisted for potential projects.

Information requests might be for price and delivery, product specifications, tenders or quote requests and even the dreaded RFP response which is likely the most time consuming task out of all the inquiries presently filling up your inbox. RFPs are on the rise because more and more companies are using them as a catch all for dealing with requirements the purchasing department receives from internal departments.

If the purchasing department does not receive a clear scope or specification on a need, they will often use a RFP to solicit a response and hopefully a solution from a vendor. What is often over-looked by the Buyer is the amount of time and effort the Vendor has to put into generating a worthy response and you cannot blame them as they have enough fires of their own to put out and most supplier’s understand responding to a request for proposal is a cost of doing business. Are there ways to mitigate the cost of responding to RFQ’s and RFP’s?  Yes and no and we will address this piece shortly.

As a vendor you should keep track of your success rate and the approximate cost of preparing your response. If you are spending $10,000 to submit a response and being awarded a $150,000 contract then you can clearly justify your ROI. If you are spending the same $10,000 to be awarded a $15,000 contract then not so much unless it leads to further work or a long term relationship with a new client.

I am not sure most companies can answer how much it costs to deliver a RFP response or tender call however I do know that if they can find a way to do this quicker, save money and achieve better results then everyone would consider doing it. Having a clean versus cluttered response is a start and taking the time to have more than one person review the RFP request are two solid ways of improving your chances. Each RFP response you craft requires a specific or unique response however some of the pieces and verbiage used in the response can be cookie cutter.

Your company references, testimonials, company bio, contact coordinates, past project successes, financials, safety and equipment lists can be prepared ahead of time. Other areas like your cover letter can also be saved in a format which allows you to tweak and go. All these pieces will help you get your responses out quicker and quicker means cheaper.

Since 2008, RFQPro has been helping both Buyers and Suppliers succeed with the request for quote and request for proposal process by providing web-based RFQ Software and edit friendly procurement related word templates to help users expedite this process and improve departmental productivity. Why start from scratch…visit the RFP Response Page for more details.

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