CSOM – Is There Anything To Love About RFPs?

I have a love/hate relationship with RFPs (request for proposals).  On the one hand, I’m thrilled to be included in the solicitation process.  On the other hand, I wish the solicitation process was a bit more friendly to those of us considering responding.

HMA Public Relations has received hundreds of RFPs over the years from a wide variety of organizations across both the public and private sector.  These requests give the client (the buyer) an opportunity to receive responses from several agencies with the hope of finding the perfect match for their scope of work.

But the problem is, in a lot of cases, the RFP itself doesn’t provide an opportunity to the agency to really demonstrate their capabilities. Here’s a few tips if you are putting an RFP together for your organization:

• Keep your organizational overview brief and focus more on sharing the purpose of the RFP. Why are you going out to bid? Is this project-specific or more long-term?
• Don’t just outline what you need — explain why you need it. What new or current challenges is your organization facing?
• Focus on the most important outcomes you’re hoping your agency will achieve. A strong RFP will be transparent with what you are looking for, allowing the agencies to provide relevant information.
• If you have a procurement officer, be sure to get input from the team (s) that will be interacting with the agency.
• Don’t expect the agency to do the work for free. They will be happy to share past work experiences but to expect a PR plan or creative work at the proposal stage is just plain wrong. And besides, this is a real disservice as they can’t possibly know enough about you at this stage to give you a plan.
• Provide realistic budget parameters. This will allow the proposing agency to assess whether they are a good fit and you will receive a response that aligns with your financial expectations.
• Provide a timeline – when to submit questions and when they’ll receive answers, when the RFP is due, when you will conduct in-person interviews (if needed) and when contract negotiations will begin.
• And speaking of in-person interviews, these are highly recommended. Once you’ve narrowed down your top 3-5 responses, invite them in for a presentation.  This will give them a chance to share more specific information with you and give you the opportunity to engage with the team that will be working on your account.

Tune-in to the podcast, Adrian and I had quite the conversation about RFPs.

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