Bid or No Bid - That is the question

If you responded to every RFP out there, you'd never get any real work done, I know.  But, don't be too quick to trash that request.

The standard decision method, that grew out of the Big 6's process says if you weren't directly involved in writing the RFP, have a former employee involved in writing it, or at least have a brother in law, that owes you a lot of money involved, don't bid. This maybe good for their situation if they already have a good pipeline of work, or if the procurement people already are very informed about their services.

But, what about if they don't know you or your company?  What if you KNOW you don't have a chance of winning?  Should you do it?  Yes, there are times I would vote to bid. 

I believe the proposal can be used as a marketing tool used to introduce your company.  It gives you the opportunity to open a line of communication with decision makers in a new prospect.  Think of this as an investment in long term future projects.

An important key to remember is to have a strong boiler plate proposal that you can change without too much effort. You don't want to spend a lot of money on proposal preparation every time a situation like this comes up.  You want to spend your time on the phone or meeting with the client asking questions and building the relationship, not pounding out fluff on the keyboard.  Spend the time building a skeleton proposal BEFORE you need it.

A terrible idea is to pay your proposal team based on their winning ratio success.  They will no bid everthing!!!

A consistent winning proposal team requires pre-relationship steps that sometimes require investment with no immediate or even apparent success.

Comments

[David]

I think one of the less-publicized ways to increase your proposal win-percentage is simply to be much more selective in the RFPs you respond to. They key to that is having the ability to find LOTS of RFPs so that you can have your pick of the litter. Try heading over the RFP Database at http://www.rfpdb.com as it's a good place to find quality projects for low/no cost and you can earn credits towards your downloads by uploading all of those RFPs you receive but don't want to waste time on.