Is responding to RFPs a waste of time?
I was having an email exchange with my friend Kevin Shoesmith. He knew I had been with the guys at silverorange, and he pointed out a blog post from Dan James earlier this summer, about how to grow a Web development company.
One of the pieces of advice he gives might be shocking to a lot of people:
Don’t bid on projects, respond to Requests For Proposals (RFPs), or do mock ups for free. Number of proposals silverorange has written in nine years: 20-30. Number of projects silverorange has won by writing proposals: 0.
I was a little taken aback by this. No RFPs? Isn’t that how stuff gets done?
I mentioned this to Joe today, accompanied by “isn’t that nuts?” or something. But Joe responded thusly:
Well, remember that we’ve never won a wide-call RFP.
I was a little stunned, but he’s right. We have never “won” an RFP process at Blend, despite completing 12-15 of them. I know David complains about them as “cattle calls,” but I thought for sure that we had landed at least a couple deals from them.
But no, the RFP response effort at Blend has been a total bust over the years. And they’re so time-consuming – to really respond well to a typically in-depth RFP is a 6+ hour proposition, stretched over several days as you go back and forth, getting questions answered, rolling the dice and guessing on hours, etc.
As for never writing a “bid,” I’m not quite sure how they get away with that. We write “bids” all the time, though they’re usually just comprised of a couple pages that essentially say, “this is our basic understanding of what you want to do, and this is roughly how much time we think it’s going to take, and how much it’s going to cost, but this is just an estimate…” A lot of companies need these for internal documentation, budget approvals, etc.
But, the traditional RFP process – is this a complete time-waster? I mean, someone has to be winning these things…right?
Selected Reader Comments
Like many blogs of its era, Gadgetopia allowed reader comments. Below are selected comments that were left on the original post.
We only do RFPs when we helped write them and are positioned to win. And that is only when the prospect has said that they need to do them as part of their process.
So many companies spend more on the procurement process than they do on the software/services that it is getting silly. A lot of the times it seems like it is just a contractor looking for more bailable work. In then end, I think they are just used to negotiate a final price.
I love Joel Spolsky’s take on RFPs. He describes it as something where a
http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/FogBugzI.html
I procure via RFPs (frequently!) and my attitude going in is that I only let an RFP if I am confident that there is at least one vendor who is capable of performing the work. I then welcome the possibility a vendor other than the one I thought of wins.
Sadly, RFPs regularly come in that make me wonder, “Did they even read the RFP?” For example, I might identify Java expertise as a mandatory, but some people will submit on the possible assumption that nicely bound, shiny, full color docs are a substitute for the requested skills.
I agree with David K.. Not all RFPs are worth responding to. I have both written and responded to several RFPs. I actually enjoy preparing the response, as it often represents the “start of the game”.
One of my favorite responses was when I was working for a small CTI / IVR company. Through the RFP process we took on a very large Telco and a very large (& blue) services company. We were invited to the table because of the RFP response. Subsequently we stayed at the table because we did a great first presentation. We eventually won $2million plus in business because we had a great sales person who made sure he built relationships with the client and kept in communication with them.
Dave J. www.marketgogo.com