An RFP for Opinions on RFPs
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We believe we’re really good at social media, media relations, media training and crisis communications. We believe that we are not as good at applying the brakes to preparing, presenting, revising, explaining, tweaking, clarifying, recasting, explaining, detailing, following up on — well, you get the picture — requests for proposals (RFPs) from prospects who came to us for help with business-threatening problems that all agreed required public relations solutions and specifically ones that we proposed. But alas, the proposals went nowhere.
We completely understand that proposals are the “currency” of new business for PR firms, and we also understand that many prospects lack the experience to understand the unique role that PR plays in helping to solve a communications problem.
However, what we want to (finally!) better understand are the signals to alert us to prospects who use the RFP process to determine what they really do want (and it’s not PR!) and/or to be given enough direction that they can now go off and execute on their own. We have recently experienced both scenarios with one going on for six months including teleconferences, meetings, proposals, revisions to same, and on and on.
We welcome any and all suggestions, including “suck it up!” The time to be whining is when no one is coming to you for a proposal!
I read this early on this morning, but wanted to stew on it for a few moments, as this is a topic that is very near and dear to me. The RFP process as it relates to marketing and communications is largely flawed. I’ve seen a lot of RFPs, but very few actually that I trust these days.
Aside from being in many cases very poorly written, many of them are developed in a way that makes it nearly impossible to submit a proposal that is an ideal solution. Instead you’re rewarded for submitting a proposal that cuts corners to keep the costs low – otherwise, you’re often not even considered (or worse yet your ideas are “borrowed”)
Traditionally, firms like ours see an RFP in one of two ways: Either a way for a client to crowdsource ideas, or a vehicle for a client to find the lowest bidder. The problem is that in our line of work the lowest bidder is more often than not the wrong choice. You get what you pay for.
Don’t even get me started on clients that send our an RFP to dozens of firms, rather than doing the work to identify a short list of potential partners and holding a competition between those firms. If I know an RFP is sent out to more than a handful of firms, I almost always decline to submit. The reason being, even if I submit the perfect proposal, the chances are high that some unknown will come in and low ball the proposal to win it. It’s just not worth the chance.
Another angle is the “20 minute presentation,” where a day’s worth of back-to-back meetings are scheduled for agencies to come in and “wow” the team/win the business. Sometimes there’s a 10-minute Q&A segment. I heard about this happening in Maryland recently, and the group stuck to the schedule, depriving the agency of 3 minutes due to a late start.