Kudos to customer centric selling for suggesting a great response to a bad process. Too many companies feel compelled to join the masses and chase after these silly RFP’s. Most companies recognize that they are one of many who are quoting on an RFP. And, they acknowledge that they may not win this type of ‘lottery’ very often. Yet, they keep playing this game as though they have no choice.
There is a choice. It is called better selling behavior. RFP’S are survivalist tools for the people writing them–usually a purchasing person justifying their jobs or a contractor justifying their pricey fees. They write beautiful RFP’s, scrutinize the numbers and award the deal on who best responded to the request. In other words–PRICE! Unless there is an end user driving the decision making process–and too often there is not–the final decision has very little to do with understanding or rewarding value. If you take the decision making process out of the hands of the RFP people, price becomes a component of the process, not the end game.
Do as customer centric suggests, when you get an RFP, go into all-out relationship building mode. Meet with the executive decision makers on the project and find out what they are actually trying to solve through the particular RFP. You will have better dialogue, better information, and be in a better position to discuss your value as a resource to the solution. (Of course, I would like to add, shame on any company who doesn’t have this type of relationship before the RFP comes out. I guess it does happen. This is a discussion for a different day).
It is your choice. You can invest costly resources chasing a lot of RFP’s you can’t win or you can spend your time selling to the decision makers and steal one of the valued RFP’s out from under everyone’s nose. SalesCooke says “go sell”. Leave the RFP drills to the purchasing people and the price oriented sales people. Go make some real money.