By Steve Waterhouse
Respond, and you lose…
One of my clients emailed me an RFP (request for proposal) that they received yesterday. It came from a company who had never done business with them and whom they had never even called on. They know my rule. RFP means one of two things. It’s either ‘Real Fools Participate’ or ‘Request For Probing’.
Real Fools are the ones that read the document and believe every word. It says, “All questions must be in writing” and “Contact with the company must be through the purchasing office”. If you play this game, you are falling into the trap of thinking that this makes a level playing field for all bidders.
Wrong!
Read more about The Most Dangerous Letters in Sales are RFP’s.
Good find Steve.
Years ago my partners and I made a decision not to respond to RFPs. We’ve broken our own rule on occasion, but I think the rule makes sense.
Most of the time RFPs are a mess. It’s someone doing research, over-burdening us to provide a million irrelevant details that could all be cleared up in one phone conversation that no one who sent the RFP wants to have. Silly, silly stuff…
Good points! Most RFP are to meet some 3 bid requirement of an organization or they really are RFI’s in that the organization is looking to gain knowledge but not necesarily looking to buy anything.