The Confluent Forms blog

Blog tip #5: Burn your feed and distribute it widely

2010-03-09T11:30:00.003-05:00

Lets be honest; when we write blog articles we do so because we want people to read them. And not just a few people, we want as many readers as possible. The challenge in today's online content realm is that you can't rely on your audience always coming to you, there are simply too many other things fighting for your viewers' attention. So instead of being reliant on your visitors coming to you, you need to incorporate strategies that push your content to your audience and, if they're interested, deliver your content to them whenever you publish.

Feedburner to the rescue!

FeedBurner is another one of those incredible services provided by Google (ok, they bought the original company, but they've made great improvements). FeedBurner does more than just clean up your RSS feed* and give you statistics on your readers; FeedBurner enables you to easily distribute your content via affiliate sites, email, Web 2.0 services, twitter... and in combination with other services such as Ping.fm, you can also announce new articles to Facebook, MySpace, and many more. But we're getting ahead of ourselves. In this article we'll be helping you to get started in FeedBurner, configuring your account, and using FeedBurner to drive new traffic to your site while capitalizing on the traffic that reaches your site.

Getting started

Getting started with Feedburner is easy; simply head over to http://feedburner.google.com and login using your established Google/Gmail account. The piece of information that you'll need to move forward with Feedburner is the URL of your current feed. By default your Blogger feed URL will look like http://YOURWEBSITEURL/feeds/posts/default or you can grab the URL by looking for a symbol in your layout and grabbing the URL that it links to.

Once you've "burned" your blog's feed you'll be asked to give it a title (to be used for display purposes so give it a proper and complete name), as well as the ability to customize the new feed URL address. Try to keep it short and relevant.

Once your new address has been created you need to go back into your Blogger dashboard; under the "Settings" tab is a navigation item for "Site Feed". In the field entitled "Post Feed Redirect URL" you want to enter the new feed address that you've been assigned by Feedburner. Keep in mind that you want to hit "Next" in Feedburner before changing your feed address in Blogger!

Common configurations for your account

The next screen that Feedburner will present you with is an "unpacking" screen where you can customize the results you want tracked; there is no reason to not check all of the boxes and hit save.

Heading over the the "Optimize" tab, there are three options that you need to focus on: BrowserFriendly, SmartFeed, and FeedFlare.

BrowserFriendly, as the sub-title aptly states, makes subscribing simpler. When a visitor clicks on your feed's icon on your site, they will be taken to a webpage that now displays your RSS feed in a more readable format while providing them with a selection of reader buttons. The idea here is to make it as easy as possible for a visitor to add your feed into whatever feed reader service they are using.

SmartFeed is a simple service that only requires that you activate it; activating it will enable your feed to be automatically configured and compatible with any feed reader application. We're not sure why they don't do this by default, but it's worth activating if it does what it purports to do. The third option, FeedFlare, gives you the ability to add social media bookmarklets to your feed items, giving your feed subscribers the easy ability to share an item by email, del.icio.us, digg, facebook, etc. You can go as crazy or as conservative as you'd like with these, but we recommend "email this", del.icio.us, digg, facebook, and stumble.

Start spreading the news!

Head over to the "Publicize" tab. The first thing you want to do is click on the PingShot service. While lots of news services and aggregators will automatically check your blog for updates, sometimes it's hard to initially get your blog onto those services. Enable PingShot and don't let those news services miss any of your posts.

Next, go to the Email Subscriptions service. Click on the bottom to "Active" the service. There are four parts to this section: subscription management, communication preferences, email branding, and delivery options. On subscription management will be two methods for incorporating the email subscription functionality into your blog; you can either add subscription into your blog as a form via a widget, or you can add it as a link that will take up less space within your site. If you're using TypePad or Blogger, adding the functionality of either the form or the link to your blog is as simple as selecting the blog software you're using from the dropdown menu and hitting "Go". FeedBurner will then walk you through automatically adding the code to your blog as a widget.

After you've added the email widget to your site, you can customize how the email system will work by going to the sub-navigation items under the Email Subscription item. You can then customize when the emails are sent out, the look-and-feel of the email including adding your logo, and other options regarding your emails.

Recently FeedBurner added the ability to connect your Twitter account to your RSS feed through their service using Socialize. In the past we'd used Twitterfeed and Ping.fm to accomplish similar functionalities, but being able to do this through FeedBurner makes life easier.

Once you've hooked up your Twitter account to FeedBurner, using the "Add a Twitter account" button, FeedBurner will start auto-tweeting new articles that are added to your RSS feed. The system will automatically shorten the URLs to your articles, and using the Socialize page, you can customize the formatting of the tweets. You can set the titles/description format, include hashtags or additional text, and other formatting options.

Lots more to customize

In this article we've only covered the basics and options that we believe you need to configure in order to get started, but FeedBurner has many more features and options that you should definitely explore including Monetizing and more. But in addition to the functionalities that it provides, having a service that cleans up and manages your RSS feed will come in very handy in the future...

Previous article: Blog tip #4: Gain insights into your visitors using Analytics

* RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication and is a format for easily sharing content that is frequently published and read using a Feed Reader.

Blog tip #4: Gain insights into your visitors using Analytics

2010-02-17T10:00:00.003-05:00

Google Analytics is a service provided by Google that enables webmasters, through the inclusion of a small bit of code in their website template, to gain a pretty good breakdown of their site's usage and log reporting. Beyond the basics of visits, page views, etc., the system also permits the creation of goals and funnel paths that can be created to track conversion rates for visitors performing specified tasks within the site.

The information that Analytics provides is not just for your own gratification that people visit your website; the data can help you see how effective your site is at:

Getting people to your site
Accomplishing tasks and goals
Tracking statistics
Understanding the habits of your visits
... and much more

The information that your reporting system provides will tell you, quantifiably, how your site is performing, and will provide you with hints as to what can be done to improve your site.

For example, how are people finding your website? Is it by referring sites, search engines or direct traffic? What keywords are they finding you by and are you being found by phrases that you specifically want to target? What percentage of people are coming to your site and immediately leaving after the homepage? How many pages are your visitors hitting in a session and how long are they staying on the site? Are they performing the tasks that you want them to perform such as contacting you, leaving comments, or signing up to receive a newsletter?

Getting started

Google Analytics, like other Google services, uses your Gmail address as your account. Once you've signed in for the first time the system will prompt you to create a New Website Profile. This profile is based on the URL of your site so as to keep track of your site based on it's location information. Since this is your first account in Analytics you'll want to check "Add a Profile for a new domain". In the field below that fill in the complete URL for your site, including www if that's part of your site location, but remove the HTTP://. Once completed, hit "Continue".

Upon submitting, Analytics will provide you with a block of Javascript code that you'll need to highlight, copy (Ctrl+C), then paste (Ctrl+V) into your Blogger template.

After copying the code, head back to the Blogger site. Click on the "Layout" tab in the header, and then go to "Edit HTML". Remember, any time you are making changes to your template you should save a backup of your template to your computer by clicking on "Download Full Template".

Scroll to the bottom of your template code. The Analytics code that you previously copied needs to go at the bottom of your template, above the </html> tag but below the </body> tag. Once pasted into the correct location click on the "Save Template" button and you're all set.

Looking at the numbers

Each of the statistics available to you gives you insight into how successful your website is in accomplishing its tasks, but also what you need to do to improve its performance. These should not be major changes; they should be small incremental changes to see how your statistics change based on an update performed. For instance, if you change the text on your homepage to use more key words and phrases, are you noticing better search queries and more people from search engines? If you're noticing a high bounce rate, changing some of the calls to action, or maybe the phrasing of your navigation items, can often have an immediate affect on performance.

At each stage in the process record what you did and take a performance snapshot. See how your site performs for a 4 week period, then re-evaluate and repeat.

Next article: Blog tip #5: Burn your feed and distribute it widely
Previous article: Blog tip #3: Interesting designs are widely available for your Blog

Blog tip #3: Interesting designs are widely available for your Blog

2010-02-01T17:45:00.003-05:00

Being able to fully customize the layout and design of your blog, while still being hosted by a free blog platform, is unique to Google's Blogger service. Sure, other blog services have the ability to select from a number of selected template designs (and Bloggers are by far the most boring), and all of the services include the ability to modify the page elements in your layout, but Blogger goes the farthest by allowing users to modify the actual code of the template through standards compliant CSS*.

There are three directions you can take your blog design customization:

You can make small changes to a Blogspot template
You can import a freely available template from elsewhere and customize it
You can build a template based on an existing site and use that for your blog (ours is modeled after our corporate site)

The level of customization available to you is entirely dependent on your programming ability. If you are a CSS wizard, you'll have little difficulty turning any design you like into a blog template (stay tuned for an Advanced Level article on doing this).

For everyone else I recommend attempting small changes to one of the default templates provided by Blogger or venturing out to find a template that speaks to you. Thankfully there are a number of sites that provide hundreds, perhaps thousands of templates absolutely free that are SIMPLE to install and customize:

BTemplates
BloggerStyles
BloggerTemplates (navigate in the header by # of columns)
DeluxeTemplates

Of these sites my favorite by far is the BTemplates site that is both easy to use, is easy to search for templates based on a criteria, and provides well over 1,000 templates to choose from.

With any of these sites the process to use one of these designed templates is the same:

choose the design you like by downloading the .zip file to your computer
unzip the zip file so you now have a folder with files inside including a .xml file
go to the Layout tab in Blogger and click on "Edit HTML" in the sub-navigation
upload the template from your hard drive by clicking on the "Browse" button and selecting the .xml file you just unzipped
click on the "Upload" button

Don't forget to backup your existing layout by clicking on the link "Download Full Template" BEFORE you upload the new template!

In uploading your new template you might receive a few small error messages regarding conflicts; these sometimes occur when a page element that you are currently using is not set up in the template you're installing. Agree to remove the element, then once you have the new template established, re-add the page element and your content should still be there.

At this point you should be able to click on the link to "View Your Blog" and see your old content in the new layout design. Based on the template you might see items that don't make sense in your site, leftovers from the original developer. Again, based on your coding comfort level, you can go into the "Edit HTML" page within Blogger and make direct changes to the template code which can include anything from changing a background photograph to updating the style sheet to use a different font. The changes you make are entirely up to you!

Next article: Blog tip #4: Gain insights into your visitors using Analytics
Previous article: Blog tip #2: Domain names are inexpensive, no excuses

* CSS stands for Cascading Style Sheet, more information found here.

Blog tip #2: Domain names are inexpensive, no excuses

2010-01-27T11:00:00.006-05:00

Coming across a blog that is using a blogspot.com address, like yourblog.blogspot.com, tells us one of two things: that the owner doesn't know that giving the site a custom domain name is easy and inexpensive, or that they don't take their blog seriously. How serious could it be if they won't spend just $10 on a domain in order to customize the first, most important aspect of your site, your URL.

Using Google's Blogger service you are able to quickly and easily customize your blog to use either an existing domain or one that you can purchase through the site. This isn't a service charge as you could buy the domain elsewhere and still use it, and unlike the other blog services the ability to do this doesn't cost you extra.

If you don't own a domain

Google is not the cheapest registrar for buying your domain, however, the difference in costs is less than $5 and the difference in simplicity is worth much more than that if you're not technically inclined. Google also provides complete DNS management, customized email addresses using their Gmail service and other services they provide through their Google Apps. The other services that Google provides will come in handy in the next articles.

The steps for getting a custom domain set up for your blog start at the "Settings" tab and clicking on the "Publishing" sub-navigation item. Click on the "Custom Domain" link and the screen will switch to the domain purchasing screen. At this point you have the option of either purchasing a new domain name or you can click on "switch to advanced settings" in order to point a domain purchased elsewhere to your blog.

After purchasing your domain you'll see a message below that Blogger will automatically redirect readers who might be going to your freebie name to your website under the new domain name.

If you already own a domain

So you've decided to go the harder way, eh? Don't worry, it's not that difficult. The nice thing is that Google has already written instructions for you to follow for some of the most common domain registrars.

You'll need to set up the DNS entries with the registrar first THEN do the settings in the Blogger system. It might take 24-48 hrs for your DNS changes to propagate, or it might be immediate... such is the Internet.

Adding your blog to an existing domain

Lots of companies use their domain for their corporate website but then want to have a blog that is affiliated with their company. For a corporate blog the logical URL for you to set up is "blog.yourcompany.com". This is easily accomplished by adding a CNAME record to your DNS through your registrar that looks like:

blog -/- CNAME -/- ghs.google.com.

Once you've added this line to your DNS registry follow the same directions as above.

In conclusion

The nice thing about changing the URL of your blog to a custom domain is that, instead of looking like a cheap, disposable blog, the site now begins to look like time and effort have been invested in the site.

Next article: Blog tip #3: Interesting designs are widely available
Previous article: Blog tip #1: Blogger over Wordpress (or other hosted solutions)

Blog tip #1: Blogger over Wordpress (or other hosted solutions)

2010-01-25T10:30:00.004-05:00

If you're trying to decide which blog service to use you've probably stumbled across the long-running debate in any number of forums. Wordpress, Blogger, Typepad... how do you choose which one to use? For the purposes of this series we're going to use the following criteria*:

free, hosted service
ability to fully customize the design
custom url at no extra cost (besides domain ownership)

The basis of this criteria is to yield you the most personalized blog solution that will enable you to customize all aspects of the site We want to accomplish this without requiring the need for a 3rd party web hosting solution, extensive technical expertise, or paying privilege or subscription fees.

The Blogger service, offered by Google, is the only service to fulfill these requirements. Both Typepad and Wordpress offer a free basic service that provides you with a wide range of features, many of which aren't immediately available to you with an off-the-shelf Blogger site. However, both of these services provide the free blog with limits to how far your can customize your site before you need to start paying. For example, Wordpress provides you with a wide selection of design templates to choose from when you create your blog, but if you want to truly customize the look of the site (and access the code) you need to either pay for the additional service or maintain your blog outside of the service.

What selecting Blogger as your platform means for you and your blog is that you can truly take advantage of the wealth of free third-party services that are available to you, customize your blog to make it look and function like you want it to be, and put the full wealth of Google services behind your site. All for 0 cost.

Next article: Blog tip #2: Domain names are inexpensive, no excuses
Previous article: Your Blog is unique, don't settle for a default Blog

* This criteria might not be your criteria and we encourage you to do some research to find the right solution for you based on your needs and level of technical expertise.

9 tips for running a more considerate procurement (RFP) process

2010-01-14T11:21:00.007-05:00

Interested in learning more about RFPs?

Read some of our other articles on Requests for Proposals.

We've been on both sides of the procurement process and have seen more than our fair share of RFPs. With this background in mind we've put together our top 9 tips for running a more considerate procurement/RFP process.

1. Be upfront with bidders

Creating a winning proposal can cost thousands, even hundreds of thousands, of nonbillable work within a company. If you are issuing a RFP you can never forget that. Being upfront and honest with bidders on your RFPs will save bidders who, upon knowing the full details of your project, might not feel it's right for them, and will save them lots of nonbillable time, effort, and expense.

2. Speak with one voice

When you receive a proposal you expect it to be well-written, concise, and a meaningful response to your RFP. In order to write that meaningful response bidders need a document that clearly articulates the bidding opportunity. RFPs are often times the work of committees, and this fact can be seen mirrored in the RFP document through a mixture of voice, strategies, goals, and definitions. These different voices make reading and comprehension difficult, and can result in a proposal that is just as mixed in its messages.

3. Don't ask for freebies

We've spoken about this before, but asking for free ideas, free designs, free consulting, or free anything is known in the business world as "Spec work". Spec work is a huge disincentive to companies interested in bidding on your project for a number of reasons, many spelled out by AIGA, and can result in top talent making a decision to NOT bid on your project. A better, more considerate practice is to ask for examples of work similar to your own project, or perhaps even consider compensation in the form of stipends for proposals that provide spec work.

4. Receive organizational buy-in

In order to be successful a project needs to have complete organizational buy-in. Nothing sinks a project faster than having the President of the company behind a project, but a Senior VP quietly destroying the project through foot-dragging, poor communication, mixed messages, or outright hostility towards the initiative. Internal teams need to be in harmony before calling for the time and effort of outside firms. This often manifests itself through projects being canceled after proposals have been received because no decisions can be made.

5. Develop your information distribution strategy

"Didn't you get the addendum? We changed the ... last week!" In our last article we spoke about how and where to publicize your RFP; assume your RFP is going to get lots of attention and have a strategy in place for how to respond to everyone equally before you publish your RFP.

6. Research detailed requirements

The more effort, in the form of greater requirements detail, the better the results will be. Not only will responders be able to reply with targeted responses based on the details, but you won't be swamped with inquiries from bidders all asking for the information you neglected to give them. So, instead of scrambling to put together that detailed information in enough time for bidders to respond properly, you can be ahead of the process and provide it to them in the initial RFP.

7. Provide budget information

Stating your budget in a RFP is often a touchy subject. Issuing organizations often think that a RFP is so they can get a product or service for the cheapest price possible through competition. We choose to believe that RFPs are better used as a way to find the best product or service for your actual budget. Look at it this way: if you state your budget and it's below what a company can afford to charge, you won't have to read their proposal (because they won't write one). Companies that would normally deliver for less than your budget still will because they'll try to be the low bidders. And companies that could potentially deliver but might otherwise charge more than your budget might be inclined to discount their pricing.

8. Formulate exit surveys

One of the tools we'd like to see more procurement departments use is exit surveys. Require a simple registration (name, company, email) in order to gain access to the RFP files. You can use this information in your "information distribution strategy". After the project is completed, go back to that list. Ask the companies about your process, why they did or didn't submit a proposal, what parts were problematic, how they learned about the project, how the process can be improved, etc. Track responses, track distribution, and generate statistics.

9. Organize your communication

You want to make sure that every interested bidder on your project has equal access to all information related to the project, so keeping your communications equal and open is necessary. If you provide an answer to one bidder you should make both the question and the answer available to everyone at the same time through the use of addendum published along with the RFP. And no matter what, don't send out an email to all of the bidders with their email addresses in the To: or CC: fields; that is exactly what the BCC: field is for!

In conclusion

Please remember the time and nonbillable investment that bidders put into every proposal. Treat this time and effort as a responsibility on your part to run a fair and considerate procurement process. Not only will you find the right partner for your project, but you'll also earn the respect of the bidders. And while not one of the 9 tips, don't forget to contact everyone that submitted a proposal to you and thank them for their time.

For more on the subject please read a previous article entitled "RFP Etiquette: Dos and Don'ts for Business Matchmaking", my interview with Vince Giorgi of Touch Point City.

How and where to advertise your Requests for Proposals (RFP)

2010-01-11T19:14:00.002-05:00

An important part of the Request for Proposals process is the distribution strategy that you use for disseminating your RFP. Without a good distribution strategy you likely won't receive the proposals you need to make your process competitive and in line with your project goals.

Some factors to consider:

Distribution requirements
Physical location of the company to you
Type of company that you are seeking
Size of company you are seeking
Monetary value of your contract

There are lots of other factors that you might want to consider, but these are typically the top five. The primary one you need to worry about is the distribution requirements of your organization or agency; those requirements might dictate the methods you need to employ for distribution and advertisement. The middle three factors are preferences that should be stated in your RFP, but also factors that will impact where you might want to announce your project. The last factor will impact where you announce the RFP, but also how hard you promote it (why get 200 proposals for a $500 project?).

Publish it on your website

The first step to advertising your RFP is to create a landing page within your website for the project. Use this page as the staging ground for all information related to the project and the place that you can direct people to go for that information. Place your RFP on this page as a downloadable file (PDF or DOC are good choices), and when you issue addendum, you'll add them to this page. In addition to the files for download, include the schedule, contact information, contact preferences, and other basic information.

Once that page is created and ready, find places within your own site to announce it, whether it is in the "News" section, the homepage under "What's Happening", or other sections that already see traffic. You don't want your RFP to be hidden within your site on a page that nobody will ever find.

We also recommend encouraging that people interested in submitting a proposal to your RFP register with you in some way so that you can alert them to changes in your RFP and send them addendums. This registration can be as little as an email with their contact information, but something that enables you to get a headcount as well as their contact information.

Seek out recommended providers

Not every project has to start out cold; ask around to business owners that you know about their experiences with vendors for projects similar to yours. See if they recommend anyone. Seek out instances of similar services that you like and find out the vendor that worked on them. Invite them to bid on your project.

Source local companies via your Chamber of Commerce

While economists and theorists such as Thomas Friedman like to say that the World is Flat, reaching out to your local businesses is often a much better idea. On complex projects a local company's proximity will enable you to have more face-time with the client, fewer communication issues, and a greater sense of connectedness as opposed to a faceless voice on a phone. In addition to these benefits to your project, establishing connections with local businesses can often lead to a greater local awareness of your organization and yield secondary benefits.

Publicize it on the RFP Database

The RFP Database is a free and efficient website for publicizing your project to thousands of vendors, many that will be interested in bidding on your project. Make sure to specify your location and location requirement if there is one. Head over to the site, register and create an account, then click on the link to "Add an RFP". A short form that should take 60 seconds to fill out and your project will be announced on the site.

Announce it through professional associations

Almost every product or service has a professional association to represent it. For instance, if you're seeking architectural services, you can visit the American Institute of Architects and their pages for RFPs. Or, if you're seeking public relations services, you can visit the Public Relations Society of America and visit their RFP Exchange to announce your RFP.

Print advertisements

Print advertisements are probably one of the least effective means of publicizing your RFP and receiving good results. RFP listings are typically buried in the back of the newspaper, rarely read, and the advertisement will cost you money that doesn't need to be spent. However, sometimes print advertisements of your RFPs are a requirement, specifically if you are representing a government agency.

Craig's List

Craig's List can be a good way to publicize your project, but be warned: you'll be on the receiving end of LOTS of worthless communications, pitches, and spam.

Should stipends be provided for a pre-qualified RFP response?

2009-12-08T11:40:00.000-05:00

David, as a board member of the Northampton Arts Council, has recently been helping prepare a RFP for a public art project that will replace a mural at the entrance to the downtown. During the course of developing the RFP a number of suggestions were floated amongst the Committee about how we could create a public call for proposals that would result in a high quality of submissions, but also be fair to the artists that we are tasked with supporting knowing the non-billable time and effort that goes into a quality submission. We came up with two ways that we believed would accomplish these goals: a two-step submission process and a stipend for the finalists selected for the final, complete proposal.

Two-step submission process
We decided to employ a two-step submission process; the first step would be to complete a short-form proposal submission that was more akin to a "Request for Qualifications" or RFQ. In the first step artists are asked to submit a short proposal that provides the selection committee with an overview of the project's concept, approximate budget, artist's qualifications, timeline, and sketches of the proposed concept. The selection committee will then review these proposals according to a pre-established scoring criteria and invite the top 3 to 5 submissions to create and submit a comprehensive proposal for the project.

Finalist stipends
The Committee wanted to explore ways of making the process more artist-friendly, and knowing that it is asking a lot from a group that we are both tasked with supporting that is traditionally economically challenged, we investigated ways we could compensate the artists for the time spent preparing a proposal. We found that, while not exactly customary, it is a common enough practice in public art call for proposals to offer a stipend to pre-qualified submissions. With this in mind finalists will be invited to submit comprehensive proposals to the Committee and will receive the stipend for their comprehensive proposal development.

The Question: Should stipends be provided for a pre-qualified RFP response?
Working with the non-profit Arts Council and offering this stipend had us wondering: should stipends be customary for a pre-qualified RFP response? Is this done in the corporate world? One of the most common complaints heard from businesses is that they feel cheated by RFPs, that RFPs are a way for an organization to get dozens of companies to provide them with free consulting and spec work at the cost of thousands of dollars of non-billable time per company. After some quick research we found that yes, there are some organizations out there that compensate submitters for their pre-qualified proposals with a stipend, but apparently this was deemed a questionable practice by some.

So what are your thoughts? Should more organizations that issue RFPs be encouraged to run their competitive bidding opportunities this way?

Writing a winning proposal: start from the champagne and work backwards

2009-11-24T09:40:00.002-05:00

Writing proposal responses to a RFP can be a mind-numbing affair, and after responding to a few lengthy and complex RFPs, it's easy to fall into bad habits. One of those bad habits is approaching the RFP by trying to demonstrate how you can fulfill the requirements of the RFP, the other is writing a proposal that nobody wants to read. Yes, we know, we gave you advice that you need to work towards demonstrating that you fulfill RFP requirements in writing a successful proposal. Rather than trying to win the project by demonstrating your competence in fulfilling the letter of the RFP, why not try winning the project by starting the proposal with the premise of your company creating a final deliverable and strong concept, and working backwards to fulfill this concept?

Knowing that the issuer is probably going to be reading a stack of boring proposals, if you are to win the project it is imperative that you differentiate yourself. Bring the excitement to your proposal by leading off with an unconventional executive summary. Get the issuer excited about your final product and their project. Paint a big picture, an exciting vision, and bring them into the enthusiasm that you have for their project.

Convey the excitement that you'll have on the day you launch their project into that opening of your proposal.

Make them want to read the other 20 pages of your proposal.

Open, Competitive, Transparent and Strategic: words that procurement departments should live by

2009-11-19T13:00:00.003-05:00

We view government fulfillment as having two priorities: getting the best product for the best price and being as transparent as possible in doing so. All products and services able to be competitively bid should be bid that way, and the ability to submit a bid for a RFP should be open to any business able to fulfill the requirements of the RFP. Too often procurement managers seem to be more concerned with fulfilling the letter of their obligations while neglecting the spirit of their obligations.

It's amazing when, after a RFP finds its way onto the RFP Database, an "uninspired" procurement manager gets upset that our site is driving more competitive bids towards the project and that it was "unauthorized". In our view procurement managers should be going out of their way to publicize their projects and welcome new audiences to bid on their projects. These same procurement managers feel that simply posting a link to the project on some hidden corner of their agency's website, and maybe running a 1-day advertisement in the local paper (last page!) fulfills their obligations of transparency and competitiveness. Sometimes they project disappointment when they only receive 2 bids on the project and their higher-ups assume that those are the only companies that were interested in the project. That hardly seems like the competitive process that was probably envisioned, especially if those 2 bids were from companies that were personally notified about the opportunity.

We understand that there are rules, established by elected officials in all levels of the bureaucracy, that specify how procurement should operate so as to avoid conflicts of interest and to set the bar for a competitive process. But we think it's fair to say that the bar is set fairly low in many instances, and too often these procurement departments do the bare minimum that is required. As overheard in a recent discussion on the subject, "The procurement directors... are obliged to extract maximum juice from every single tax payers' dollar spent".

What this translates into is the need for a proactive procurement policy, one that actively engages and solicits feedback in the interest of getting both the best deal, but also the right final product, and one where the procurement department isn't tasked with running each RFP as if it's a commodity based solely on price. If procurement officers are only used in the capacity of taking the requirements from other departments and putting them into a formal document for publication, is that procurement department truly fulfilling its obligations?

For example, if a department puts out a RFP and now has a huge project running on one type of database, and a little while later another department puts out a RFP and now has their project running on a different type of database with their own set of hardware and software, has the procurement department saved the tax payers money or negotiated the best deal? Is it possible that the second project could have made use of the same database and saved the cost of licensing and additional hardware?

There is exceptional value and savings to be gained by having an active and engaged procurement process and purchasing officer. Not only will this officer help direct the organization towards a unified purchasing strategy that can potentially avoid the above situation, but in the process negotiate better pricing and purchasing through a detailed process that solicits stronger proposals. Combine this with a disbursement strategy that puts the project opportunity in front of companies, large and small, from all over the country without any artificial barriers, and you've accomplished the open and competitive procurement that is the supposed goal.

Open, Competitive, Transparent and Strategic should be the words that procurement departments live by.

Reviews and recommendations for the RFP Database

2009-10-23T09:56:00.011-04:00

Interested in learning more about RFPs?

Read some of our other articles on Requests for Proposals.

On October 1, 2009, the RFP Database surpassed a membership of over 53,000 registered users and having announced over 15,000 RFPs. On a given week there are over 250 to 350 new RFPs listed on the site with a value exceeding $200 million for services ranging from Accounting, Architecture and Engineering to Public Relations, Marketing and Web Development.

But most importantly, what do the users think about the site?

"[Confluent Forms LLC] provides one of the most valuable resources for a sales professional especially one in the IT world. [Confluent Forms LLC's] RFP Database website is an excellent resource for sales leads and a wonderful peer to peer network. I would recommend them and their services to anyone in the sales industry."

Carl Barcroft
Sales and Marketing Manager, Project A

"Some ideas are so good that they seem obvious as soon as someone else has thought of them. The RFP database is one of those. It offers extraordinary value to a very large group of people, who both add RFPs that they can't use from their own searches and draw on the finds of others. But not only did [Confluent Forms LLC] come up with the idea, they have done an extraordinary job of maintaining and promoting it (not a task to envy)."

Sam Frank
Principal, Synthesis Partnership

"I am very impressed with the quantity and quality of information captured and posted on the RFP Database. It is a "must-read" for me each morning and has been a source of business leads since I registered. Good work and thank you for making it easier to find opportunities!"

Linda DiMario
Owner, DiMario & Associates

"Your database is a tremendous resource and a great help to us. We received 11 solid proposals. We will certainly use your services in the future."

Town of Irondequoit NY

“QTI has been members of [Confluent Forms LLC]'s site (www.RFPdb.com) for a few years now. I highly recommend their site to all professional firms that bid any overall projects. There is no Lead Generation site on the net more user-friendly, current and valuable when participating in uploading and downloading prospective projects. In addition, our company posted our first ever banner ad and decided to do so with www.RFPdb.com. Thank you so much for your help with bid opportunities and the existence of www.RFPdb.com!”

Darren Ferona
Marketing and Sales Manager, Quality Teleservices, Inc.

“[Confluent Forms LLC] has assembled the largest collection of RFPs and does an amazing job serving their audience with information they need to know about RFPs. I rely on their company to keep us informed of opportunities that benefit our bottomline.”

Kristine Forsberg
Owner, Vertical Methods, LLC

"I was not aware that our RfP had ended up at the RFP Database, but I'm happy it did. We are always looking for ways to get our RfPs broadcast as widely as possible and we will be using your site in the future!"

Canadian AIDS Treatment Information Exchange

“I have found the service offered by [Confluent Forms LLC] through RFPdb.com to be an excellent resource for new business leads. The RFP Database is a cost effective means for gathering a large number of potential projects in a short period of time.”

John Silentio
Independent Computer & Network Security Professional

"It was a funny story getting to you as I had said to the staff "Wouldn't it make sense if there was a place you could post the RFP rather than digging through all of these directories, etc." One motivated staffer came back after a little research and said – it exists. With appreciation!"

Sibley Memorial Hospital Foundation

"[Confluent Forms LLC]'s collaborative site has generated a number of additional prospects and leads into our pipeline. The deals closed after bidding on the sources provided on RFPDB.com have amounted to around $160,000 in revenue. As our small business drives forward, we will continue to utilize the RFPDB community to hunt down attractive government-based projects."

Daniel Nyquist
Business Development, Artemis Solutions Group

"We were wondering how we gathered proposals from as far as California! Yes, we received 6 proposals in total and that is more than we expected. Thank you!"

Addison County Transit Resources

"[Confluent Forms LLC] has built a community for people like me to find new business opportunities. Their website, The RFP Database (www.rfpdb.com), allows users to look for & post RFPs. As a digital marketing consultant responsible for new business development, rfpdb.com is now my favorite website."

Mark Wilson
Drennon Construction & Consulting, Inc

"I would like to take this opportunity to recommend [Confluent Forms LLC] and commend the fine work they are doing at RFPdb.com. I have been using their service to identify RFP's in my field and have had continued success in not only making the finals, but winning bids I have found through his service. I consider RFPdb an instrumental tool and valuable resource in my new business prospecting."

Graham Stinchcomb
Senior Director, Business Development, Employment Enterprises

Have feedback on the RFP Database? Please send your feedback to david@confluentforms.com

Developing your Go/No-Go decision tree

2009-10-16T11:28:00.006-04:00

The situation:

A potentially juicy RFP falls into your lap. You try not to get too excited because you know that creating a winning proposal can be an expensive and time-consuming affair. Before you get invested in the project proposal you want to determine whether this is, in fact, a worthwhile project for you to chase, or one that you should pass.

Companies should always be taking a hard look and evaluating their leads as a way of increasing their win percentage and return on investment (proposal writing), but this is especially important in today's tough economic environment. When you receive a RFP it is easy to get excited about it, especially if it was specifically sent to your company. However, it is important to be able to quantify your chances of success so you can avoid becoming column fodder. Spending time developing a Go/No-Go decision tree, and continually working to improve it, is a way for your company to keep these decisions objective and to approach sales opportunities with your eyes wide open.

So what is a Go/No-Go decision tree?

Interested in learning more about RFPs?

Read some of our other articles on Requests for Proposals.

A Go/No-Go decision tree is a document that you create to numerically quantify your chances of success in winning the project. We have seen it take the form of a multiple choice test, an evaluation form, a flow chart, and others. The Council of Public Relations Firms has a rudimentary form that they call their "Fit to Win" questionanaire that might be a good starting point. You want to ask tough questions of both yourself and the project to determine whether it is a good RFP but not the right project for you, a bad RFP but possibly worth responding to, or whether it is a good RFP and one that you're definitely going to bid on. (You might notice we're not advocating the half-measure of sending in a weak proposal as we believe that just makes you look bad).

In creating this document you want to ask tough questions of yourself, the project, and the client. By asking tougher questions you'll develop a better, more realistic view of the project, and in the long run save on non-billable time but probably also win more projects. These questions also don't need to be limited to questions designed for helping you win the project, but can also be designed to determine whether the project is actually one you want to win. For example, you might have had bad experiences with projects run by a committee; perhaps that should be one of your questions.

How do I create my Go/No-Go decision tree?

Your decision tree should not be treated as a simple sales tool; a good decision tree will both help you in determining which leads to pursue because you can win them, but also enable you to target the leads that result in the best projects for your company. And don't limit these questions to the positive; which projects and project leads turn out to be losers. These decisions go beyond the sales team so we advise including more than the sales team in formulating your tree.

1) start by identifying your best and worst projects
2) evaluate your portfolio and identify your strengths and weaknesses
3) revisit your proposals, both won and lost

The purpose of this introspection is to be brutally honest in identifying trends in your business that can aid you in both finding the right projects while avoiding the wrong projects. Use this information to formulate the questions that will enable you to put proper perspective into your business prospecting.

Now take a look at the proposal. Start writing the tough questions that will enable you to figure out if you have enough information to bid on the project and if you have a worthwhile shot at winning the project. Some questions to start you off might be:

Is the current vendor bidding on the project?
Is there an established budget, do we know the budget, and is it reasonable for the project?
How well can we demonstrate we should be awarded this project?
Are we a good fit for this project?
Is this project a good fit for us?
Have we won similar projects to this in the past?

If you don't have all of the information you need to answer your questions make sure to ask the client the questions that will enable you to continue. Ask questions, lots of questions, until you feel you have enough information to make an educated evaluation of your chances.

Turning it into cold, hard mathematics

Everyone has a different method for turning the questions into a formula, and everyone's questions will be different based on the results of your business introspection. We've seen companies working upwards to a weirdly weighted seemingly random number, we've seen companies working backwards from 100% and subtracting based on negative questions, and we've seen ornate flow chart decision trees. Perhaps a spreadsheet of 50 questions works best for you where a full value is 2 points, half-value is 1 point, and you work upwards to 100. There's no right method beyond finding the formula that works for you.

The next step is to look at the numbers that are generated and create a numerical-based sliding scale of "RFP worthiness" that will help you in both determining how good your chances of success are, and how worthwhile chasing this RFP will be. We encourage you to document your results for each RFP received, especially for those that you choose to respond to. Track your win percentage and any post-mortem results/feedback from each proposal and use these results to further refine your decision tree.

An important thing to remember

The most important thing to remember is that the Go/No-Go decision tree is a tool. It is a tool that will provide you with better results if you put more work into it and continually develop it. Every win and every loss can provide you with further insight into your selection process, so make sure to periodically revisit your tree's questions and valuation arithmetic. There are lots of opportunities out there, your time is best spent on the projects that are a good fit for your company and projects that you can win.

What the Great Recession means for competitive bidding

2009-10-06T12:25:00.006-04:00

One prebid meeting I went to had over 150 people there. In the past I would have expected ten at a prebid and six to propose.

Betty Brennan
Taylor Studios, Inc.

This economy, the so-called Great Recession, is a different and challenging situation for business prospectors who likely have never faced the retrenchment that is occurring in both private and public spending. According to some estimates the economy has contracted at an annual rate of 3.8%, a number not seen since this information was tracked in 1947, including a drop of over 6% in the first quarter. Businesses, faced with declining sales, are faced with a choice of laying off workers or delaying purchases, so are trying to do a combination of both. Less spending in Corporate America is pushing companies into trying their hand at public/government projects, but even that isn't safe. States and local municipalities are facing revenue shortfalls themselves and are being forced to cut spending... and then cut them again as revenue projections are lowered a few months later.

I remember spending weeks writing a proposal only to find out that no funds were going to be available. The project was stalled for over 2 years and when the funds did become available, we had to go through the process all over again. We stuck with it because we knew we'd received high marks from the selection committee the first time, and we know we're the right firm for the contract.

Donna Stuart
Glen Group, Inc.

Many hoped that the Recovery Act would provide the resources necessary to take "shovel ready" projects that were delayed due to lack of funding and put companies immediately to work, jump-starting the economy and spending. It is possible that they severely underestimated the situation. In July the Lee County Board of County Commissioners issued a RFP for a firm or firms to provide "civil, architectural, structural, landscape architectural, land surveying & mapping, utility, mechanical and electrical traffic" services. They anticipated the awarding of contracts to "numerous" firms.

The project was canceled. The Board's cancellation message reads: "Based upon the overwhelming response received (167 Letters of Interest), the Committee has canceled this procurement process and Lee County will not proceed with awarding any contracts under this solicitation".

We don't know for sure if this project was to be funded by the Recovery Act, but we've heard similar stories from multiple sources expressing amazement, frustration, and a bit of hopelessness in trying to bid on projects where you're competing against so many other companies. Firms are now competing hard for projects that they would have rejected in the past because of low profit margins, ridiculous requirements, impossible deadlines, etc., and they're doing it because they need to survive.

And this isn't limited to the public sector. As many in the advertising industry know, Zappos issued a RFP this summer seeking a new advertising agency to represent it. Advertising agencies responded as if they were cattle in a stampede and over 100 agencies responded. We gave an interview recently discussing the Zappos RFP hubbub entitled RFP Etiquette: Dos and Don’ts for Business Matchmaking.

Regardless of the competition and the odds stacked against them companies continue, and must continue, to bid on these projects. Guy Iannuzzi, CEO of Mentus, explains his reasons for competing for a large and very competitive marketing services RFP for water conservation as:

It was a very large budget, which while very competitive, still was attractive.

The high profile of the project would be useful in promoting the agency in the community.

The campaign opened the water conservation and sustainability markets to the agency.

The agency had background in producing several of the organization’s annual reports for the previous years.

The agency had previously answered another large branding RFP for outdoor conservations the previous year, and had come a very close second (by a half point), which gave us confidence

His advice, and the advice of many others, teaches us that we need to become much smarter in our business development strategies and how they relate to competitive bidding. We can all agree that jumping into a competition like the ones mentioned above is awful, but that sometimes there is little choice. There are lots of resources for learning how to better respond to RFPs, and the companies that will win more of these projects are the companies that put time and effort into strengthening their RFP/proposal strategies.

What can RFP issuers do?
We're certain that the companies, organizations and municipal agencies that are issuing these RFPs are equally overwhelmed at receive 100+ proposals, each running 10-100 pages in length. But just as vendors can get smarter at choosing which RFPs to respond to, issuers can get smarter about determining who they request proposals from while still using a RFP process. We don't advocate the "open the yellow pages and choose 3 vendors" approach, but what issuers can do is put out a Request for Qualifications (RFQ) or a Request for Information (RFI). The purpose of these documents would be to get vendors to supply and answer basic qualification questions related to the project at hand in a shorter format (perhaps 5 pages instead of 50). Simple questions such as corporate history, examples of similar projects (scope, request, budget, etc.), executive summary for why they believe they are the most qualified or best fit, etc. The issuer would evaluate these responses and choose a handful of companies that they want to receive full proposals from instead of receiving 100 proposals from all around the globe.

Another suggestion would be to have issuers re-think their standard RFP and revise it so that the requirements of the RFP are more in-line with the scope of the project; vendors shouldn't need to write 100 page proposals for a 5 page website redesign.

Some vendor-side words of wisdom
The suggestions below were sent to us in response to a Help a Reporter Out request that read:

We're looking for stories of businesses that responded to a RFP and endured a lengthy/difficult/ridiculous RFP process to win a project. Looking for details such as 1) why it was so lengthy/difficult/ridiculous, 2) why you stuck with it, 3) whether it was worth it in the end and 4) what 1 piece of advice you'd give to other RFP issuers so they can learn from what you went through (besides directly hiring you)

The responses we received all showed companies who understood the process, were continually working to improve their win ratio and proposal ROI, and actively engaged in competitive bidding. Reading their stories it is fair to say that they all overcame adversity to win their projects, but they all continue to engage in competitive bidding. A selection of the advice that was sent to us is included below.

"I would advise people that it's all about the Q&A process. Reviewing the RFP immediately upon receipt and then preparing a thorough set of questions for the issuer is the most important thing you can do. In this example (and dozens of others) the Q&A process allowed us to develop a connection with the client and really understand what they wanted. Effectively, they trusted us before they even saw our response and that was why they asked us to resubmit when it wasn’t what they wanted."
-Mike D'Abramo, Youthography

"First, to examine what information is truly needed in order to make an informed decision - not just to ask for detail because every other prior RFP the organization has sent out has asked for it. And to be honest up front whether the issuer is willing to work with a firm that's not local. So often the knee jerk answer is "Of course, we'd consider working with an agency that's out of the area/state/region," but in actuality they really want someone down the street."
-Donna Stuart, Glen Group, Inc.

"The key to remember is that RFP are meant to be a framework for enabling a structured response but is not the final word. You still have to perform all the sales process steps and make sure you get a chance to speak to a human being who is the decision maker. Since then we have made a rule. If we cannot speak to a decision maker in an RFP, we will not bid. Better to save the time and pursue other meaningful clients or just improve your work life balance."
-Vivek Khanna, Neeyamo Enterprise Solutions

"I remember bidding on a rather small identity job (maybe $10,000) that had 20 open-ended questions that required a week to complete and ran about 6-8 pages with answers. At the same time I was asked to bid on a $100,000 project, met with the prospective for an hour input, and submitted a bid three days later. This contrast of open ended, time consumption vs. a quick and direct input session highlighted for me the difference between a good process and a weak one."
-David Langton, Langton Cherubino Group, Ltd.

"My advice is to not stint on the effort of demonstrating your competence or abilities in answering the RFP. As a consequence, you will need to choose wisely – you cannot afford to provide that level of effort unless the RFP is VERY closely aligned with your organization’s mission and competency."
-Guy Iannuzzi, Mentus

For more articles on RFPs and proposals please visit our other articles on the subject at http://blog.confluentforms.com. We encourage our readers to sign up to receive our articles by email (top right corner) as we post them on an irregular basis.

Why responding to RFPs might not be for you

2009-09-29T18:30:00.006-04:00

Requests for Proposals aren't for everyone. Some companies simply don't need them in order to acquire new clients and new business. It makes complete sense; why enter yourself into a competition against other companies, spending tens or hundreds of non-billable hours creating proposals, only to lose more proposals than you win? We can certainly think of some methods to land new business that are less painful on the ego and lots more fun:

Invite potential clients to rounds of golf and free drinks
Hire junior sales members on commission only to make cold calls
Throw elaborate holiday parties with open bars
Sponsor networking events for large Chambers of Commerce
Place advertising in major industry journals, newspapers, and tv stations is major markets
Call people out of our rolodex
Hire connected sales people to call people out of their rolodex
Develop fancy marketing material, interactive advertisements, and holiday Flash games
Reserve a corporate suite at SXSW

With these sales resources and strategies in mind it's a wonder that any medium or large agency would ever consider responding to a RFP as there's simply no reason to dedicate the time and effort necessary to winning it, let alone give up any of these more fun and exciting methods of landing business. If you have access to all of the above resources for developing new business opportunities we wholeheartedly encourage you to skip the RFP process.

Really.

Don't even consider it.

If you get a RFP in the mail your best course of action is to set up a mail filter to immediately delete it or return it to the sender with a note that you're not interested. Don't think twice about this decision, let alone write gripes on your blog decrying the whole RFP process. With such better sales strategies and techniques at your disposal, RFPs are for suckers; let the suckers waste their time and efforts on them while you're finishing the back-9 with a potential client.

For everyone else I recommend reading "RFPs Suck!" by Tom Searcy.

Being unconventional with the RFP Database

2009-08-14T14:20:00.013-04:00

If you're looking for RFPs, search no further: go to the RFP Database.

We fully realize that the following article might sound like an advertisement for the RFP Database, but as the site was built with the intention of helping construct business relationships, we want to showcase the more unconventional ways in which that site is being used to grow new relationships. We hope that some of the ideas listed below might spur you to approach the site with a new outlook and try some new ways of using it to advance your business goals.

When we built the RFP Database we really only anticipated the site being used two ways, to either announce your RFP for bidders or to find RFPs to bid on. At the same time, the site was built incorporating a credit system so that should we come up with ways to extend the site, ratios of cost could easily be added to the site and new uses integrated. Over the last few years we've been told about some unconventional or secondary ways that our site has been used to extend businesses that weren't as interested in finding or announcing RFPs, but still put our site to good use:

Teaching a college-level business course

We notice this when we have a sudden influx of students from the same college joining our site, other times we've been contacted by the professor. Sometimes we regret that we hadn't taken courses like this in college, but we're glad someone out there is teaching them! The assignment is often a combination of learning how to write a RFP and how to respond to craft a proposal response to a RFP. The teacher might download some sample RFPs to demonstrate in the class, the students might look for examples to download, or the students might even grab a RFP and be tasked with writing a proposal to be evaluated by the teacher.

If you're a professor or student looking for some RFPs to use as samples please feel free to register, the first two projects you download are entirely free. If those first two aren't enough, we recommend going to your college/university procurement site (almost all universities have one) and uploading a few from that site; for each RFP you upload you'll gain access to five more leads that you can use.

Free advertising of a company's services

Some companies aren't looking for RFPs themselves, but are instead looking to connect with the people issuing RFPs or looking for RFPs. The companies that stick out are the ones that are geared towards helping companies write killer proposals, or helping organizations write RFPs as many organizations often go looking for samples to base their RFP on. Taking advantage of our inexpensive advertising option, companies are able to purchase advertisement views in blocks of 1k, 5k, and 10k views for $10, $40, and $70.

This becomes even more attractive for companies when it becomes free; as our system is based on credits, you can use credits earned from uploading RFPs to purchase advertisement views. In exchange for 7 RFP uploads, which should take about 15 minutes to find and upload, a company can run an advertisement for approximately one month on our site for free

White papers announcements

It seems that we're not the only ones that believe that the best way to impress potential clients is by demonstrating that we're knowledge leaders by self-publishing. A few users that are prolific authors have taken advantage of the above-mentioned advertising opportunities and, instead of simply publishing an advertisement for their company, their advertisement is instead an advertisement to read and download a new white paper. There aren't many better ways for a company to impress potential clients than showcasing their expertise on the subject matter in the form of a white paper, and it's ingenious that they're able to advertise their white paper for free to those potential clients.

Writing new Requests for Proposals

So this might not be the most unconventional of uses, but it's certainly a good one to mention. Often times, someone in an organization is tasked with writing a RFP but has no idea how to go about doing this. Why reinvent the wheel? Looking at examples of existing RFPs that are similar to the one you are seeking to write is one of the best ways of jump-starting the RFP-writing process. You can also join our LinkedIn group and ask for assistance. Vendors appreciate well-written and documented RFPs and will always give you tips on how to write a better RFP. And once the RFP is written you can announce it on the website and get the competitive bids that you need.

Keeping in touch with corporate partners

This is one of our personal favorites: one of our members is in sales for a company that, while they provide a service, it isn't a service that generally pitches directly to the organizations issuing RFPs. Their service is generally sought by the winner of a project who incorporates their offering into the project plan. As a way of keeping in touch with the primary companies who would be both bidding on these projects and then hiring the company to do their piece of the project, this sales person will find and send RFPs from the RFP Database to their clients who might be interested in bidding on the project. This practice both ingratiates the client to you for bringing leads to their door, but also keeps alive channels of communication and keeps you in the forefront of their mind for other projects they might be working on.

While the above is a bit vague, here's an example:

You represent a company that writes jingles for advertising campaigns. You receive notices about advertising projects listed on the RFP Database and one catches your glance: a RFP for Tourism marketing and advertising services. You think sure, there might be an opportunity for my services within that project, or you might know the perfect company for that project. You download the project for a mere 2 credits and send it over to your contact with a friendly note. Talk about a great way to make friends, especially if they win the project!

Project leads for an organization's members

Membership-based organizations are always looking to provide greater services to their members; this is especially true in down economies. One method we've seen in a variety of different forms is organizations incorporating leads from the RFP Database into their site. An example of this in use is Mike Rowe (of Discovery Channel "Dirty Jobs" fame) and his site, MikeRoweWorks.com. In the Job Site section of his site he has integrated a RSS feed of RFPs from the RFP Database as a way of showing projects that might be interesting to his visitors. Having this additional content and providing it as a service to your members will both encourage new visitors as well as keep your existing members very happy with what you're providing.

If you've put the RFP Database to good use in a way that's out of the ordinary please let us know!

RFP Etiquette: Dos and Don’ts for Business Matchmaking

2009-08-05T10:00:00.002-04:00

The following interview/article was conducted by Vince Giorgi, Vince President of Hanley Wood Marketing for his blog, Touch Point City. The original article was posted here on July 21, 2009.

In case you haven’t heard, online marketing and media conversation has been buzzing in recent days over an incident involving a request for proposal (RFP). If your business purchases products and services, or competes for new business, through RFPs, you’ll want to read on.

The two parties in this scenario are Zappos, the online retailer, and a marketing agency, Ignited. Mike Wolfsohn, Ignited’s EVP-executive creative director, wrote a Sunday post for his agency’s blog describing Ignited’s experience during a recent Zappos agency search. His post tells of the agency’s chagrin at seeing, via Google analytics, that Zappos viewed only five pages of Ignited’s 25-page proposal (submitted as a blog), with an average page-view time of just 14 seconds.

While admitting to voluntarily joining what he and his colleagues suspected would be a “cattle call,” Wolfsohn states in his post that the “Zappos pitch underscores what’s wrong with the review process.” He argues, “If agencies are going to spend weeks preparing their response, the least any client can do is commit 30 minutes to look at it.”

The headline on Wolfsohn’s post: “Is 30 Minutes Too Much To Ask?”An article about the post in the AdAge Daily News e-newsletter triggered, at last count, 88 comments, many from marketing and ad agency pros. A majority take Wolfsohn to task for voicing sour grapes over a relatively standard RFP process in which his firm finished out of the running. Fewer express empathy for Ignited and disdain for Zappos’ approach. Several lament unfairness and imperfections inherent in the RFP process itself.

Rules of the RFP Road?

All this hub-bub over a single RFP made us wonder what exactly are the rules of etiquette and best practices for publishing, and responding to, RFPs?

For insight, TPC contacted David Kutcher, president of Confluent Forms, a Northampton, Mass., design firm. Kutcher also is founder of The RFP Database, a Web-based service that aggregates RFPs of all types for efficient distribution by issuers and searching by suppliers.

TPC: Without delving into the specifics of this case, David, what’s your overall takeaway? What tends to go awry in a situation such as this?

Kutcher: I think everyone is a bit too overwhelmed to think rationally; Zappos received over 100 proposals, which is not really surprising, and Ignited put their heart and soul into the pitch and felt a bit disrespected. It’s completely understandable. I’m not sure anything went awry from a process standpoint, but I think it’s a learning experience for companies that enter into the “cattle calls” as much as it is for companies that release their RFP to the wild.

In this specific case I might have recommended that instead of releasing their RFP to the wild, that Zappos instead release a simple RFI (request for information) that asks for a maximum of two to five pages of information, mostly as a way to get profile information about firms, examples of their work, etc., and from there, select a smaller number of firms to receive the full RFP.

With this sort of approach you can spend more time with the firms you do a final ask from, but also not ask so much non-billable time from firms who go overboard making a full-blown pitch. Only the firms that make the first cut would be asked to compose that full proposal.

TPC: Is every supplier that responds to an RFP owed a certain minimum level of review and consideration by the potential customer?

Kutcher: I think we all like to feel we should be heard and given ample time to make our pitch, but this harkens back to the idea of a company’s “elevator pitch,” which seems to be becoming a lost art. If you can’t connect with the reader in the first 30 seconds and explain why you are the best choice for the project, then you really should revisit your proposal-writing strategy.

Regardless if they keep reading, the reader is likely just going through the motions at that point, since they’ve become mentally disengaged. If you don’t capture your reader, that’s on you, not the reader. And that’s business; it’s up to YOU to make the sale.

TPC: On the client side, what are common things you see companies struggle with or miss when it comes to conducting an effective, fair RFP?

Kutcher: It all starts with the issuer, and generally the RFP process goes off the rails because the organization didn’t put enough forethought into the RFP. This could be that they didn’t do enough internal research for what they were looking for, didn’t think about how their process would be run, or failed to define the proposal format and information they wanted back, so as to have an apples-to-apples comparison.

Organizations need to fully appreciate that companies put a lot of unbillable time and effort into responding to RFPs. Releasing a poorly written, poorly defined, and poorly executed RFP into the world can ruin your reputation among vendors and, instead of leading you to a good partnership, can leave you with the bottom of the barrel.

TPC: What about suppliers? Are there things they need to remember, or ask the client, on the front end, in order to ensure they’re not left feeling badly treated on the back end?

Kutcher: Suppliers need to ask questions, LOTS of questions, until the point where they are assured that the issuer is serious about their project, has done the necessary homework, is issuing this competitive bid project with the full intention of hiring someone, and that a vendor with no prior relationship has a chance of winning.

TPC: What’s the trend line? Is RFP-driven sourcing becoming more prevalent?

Kutcher: I think the trend in RFPs matches the trend toward businesses using the Internet to conduct business and going online to find vendors outside their local areas. Online business, and RFPs, enable a vendor in western Massachusetts (like my company) to win projects from organizations located in Manhattan, beating out local companies because we can offer superior value and competitive pricing.

Instead of location being one of the primary determining factors, quality, value and ideal fit can be considered first. A well-run RFP process can be the most democratic, meritorious and pragmatic approach to procurement and purchasing, but it all depends on if the process is run well.

TPC: Does The RFP Database offer tips or tools to help both parties work effectively with RFPs?

Kutcher: We’ve written a number of articles on the subject of RFPs and proposals that can be useful to both issuers and bidders. You can find these articles on our blog.

The RFP Database also can provide help through our sheer library of RFPs. If you’re new to RFP writing, search our site and find some projects that are similar to the one you’re looking to undertake. See what others have done before. Look at how they described their project, their timelines, and get a feel for what you need to have in your own RFP. Call them and find out if they would revise their RFP if they had re-issued the project.

You can also join our LinkedIn group and find some talented RFP writers and strategists to assist you. You shouldn’t feel like you’re reinventing the wheel, and if you need some assistance or have questions, just ask.

TPC: If you had one piece of RFP advice for clients and suppliers, what would it be?

Kutcher: To issuers I would say this: The amount of forethought and effort you put into the process in the beginning will greatly affect the quality and ease of the process and final project.

To suppliers I would echo the words of the Oracle at Delphi: “Know thyself.” If you can clearly articulate why, on paper, you are the best choice for the project, then you really can’t do much more. Don’t fight for being the lowest bidder, the firm that can do it all, or try to wow them with your management team’s bios. Show them that you can rock their project like you’ve rocked lots of similar projects in the past.
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*The comments are both enlightening and entertaining, and we hoped to provide a direct link. But it appears you’ll need to register on AdAge’s site, then subscribe to the Daily News e-newsletter, in order to access the article. If you choose to do so, look for the July 15 issue of the e-newsletter, or search on “Zappos” or “Ignited.”

We seek RFPs for Innovation, not Inspiration

2009-07-15T12:30:00.005-04:00

One of the biggest conundrums that companies encounter when they are reviewing Requests for Proposals (RFPs) that they are interested in bidding on is whether the RFP is for a real project, or whether it's a fishing expedition for ideas to be implemented by an existing vendor or internally. The problem that companies run into is that they want to wow the prospect, they want to show that they have good ideas and can provide unique insight and value to the customer, but they don't want to give those ideas away and they don't want to waste their time by putting effort into coming up with those ideas for a project that doesn't exist or for a client that isn't ready to commit.

For us, this boils down to Innovation vs. Inspiration. If the RFP is asking for potential solutions to a clearly defined concept, challenge or goal, then that is Innovation (and good). But if the RFP is vague in its needs and throwing around a wishlist of ideas (wants) without a coherent concept, they are clearly looking for Inspiration (and bad).

We believe the situation boils down to whether the company issuing the RFP has established their requirements and are seeking innovative ways to fulfill those needs, or whether they are looking for inspiration and ideas of what they should or could be doing.

How can you tell if it's seeking Innovation or Inspiration?

We'll be the first to admit that we've spent lots of time and effort on projects that sucked us in, but turned out to be Requests for Inspiration. There is little more frustrating than hearing a few weeks after your submission that they decided to stick with their current vendor, not go forward with the project, or have delayed the project until they've done more research. It's even more frustrating when you don't hear from them for two months, and only after you contact them to find out what happened, hearing the above responses. At that moment you know you've been had and you can't help but feel frustrated and disappointed.

You can usually tell this by the information, or lack of information, that they provide in the RFP, and sometimes by the seemingly random insertion of buzzwords and industry jargon. And no, it's not a matter of how much information they put into the RFP, but the type of information that it contains.

Are they asking you targeted questions, seeking potential answers to specific questions?

Are they providing you with the necessary information to enable you to respond with detailed solutions?

Are they providing you with facts, figures, statistics and background information that you'll need to properly evaluate their RFP?

And simply,

Did they do their own homework before asking you to invest your time and effort?

If in the process of starting your proposal you find yourself actually defining the project (as opposed to defining your solution) you've clearly determined that they are seeking Inspiration, not Innovation.

Organizations must invest their time and effort... before asking Companies to invest theirs

In an earlier article we wrote 6 steps to writing a better RFP; there is a reason why the first step is to do your research and define what you are seeking. We also wrote that not all RFPs are worth a proposal. Beyond setting the stage for the project, enabling a hopeful apples to apples competitive bid process, and getting your internal ducks in a row, doing your homework shows to the companies that are preparing to spend lots of non-billable hours that you are serious about your project and serious about hiring a partner to work with you.

As an organization soliciting bids, it is important that you clearly articulate your vision of the perfect proposal and proposing firm for your project.

What are you seeking to accomplish?

What are the boundaries that the firm must work within in their proposed solution?

What are the factors that will influence your decision in selecting a proposal?

What are the constraints within your project (financial, technical, political, etc.)?

Is there a defined project or solution request here or are you simply seeking information and ideas for free?

In closing, it's important for organizations to acknowledge that companies put a lot of time and effort into creating proposals, all of it non-billable, in the interests of winning your business. It is unfair of you to put forward a Request for Inspiration, and in the long run, could hurt your reputation in the industry as well as the quality of future RFP responses.

Often maligned, RFPs are a valuable tool and opportunity

2009-07-10T13:05:00.005-04:00

Interested in learning more about RFPs?

Read some of our other articles on Requests for Proposals.

It seems that every month another expert writes an article on how RFPs are bad for business, RFPs are a bad idea, top 10 lists of why you hate them, RFPs should be done away with because they increase risk and cost, and that RFPs will soon be extinct.

While we have a vested interest in RFPs in that we run the RFP Database, we do find them to be one of the most democratic, meritorious, and pragmatic approaches to procurement and purchasing. They're not a full proof solution, and often times they are run poorly, but that's exactly why we recommend that you be selective in the RFPs you respond to.

A very quick intro to Requests for Proposals

Requests for Proposals (RFP) are a document created by an organization detailing a product or service sought and distributed to suppliers as a way of receiving structured competitive bids. RFPs typically consist of a listing of requirements for their needs, a structure for resulting proposals from suppliers, contractual information, profile information about the supplier, and pricing documentation.

Complaints against RFPs and the process

Many of the complaints against RFPs, such as the ones listed below, are problematic and fairly common. Some are more legitimate reasons than others, but as we've said before you should always be selective in the RFPs you respond to.

1) Cover for a pre-selected vendor

The biggest fear of every vendor is that they're spending time pitching a project against a stacked deck, that the issuing organization has already selected the vendor they would like to use but that the RFP is simply being issued to satisfy a requirement and attach a veneer of transparency.

This is a valid fear, but by simply asking the issuing organization pointed questions about the situation you can assuage this fear or learn enough to walk away from the project. Ask them: "is there a current vendor in place and are they bidding on this project?" or "did a firm assist in the writing of the rfp and are they also bidding?" If they are you know what you're up against and can make up your own mind whether or not to bid on the project.

2) Only about lowest pricing

Perhaps it's because we work in a service industry, but we have never encountered this problem when it comes to RFPs. Yes, everyone has a budget, and yes, almost every RFP says "pricing will be considered when evaluating proposals", but does anyone expect it to NOT be a consideration?

In assisting organizations with their RFP process we have often heard "they're too cheap compared to everyone else, there has got to be something wrong there" as often if not more so than "they are simply too expensive". This has lead us to believe that yes, pricing is important, but it is much better to price your solution in the middle of the pack than it is to price it at the bottom of the barrel.

3) Boxed in to a pre-determined solution

Vendors often feel that RFPs automatically put them at a disadvantage because the project might be structured by stakeholders based on their knowledge of their requirements and a specific direction clearly indicated. They might have already made up their mind that their project requires a Microsoft solution, or that they require a LEED certified architect, or some other requirement, or any other reason either because that's what their familiar with or that's the direction they are required to take.

A vendor might have a solution to the project and feel that it is a better solution for any number of reasons, but because it is not the exact project specified by the RFP, that it is the fault of the RFP process for not enabling alternative approaches to be submitted. Asking the project manager a simple questions such as "will an alternative solution that fulfills the project goals be considered?" will quickly let you know where you stand with the project and whether or not you should spend time responding.

4) Cattle call, not worth participating

If you're a sled dog and not at the front the view never changes, right? Sure, and open call for proposals will get dozens of respondents, but how can you possible win if you never take the field? Every business is in business because they believe that they have a product or service that is worth buying and that, somehow, they have enough market differentiation to set themselves apart from the crowd and win projects. No company is the #1 choice for every project because someone somewhere has excelled at that specific type of project and can win through a combination of experience, pricing and proposed solution. Unlike the other complaints, this one requires that you perform a bit of introspection to determine how likely you will be successful in setting yourself apart from the rest of your competition.

5) Impersonal, no ability to connect

This is the complaint usually heard from smooth-talking salesmen who often are heard bragging that they can sell anything to anyone. They're disheartened by the RFP process because it emphasizes fulfillment of specific criteria, turns slick marketing pieces into a negative, and limits conversation, golf outings and free dinners. This is usually spun as "we need to meet with the client, work with them to determine their needs, get a feel for the project, etc.", but what they're really trying to angle for is an "in".

When proposing to projects that we felt needed further definition or to work with the client to better formulate their needs we have often pitched a 2-phase project with the first phase being the "lets figure out the project needs together". This phase had the discussions, discovery, requirements gathering, etc. that then was put into a detailed SOW which became Phase 2. And if the organization isn't interested in this two phase approach, you can always walk away from the project.

6) Impossible odds

This complaint often arises from a correlation/causation issue in that "since I've never won a RFP" that must mean that "RFPs must be impossible to win". As we've disputed in the past, this isn't a problem with the RFP process, but is in fact a process of companies not being selective enough in choosing which RFPs are worth them spending the time in responding. If you're specialized and can effectively demonstrate that you are the superior option there is no reason why you'd be facing long odds.

Advantages for issuing agency

RFPs are often a mandated requirement for municipal agencies, non-profits and corporations as a way to try to get unbiased and competitive bids for their needs. Organizations often don't receive enough proposals to truly receive a competitive bidding process because they don't publicize them enough, but even when they only receive three bids, RFPs still provide them with advantages. They can also be seen as time consuming since they require that the organization put time and thought into their needs and requirements, but this is time well spent.

1) apples to apples comparison

How can you evaluate which is the best solution for you and which provides you with the best pricing for the features you want without the ability to put the two solutions side by side? The RFP process enable an organization to define their needs/goals, get specific pricing for the solution that meets their needs, and evaluate multiple solutions on a level playing surface.

2) promote open and fair competition

One of the worst things an organization can do is be seen as playing favorites and putting a veneer of competition on their purchasing process when they're simply going to award the project to someone's nephew. When you have transparent competition with a documented set of requirements and evaluation process the process for getting funding and approval for your project because that much simpler. People won't think "oh, they awarded this project to this company because the CEO took the PM out for a round of golf and a fancy dinner"; instead you'll be able to point to the proposals, point to the evaluation criteria, and say "this project was the one best suited to our needs and won on its merits".

2) competitive pricing and alternative solutions

Squaring away funding for a project is obviously more difficult when you've had a less than competitive process and/or only received one proposal; it's easy to question whether you've received a fair price if you don't have other pricing to compare it against.

During the competitive bid process many vendors will often propose solutions that deviate from the specified, or at the minimum ask you questions that might challenge your defined project and assumptions. This feedback might cause you to re-evaluate your project, and in the process, create a stronger project due to the added definition and discussion.

4) potential wide-range of submissions

If you are open to simply receiving the best solution based upon its merit and within loose guidelines for your specific project you will be surprised at how wide-ranging the submissions will be. Every solution provider tries to distinguish themselves from their competition and believes that they offer something different and something better than everyone else. Let them and encourage them. You want to find the solution provider that will not just meet the needs and requirements of the project, you want to find the provider that will exceed them.

5) non-sales documentation of solution

Once your RFP gets the submitters to move past their stock sales and marketing pieces you're actually able to learn something, minus the overkill in buzzwords, about the provider and their solutions. While vendors like to say that they despise RFPs because they have to jump through so many hoops and spend so much time writing proposals, if it wasn't for the RFP and the fact that you're telling the vendors the information YOU need in the format YOU want, you'd likely receive hundreds upon hundreds of sales material that wouldn't tell you what you were getting nor what it would cost.

Advantages for responding companies

Small and mid-sized companies shouldn't listen to the advice of experts that tell you that the RFP process is broken or that you should never spend time responding to RFPs.

1) small biz equalizer against large biz

How often do you as a small or mid-sized business get the opportunity to participate in a competitive bid process that is judged on its merit? An open RFP gives you the opportunity to submit your proposal alongside the "Big Dogs" and show how a small, nimble company can in fact be the best solution.

2) connections matter less

Not all of us have connections to Fortune 100 companies or Executive Directors for large non-profits, so while we might not have the time and money to invest in extensive marketing endeavors, open call RFPs provide us with the immediate open door. The trick is, now that the door is open enough for us to stick our foot in (in the form of a proposal), we need to capitalize on it with an amazing pitch.

3) can reward innovation and expertise

While not all RFPs encourage you to venture outside the box of their firm needs and requirements, there is always the chance that the reader will realize the brilliance in your proposal and the fact that you went a step further than your competitors in proposing a solution that would save them time/money or yield increased returns.

4) plays to your strengths

In the process of being selective in the RFPs you respond to, an open-call RFP enables you to select projects that play to your strengths as well as your more profitable projects. You can actively seek out the projects that, in your mind, are big, easy, and juicy. It's not longer about the projects that find you, but that you can actively seek out these long-ball business opportunities.

So in short, go out, find some RFPs, but don't forget to be selective!

6 steps to writing a better Request for Proposals, a primer

2009-06-19T13:01:00.007-04:00

Interested in learning more about RFPs?

Read some of our other articles on Requests for Proposals.

We believe strongly in Requests for Proposals (RFPs) as a tool for companies to find the best products and services at competitive prices, but also as an evaluation method for finding that elusive "best fit". However, too often the RFP process is run by people who have never experienced the process before, either from the issuer or vendor side, and essentially don't know what to say or what to ask. Our goal in this article is give you the basics that you might need to create your own RFP and run a RFP process without too much frustration. As an example we're going to use a small website redesign project (because that's what we do), but we hope you'll be able to extract the concepts you need for your own project.

Step 1: do your research and define what you are seeking

Don't jump into the RFP without doing your own internal homework. After receiving your RFP vendors will be beating down your door with dozens of questions; you're not going to want to be scrambling to find out answers which could then derail your timeline (more on that later). Defining your project as best you can will enable you to pass that information on to potential vendors, but also receive proposals that are tailored to your needs (pricing and project plans) by vendors who understand the project they are bidding on.

Example: You say you want a website redesign. Do you have existing brand material that will be used in the design or does that need to be created? Do you have the content for your new site written, or will that need to be created by the vendor or through a collaborative process? Do you envision this as a 5 page website or a large, 100+ page website? Who will be handling upkeep of the site, hosting, etc.? Do you need a Content Management System for maintaining the site and keeping it up to date or do you think it's going to stay fairly static? Are there any interactive pieces you need in the site or specific functionalities that will need to be implemented? Does the website need to interact with any database or 3rd party software?

This is by no means an exhaustive list of the types of questions that vendors will be asking you. The more you know about your project, the better the answers you'll be able to give to guide the vendors into great proposals. Yes, vendors will also be asking you questions you've never considered (which is a good thing), so be prepared to do additional definition work once you've received the questions from them.

Step 2: decide your distribution strategy and information publication

How will you be distributing your RFP, how will you be collecting information from potential vendors, and where will you be providing project updates?

Our first recommendation is to create a project page or project site that will house your project overview, contact information, timeline, the RFP for download, and all other project documentation that you need to share with vendors. Include a link to this page in your RFP and direct people to it as a central repository for the project.

Our second recommendation is to think long and hard on whom you'd like to be bidding on this project. For example, are you only going to entertain proposals from companies local to you, or does location not matter so much? Do you only want to receive proposals from a specific number of vendors that you invite to participate, or do you want to open the process up to receive qualified proposals from anywhere? Regardless of your decision, be upfront about this decision so that vendors aren't wasting their time by creating a proposal when you're not interested in them because of location.

Step 3: provide the information necessary to a vendor

This might seem a bit obvious, but provide the above information to potential vendors by organizing it in the RFP. Spend time giving them information about your organization, culture, marketing/branding efforts, any deadlines that you need to hit, a narrative of the project that you wish to implement... anything that will enable the best proposals to be written. If there are specifics make sure to list them out. If you don't mention them most vendors won't know to include them.

Step 4: create a reasonable timeline

There are a number of dates that you should include in your RFP timeline. For example, take the following schedule:

June 1, 2009 - Release and distribution of RFP
June 15, 2009 - Deadline for vendors to submit written questions and/or non-mandatory notice of intent
June 17, 2009 - Questions with written answers provided to all interested vendors
June 30, 2009, 9:00 am EST - deadline for submitting proposals
July 10, 2009 - Finalists notified
July 13, 2009 to July 17, 2009 - Finalist interviews
July 22, 2009 - Vendor selected
July 31, 2009 - Vendor signed

This is a fairly optimistic schedule, but it provides time in the various stages for work to be performed. We highly recommend varying this schedule based on your specific needs. For example, if you're running a complex software development project and are receiving technically complex questions, you're likely to need more than 2 days to answer all of the questions and provide them to vendors. You might also notice that we provide time both before and after the Q&A deadlines for vendors to both pose the the questions, but also take the provided information and create their final proposal.

Step 5: identify the information you need from the vendor and proposal format

If you don't specify the information you need from the vendor you'll end up getting a hodge-podge of information, some of which might be useful to you, most of which will be boilerplate. Using the website redesign example, the following includes some of the questions and information you might ask and request:

Proposals should include the information outlined in this section; our ability to interpret and apply your proposal to these questions will factor into our decisions.

Describe in detail the firm’s proposal to address the requirements outlined in this RFP, including details such as technologies to be used.
Provide a timeline for the completion of this proposal; if the project involves a multi-phase approach please provide approximate timeframes.
Describe the fee structure and how the organization will be charged. The costs involved may be categorized separately as redesign, implementation costs, maintenance costs, and software licensing costs. Also include the firm’s plan for post-deployment maintenance, support and upgrades including hourly rates for services.
Provide a brief history and profile of the firm and its experience providing services for organizations similar to ours. Provide a list of the firm’s clients comparable to our organization; include contact name, telephone number, website location, services provided and length of service.
Describe the project process and methodology including sample deliverables from past projects of similar size and scope. Document examples of the firm’s experience in designing/developing each of the project requirements.
List the project team (including programmers and designers) and short biographies of each team member. If using freelancers or outside resources please indicate them as such; we reserve the right to approve/disapprove of selected resources. Indicate how many full time staff does your firm employ.
All proposals must include a hosting solution, whether that solution is provided by the company or a 3rd party service provider. Please detail the cost structure, hosting platform, uptime statistics, location of the server, data backup and integrity plan, etc. Clearly identify additional costs incurred with a change in hosting site.
Please provide an unsigned copy of your standard service contract for our review and any additional stipulations of which we should be aware.

Please be sure to document experience illustrating expertise in:

working with non-profit organizations and providing design services
building websites that engage the users and encourage them to register

This is by no means an exhaustive list. Determine the information that you need to make your decision and what information will enable you to select the vendor that is the best fit for your organization and your project.

Step 6: determine your evaluation criteria

Is pricing your only evaluation criteria or are you looking for the best fit and the best project for your budget? And if all of the companies give you proposals for roughly the same price, how will you choose your finalists?

Some possible evaluation criteria for you to consider:

Is the company good at communicating with us, for both our needs and for their needs during the project?
Is it important to us to have someone that can come in for occasional face to face meetings or is over the phone ok?
Do we like the project examples we've been shown and can we easily see our project reflected in those examples?
Do they seem to "get" us?
Is their pricing and timeline reasonable and within our parameters?
Did they educate us on how they will complete our project, the team that will be working on it, and the deliverables that will be provided?
Is their contract something that we can agree to or will that be cause for concern? (for more on this please read "How not to destroy a project during the contract phase")
Have they adequately detailed the costs and payment plan so we know how we will be charged?

These are just a few examples of evaluation questions beyond the "is their pricing the most competitive", but they'll hopefully lead you to a vendor that is more than just a supplier, but a partner in your project.

If you're having trouble writing your RFP, or would like feedback on it, please feel free to contact us at info@confluentforms.com or (413) 303-9612

5 quick tips to writing better proposals (RFP responses)

2009-05-27T09:29:00.006-04:00

Interested in learning more about RFPs?

Read some of our other articles on Requests for Proposals.

We're frequently asked for any tips we might have for people writing proposal responses to Requests for Proposals (RFP) that they've received. After finding us through the RFP Database, seeing the abundance of RFPs that it contains, and knowing that all of those RFPs are open competitions, the natural question is "if I'm going to spend time writing a proposal it has got to be a winner".

So here are our five quick tips that can make your proposal a stronger candidate:

write an amazing executive summary

While you might say you can't judge a book by its cover, when faced with a stack of 30 or more proposals, each consisting of 20+ pages, you better believe that your proposal is judged by its first page. Faced with the situation of having to read 300+ pages of different vendors' proposals many people read the first page and then start skimming, and if they're not skimming, their minds are probably going numb. Your executive summary or cover page should give a 1-page overview of your proposal, hitting all of the high notes for why you are the optimal choice for them, including budget and other pertinent details. Having that information on one page, the first page, makes a great first impression and says to the client "yes, we're thinking of you and trying to be helpful". It's one of the quickest and easiest things you can do to set the tone for the remainder of your proposal.

be succinct

Nothing makes a reader's mind go numb like endless shop-talk, buzzwords, and information that isn't requested nor has any impact on the project. Again, faced with 300+ pages of vendor proposals, you are actually punishing the reader by making them read more than they need to. If you can answer the question in one paragraph why make them read five paragraphs? Focus your proposal and stick to the points that are necessary to convey the information to the client. Go back to the maxim that less is more so long as you answer the questions.

answer the questions

It always makes us laugh when we find ourselves saying "this seems like a stock proposal" or "fine, but they didn't answer any of our questions!" What's the point in spending valuable time writing a proposal if you've answered questions the client didn't ask and didn't answer the questions they did ask? The best way to show a client you're a good listener? Answer their questions. The quickest way to show a client that you're not attentive to their needs? Not answering their questions. They asked the questions for a reason and they're judging you on the responses so does ignoring them give you a leg up on the competition? Doubtful!

provide relevant examples

The best way to prove to a client that you can successfully complete their project is to show them examples of past projects that you've completed that are similar to their own. Dispel any doubt that they might have regarding your ability to fulfill the project by listing out three to five projects of the same caliber as their own that you completed that have strong similarities. Spell those similarities out so that the client can say "oh, that's just like ours". If that sentence is immediately followed by "and I like what they did here" I'm confident you'll be a finalist.

articulate what makes you the best choice (and not the price!)

Too often companies fall back on pricing as the greatest differentiators between them and their competition. By focusing on price you end up with two problems: there will always be someone that underbids you and you're not bidding the project but instead what you think the competition will bid on the project... which greatly skews your pricing and sets you up for later failure. So instead of focusing on the price, focus on YOU. Get back to your elevator pitch, your 30-second explanation of what makes you new/different/unique/perfect-for-the-job. You want the client to come away from reading your proposal thinking "they seem like the perfect fit for us" which is a much better takeaway than "well, they're the cheapest".

The biggest question that you need to answer in all proposals is "why are you the right choice for this project". If you can do that you're halfway to a winning proposal.

Where to advertise/publicize your Request for Proposal (RFPs)

2009-05-10T17:49:00.010-04:00

After seeing so many search results end up at our website and blog for people searching for how to "advertise their RFP", I've decided that it's about time I addressed this issue head-on: you should go to the RFP Database right now, register in the site (there is no charge), and upload your RFP listing to the website (again, no charge).

You owe it to your project to get the most competitive bids that you can and the RFP Database can provide you with the most exposure for your project at no cost to you:

we have over 60,000 registered users, the majority looking for projects to bid on
for almost any RFP search in Google we're in the top 5 results (sometimes #1 and #2)
your RFP is announced through mass-emails to interested parties, as well as on blogs and Twitter
many professional associations look to our site for project leads to provide to their members

Over 300 Requests for Proposals are announced on our site every week. Organizations that were used to receiving a maximum of 3 bids on their projects have contacted us in the past, surprised at receiving 20 or more qualified proposals for their consideration. Unlike many of our competitors we don't have a registration fee, membership fee, listing fee, or any other fees that would get in the way of your announcing your project, and it's a much more efficient means of soliciting proposals than announcing it in your newspaper or other press release outlet. Our site also receives significant traffic that will bring the desired attention to your project which might not happen if you only announce the project on your own website.

So go ahead, give the RFP Database a try and register now. If you're looking for examples of projects similar to yours to help you with writing your RFP you'll also be able to download two RFPs at no charge.

Don't squander a great opportunity in the form of a bad RFP

2009-04-18T20:00:00.006-04:00

It seems that every month another expert writes an article on how RFPs are bad for business, RFPs are a bad idea, top 10 lists of why you hate them, RFPs should be done away with because they increase risk and cost, and that RFPs will soon be extinct. I have theories about why these "experts" are all against RFPs, but in my opinion, let them go elsewhere and leave these business opportunities to the rest of us.

While I have a vested interest in Requests for Proposals in that I run the RFP Database, the consulting side of my company does respond to a few RFPs every month. I find them to be one of the most democratic, meritorious, and pragmatic approaches to procurement and purchasing. They're not a foolproof solution, and often times they are run poorly, but that's exactly why we recommend that you be selective in the RFPs you respond to.

We've all received a poorly written RFP at one point in time, often from an organization that we would love to have as a client. By poorly written what I mean is that:

the project is very poorly defined
has no stated budget or timeline
is looking for the vendor to define the project (strategic spec work)

There are many other factors that can lead you to consider the RFP as junk, but those are my top 3. Since most sales people typically have multiple RFPs infront of them at any moment these "junk RFPs" are the first to get disregarded as we move onto other opportunities that enable us to write a straightforward proposal. Our GO / NO-GO decision tree justifies the decision.

This can be an opportunity squandered.

I've read quite a few articles in recent days about huge projects that were awarded to companies after the organization received no more than 3 proposals. In almost all cases that I've read there was a common refrain: why didn't more companies bid on the project? Why didn't OUR company bid on the project? In the Austin project the RFP was sent to over 200 companies with only 3 proposals received, a response rate of less than 2%... if you had simply responded to the RFP you would have been "a finalist" so long as you were able to fulfill the requirements of the project!

Think about it: conventional wisdom would tell you to walk away from the RFP, to spend your time on better defined projects that you can write proposals tailored to the needs written in the RFP. RFPs that you can easily cut and paste from past proposals to create a response without spending too many hours of unbillable work. This "wisdom" is something that all good sales teams learn because it's seen as the most efficient use of your time and doing the extra work necessary to respond to a bad RFP hardly seems worthwhile. So they pass.

When everyone zigs, maybe you should zag.

My advice to you is this:

Try to get more information about the project
Explain how you'd first work with them to define the project better
Formulate what you envision the project to be and fill in the blanks
Propose alternative solutions that fulfill the requirements if some stated assumptions can be done better
Educate the prospect, illustrate how you're a subject expert
Press your best case

Use this opportunity, however poorly defined, as a way to both get your company in front of this prospective client, but also to get ahead of your competition since your competition has decided to opt out of responding. In some cases the simple act of responding with a qualified bid can make you a finalist; a thoughtful and well-written proposal can easily make you the winner. And at worst it can get your company's information to other decision makers within the organization that might want you for a different project.

Press Release: Wanna Get Dirty? The RFP Database is Proud to be Featured on MikeRoweWorks.com to put America Back to Work

2009-04-01T09:35:00.003-04:00

Northampton, MA (PRWEB) April 1, 2009 -- The Request For Proposals Database is proud to be working with Mike Rowe of Discovery Channel's "Dirty Jobs" to put America back to work! In honor of Mike's site going live last month, the RFPdb Team scoured the web to add more than 100 new construction RFPs. Visit http://www.mikeroweWORKS.com and go to the "Job Site" portion of his site for the RSS feed of all our construction projects on his site and a link to the "RFP Database".

"We share Mike's values and celebrate the businesses that land the dirty jobs that build our country," said David Kutcher, president of , the creator of RFPdb.com. "Our goal is to enable businesses to find work and help their employees, as Mike says, 'go to work clean and come home dirty.' That's what RFPdb.com is all about."

The demand for skilled workers to rebuild our country's infrastructure has never been greater. Areas of opportunity listed on RFPdb.com include construction, engineering, architecture, advertising, marketing, web design, computing, management, manufacturing, and other fields - basically any work brought to RFPdb.com by its members. The RFPs range from small projects in the thousands of dollars to large projects running into the millions. Project solicitations are issued by municipalities, state and federal agencies, major corporations, small businesses, non-profit organizations and others.

Membership on RFPdb.com is free. Got time on your hands before your next project? RFP Database wants your labor, and we'll compensate you for it! If you help the rest of us by uploading projects you aren't bidding on, we'll stock your account with credits that enable you to download your next RFPs for free. Need more incentive? There are no registration fees, no subscription fees, and no commissions. If you'd rather purchase the project leads without uploading projects they cost a mere $2.

For contracting officers looking to attract competitive bids on their projects, RFPdb.com offers an easy-to-use and active marketplace to list your project with over 38,000 registered users from small, mid-sized, and large businesses. The listing cost per project? Free.

Join us and discover for yourself why thousands of people, representing diverse businesses and organizations, are registering each month.

RFPdb.com offers:

An exceptionally affordable and high-return resource for businesses seeking new work.
No fee for joining -- you get the first 2 projects free, and you can be selective in the projects you choose to bid on.
No registration fees, subscription fees or commissions
$2 per project lead -- free if you help by uploading projects
Free sign-up to daily or weekly customized alerts of new projects
200+ new projects uploaded every week
A community of more than 38,000 registered users
A LinkedIn group for members to learn, collaborate and discuss

About the RFP Database (RFPdb):
The Request for Proposal Database (http://www.RFPdb.com) was created to facilitate the submission and sharing of RFPs between organizations and contracting firms/independent contractors. This goal of the RFPdb is to provide a public site for organizations to post their Requests for Proposals (RFP) to a centralized location that will garner them the most responses and a destination for companies seeking projects to bid.

About Confluent Forms LLC:
Confluent Forms LLC (http://www.confluentforms.com) is a boutique branding, graphic design, web design and custom software development firm based in Northampton, MA. Incorporated in January of 2002, Confluent Forms has provided technology consulting, branding, graphic design, web design, PHP and MySQL development, Web 2.0 software development, application development and hosting services to customers from the Fortune 100 to local non-profit organizations, startup businesses and academic institutions.

For More Information:
David Kutcher
President
Confluent Forms LLC
+1-413-303-9612
http://www.confluentforms.com

Can I Twitter us to the top? Making use of popular social media tools to reach new business

2009-01-12T10:00:00.020-05:00

I'm skeptical about most technologies, especially those that everyone is talking about. Myspace, Facebook, Search Engine Optimization, Twitter, Linkedin... I've turned my nose up at them more times than I can count. But I have come around to a number of technologies, technological innovations, and technical strategies kicking and screaming for the most part, always in the interest of promoting my company or our creation. So far they've been worthwhile contributions to the effort.

My newest challenge is making Twitter work for us... but before I get to that, I'd like to expound on the other strategies we've employed in our quest to drive traffic to the RFP Database.

Search engine optimization

SEO can be done two ways; white hat and black hat. White hat involves making your site more accessible to search engines, proper naming of links, key terms, key phrases, page titles, etc. It also involves getting quality links to your site. The black hat method involves the creation of multiple landing pages under different domain names, having dummy sites set up to provide links to your site, and other methods of spamming and tricking search engines. The black hat method is something you do NOT want to do if you want to run a respectable business or end up penalized by Google.

One of the important aspects of SEO to keep in mind is that search engines aren't your only audience; your site needs to be accessible and usable by human beings as well as search engines. Your SEO strategy can't interfere with your audience targeting strategy and usability.

When we redeveloped the RFP Database in the fall of 2007 we created a listing site that made use of clean urls, categorizing the projects, RSS feeds, and sorting of listings. We made a strategic decision to attempt to make our content as accessible as possible to search engines and others. I initially thought of SEO as a scam, something that less-than-honest internet companies offered as a service to customers, bilking them out of marketing and advertising money. I still do to some extent, but have come to the belief that Search Engine Optimization should be replaced by a Search Engine Strategy. The question you should ask is "how can I make my site receive more quality visits from search engine visitors?"

This strategy has worked very well for us over the last 2 years. Over 40% of our visitors arrive via a search engine query, the average visit from a search engine visit is nearly indistinguishable from a visitor that typed in our URL to arrive at the site, and over the course of one year the number of visits we receive per month from search engines has tripled.

Blogs, yours and others

I know I've written about it before but I don't think I can stress it enough: get your site mentioned as often as possible on quality blogs. If you're having trouble getting mentioned in blogs, set up your own! Use bookmarklets to make it easy for you to post items to your blogs and less of a chore.

Years ago I read a great article in Fast Company Magazine about self-branding and how to use blogs and self-publishing as a way to increase the value of your personal stock. Self branding enables you to showcase your talents, organically getting your name and information in front of people who might be interested in your services, and get networked to people who could help you grow your business. It was a while before I implemented this advice and it has paid dividends over the last year or so for Confluent Forms.

I have also made a concerted effort to get our website mentioned on any blog that discusses the topics of Requests for Proposals. These links to the RFPdb have contributed to the overall page rank of the RFP Database (currently a respectable 5), but also continue to get us mentioned in time-sorted search results and enable us to show up dozens of times in regular search results for content that has keywords and phrases not in use on our site.

LinkedIn, Facebook, and other sites

While often derided as websites for teenagers to post pictures of themselves, and trendy sites that have little business purpose, using the more business-oriented LinkedIn or slightly-more-professional-than-Myspace Facebook can have a positive networking effect for your company and services. Initially I was skeptical that LinkedIn could have any successful impact on my company and its performance and merely used the site to reconnect with old co-workers. Fine, but nothing spectacular, and not much in the way of "networking." I decided to try spending more time on the site, and instead of passively using it, actively network and self-brand myself as an expert.

After giving my profile a makeover, I made extensive use of LinkedIn's Answers section. I started asking questions, answering questions, and tried to make myself a fixture on topics that I believe I am an expert on. I also started asking for recommendations from people that I've worked with in the past or who had used my services, building out my profile into something that I would be proud enough to add to my email signature. As a result of this work I have noticed a significant increase in the volume of proposal requests we receive, inquiries for expertise, traffic to our sites referred to by LinkedIn, and we have landed some very nice projects that originated from a LinkedIn query.

More recently I have turned my attention to using LinkedIn, specifically the new "Groups" functionality, to promote our sites as well as creating a RFPdb LinkedIn Group that enables our more active networking users to meet each other, collaborate on proposals, and advance our site's mission of facilitating business to business communications.

And now... Twitter

Approaching Twitter has been no different than the above mentioned technologies and my initial aversion to them which can be summarized as follows:

Blogs: why should I care what some nutjob thinks about whether his cat has dreams, how to garden in your basement, or any slightly less ridiculous topics
SEO: easy way for unscrupulous technology teams to take your money, show short term results, then get you perm-blocked by Google
LinkedIn/Facebook/Myspace: embarrassing frat-party photos or people trying to sell me get-rich-quick schemes

Yes, I'm exceptionally skeptical to most new technologies... I'm still trying to figure out why Google bought YouTube for a gazillion dollars and opened themselves up to ridiculous amounts of liability.

So why should Twitter be any different?

Responding to other people

The casual way to get started on Twitter is simply to create an account and start giving updates on your life or posting short messages (under 140 characters). You can tell people your account name and they can follow the short, meaningless updates on your life. You can also respond to other people's messages and/or choose to "follow them", getting up to the minute updates on whatever your chosen people have said. People can also choose to follow you... but why would they want to?

I started simply enough, running searches for queries such as "rfp", and responding to peoples messages, touting the RFPdb, responding with links, etc. It was very slow going.

Manually adding links and announcing new project

Taking a page out of our blog strategy I began to announce new project listings and currently active popular projects on Twitter, often consisting of the title, adding "rfp" to the announcement, and a link to the project. This was a time consuming process, but I started noticing users following me leading me to believe that if I kept the posts coming, that I could assemble a legion of followers...

Twitlet, Twitterfeed, and creating a topic

Nothing makes life easier than tools that allow you to automate a process. Twitlet is a simple tool that allows you to make a Twitter bookmarklet for quick submission to the system, as well as enabling the embedding of "short urls" for inclusion in the post. Good, but not great yet. However, through this tool I learned about topics, the ability to highlight a word or phrase using the # sign to create a linkable query. Using this knowledge in conjunction with Twitterfeed allows you to fully automate the submission of tweets by setting up a service that takes the RSS feed from your site, automatically posts it to Twitter with a link to the article, and allows you to prefix it with a topic link.

Putting the legions of followers to use

I'll admit we're not at this point yet. I don't feel we have reached critical mass enabling me to put my twitter-followers to use in an unstoppable digital mob. My buddy Garry has told me stories of his successes using Twitter and Reddit to draw traffic to his site and I'm looking forward to doing the same... we'll see what the future brings! In the meantime, follow us on Twitter and track the growth of our Twitter army.

Update: an example of a possible Twitter/Facebook army usage

The Power of Yous

2009-01-05T08:00:00.002-05:00

A week or so I was reading the discussions under a group I belong to on one of my favorite business portals, LinkedIn, and I came across a post by a man named Al Walsh. His discussion was about his series of blogs "aimed at start-up to mid-market businesses"; I of course asked him for a mention in his blogs about the RFP Database since I feel it's a service that every startup and mid-market business should know about as a destination for getting competitive bids and new project leads. His reply:

Okay David, you're in. if you get an[y] business from this blog referral, I'll expect at least a steak dinner out if it.

I believe in the power of getting mentioned on blogs, regardless if they have thousands of visitors or one visitor a month. I call it "the Power of Yous".

Growing up in Philadelphia my English teacher would disparagingly acknowledge that there is a unique "you plural" in grammatical use, "yous", used in a similar fashion to "you all". There are many benefits that come as a result of you becoming yous, especially in the realm of online publishing.

Introduction to a new audience

Every blog has an audience, whether it is just one dedicated reader or hundreds of readers that stumble upon the article (and don't forget about the site StumbleUpon). Every reader who learns about your site, service or product is a potential customer or a referral to potential customers. They now know about you and might buy your product or tell others about it.

A new article about your site or service

Bloglines, Google Blog Search... there are dozens upon dozens of blog readers and blog news services that monitor or are pinged by blogs and list all new articles that are published. Any new article gets listed on a homepage or topic page that receives significant eyeballs, gets mentioned near the top of published-date-sorted searches, and through the use of tags gets compiled with lots of other related articles yielding even more views for the article mentioning your product.

Search engines and the collective

While one of the most important factors in search engine optimization is the ability to get linked to by highly trusted sources, other factors include the number of sites linking to your site and words they use in the link to your site, and the context surrounding the link to your site. Each article that discusses your site and what its about adds context to your site link and establishes it as an authority on the subject(s). The more links to your site and the more sitelinks you garner with targeted context the higher your site will show up on search engine results.

The moral of the story? Get linked by quality blogs that discuss topics related to your site. Every link to your site contributes to your power of yous.