EP125: 5 Non-Negotiables to Get the ‘Yes’
Are you submitting proposal responses but rarely getting the YES? Even when the RFP is right up your alley?
Then, you may be missing one of my five non-negotiables for winning a bid.
On this episode of The RFP Success Show, I discuss the five things you need to do to get the YES, describing why it’s crucial to meet 100% of the baseline requirements in an RFP.
I explain how to convey your capabilities and experiences properly on paper and explore what it means to build trust in the context of an RFP response.
Listen in to understand why it’s more effective to SHOW rather than TELL and learn how to make it easy for evaluators to read your proposal and find the information they need to give YOU the YES!
Key Takeaways
5 non-negotiables to get the YES on a request for proposal
Why it’s crucial to meet 100% of the baseline requirements in an RFP
How to convey your capabilities and experience properly on paper
What it looks like to build trust in the context of a proposal response
How to SHOW rather than TELL in an RFP (and why it’s more effective)
The value in knowing the issuing organization’s business or industry
How to make it easy for evaluators to read your RFP response
RFP Success Show EP125 Transcription
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You're listening to the RFP Success Show with eight-time author, speaker, and CEO of the RFP Success company, Lisa Rehurek.
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Tune in each episode to learn what today's captured in RFP teams are doing to increase their win percentages by up to 20% 30% and even 50%. And meet the industry trailblazers that are getting it right.
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Let's get started.
Lisa Rehurek (00:24):
Welcome, everybody. The RFP Success Show. I am your host, Lisa Rehurek, founder and CEO of the RFP Success Company. Today, we are talking about five non-negotiables to get to the yes. These are five things that you absolutely must have to go in feeling super confident that you're going to get the yes, right? What can you do to make a difference in your RFPs? We get this question all the time. What are the top mistakes that people make, and what can we do better? And so, as I started thinking about, what I wanted to talk about in this episode, we really wanted to hone in on what are the things that are pretty non-negotiable if you want the yes, okay? So, that's what we're going to talk about today.
(01:11):
The very first one is going to seem super obvious, but we've got to set the stage here. You must meet the requirements of the RFP right now. Again, feels obvious, right? You'd be surprised at how many think 80% or 70% or 90% of the requirements will be okay. Well, maybe, but then, you've got to make it up somewhere else because you're going to lose points, you're going to lose scoring. Your competitors are all going to be likely meeting 100% of the requirements, so you're going in at a disadvantage. And also, it's not likely that you're going to be okay. I mean, it's not likely that you're going to be okay. It's not likely that you're going to win if you're not even meeting the baseline requirements. But I want you to get in your mind, is that what they give you in that RFP as requirements, that's the baseline. You've got to meet those.
(02:05):
Now, can you get creative? Sure. Can you make it up somewhere else? Sure. But you better have one heck of a strategy and not count on the win if you can't meet the requirements. So, meet the requirements, make sure that you can get either a meet or exceeds. And if you can't, you got to figure out how to make up some points because it's going to deem right. One example is, there's a lot of times in the state RFPs, there's small diverse business requirements, and some companies just are like, "We don't have anybody. We don't know anybody. So, we're just going to let those points out. We know we're going to miss those, and we're going to hopefully make up for it somewhere else." It's a crapshoot to be honest with you, because if you've got a competitor that comes in and meets those requirements and gets those points, you're chasing after more points and it's just a tough position to be in. So, that is number one. Number one, make sure you meet the requirements.
(03:04):
Number two. Now, meeting the requirements in your head is one thing. But making sure you translate that to paper is a whole other thing. And again, it seems obvious, but often, not done very well. Let me talk a little bit more about what I mean here. So, you are in your business day in and day out. Things are very obvious to you, but when you're responding to an RFP, you've really got to pull back and spell things out in a way that might feel too remedial or basic to you. But remember, the people that are reading your proposal, they don't know your business like you do. You've got to spell it out and make sure you're presenting your capabilities, your experience, all of that, everything that they're asking for in a way that the evaluators can see the truth. They can see whether you need or exceed.
(04:01):
So, again, we see it a lot where we'll do a proposal review of past responses and our client will say, "We don't know why we lost. This is right up our alley. This is exactly what we do." But to us, in the review, it's plain as day that they didn't meet the requirements. Plain as day that they didn't meet the requirements. So, you want to make sure that what's in your head gets adequately conveyed on paper, and it is a hard thing to do, and it's a big miss that so many companies make, and we don't want to see you make that. So, number two, make sure that what's in your head gets conveyed properly on paper.
Speaker 1 (04:42):
That RFP response deadline is coming in hot and you want to win. Don't panic. Call the RFP Success Company for a strategic outside review before you hit submit. Learn more at the rfpsuccesscompany.com.
Speaker 2 (04:59):
All right. Let's move on to number three. Number three is build trust. Now, you've got to build trust in your response. It isn't just about meeting the requirements, right? So, one and two, we're telling you go out, make sure you're meeting the requirements. Make sure you're conveying it, hugely important. That's the baseline. Now, that you've done that, we've got to take it up a notch. We've got to move it up a notch. So, building trust, it is the opportunity for you now to say... to showcase that you're the ones that they should want to work with. And building trust is really hard because it's a little subjective, and it's also emotional. And when we respond to RFPs we tend to be very objective, very tactical. We don't put a lot of emotion in it, but build that trust. Showcase that you're the company to hire things that build trust or stories, case studies, experience, knowledge, just being yourself, not being so uptight in your responses.
(06:01):
And this actually leads to number four, which is show versus tell, okay? And what is the difference? Show versus tell. And I pulled this from an article, actually. There was an editing company called Invisible Ink, and I think they were talking very much to probably writing a novel or something. But I really, really thought the description was spot on. Telling uses exposition summary and blunt description to convey the message. And this is just how we tend to write when we're responding to RFPs. They ask a question, we respond to it, and we get in our heads about it, and we put ourselves in the same frame of mind as the RFP is. But you can't do that. You've got to get to the show piece of it because the show versus tell, this really is where that trust is going to get built.
(06:54):
Showing uses actions, dialogue, they say body language, of course, you can't do that in a written context, but characterization, unsetting and other subtle writing tactics to put your readers into the story. You want them to feel like they're reading a story about what it's going to be like to work with you, what it's going to be like to get their solution fulfilled. So, how can you do that by showing them instead of telling. Telling to me feels like you're cramming it down their throats. You're pushing, pushing, pushing you on them instead of showing which pulls them into the story. They're part of it. They can envision themselves in it instead of being this watching from a distance as you're screaming at them. So, this is a really important one because we see this all the time, and it's so gross to read to be honest with you, but it's what 90% of the companies out there do. It really is what everybody reverts to. So, it's not unusual, but if you can shift that, this is going to be a really great shift for you in getting those yeses. It's just beautiful.
(08:08):
All right, number five then is know their business. So, do not just write to the questions that they've asked. Now, this is a little bit of a balance. I don't want you to go off the rails and start giving them all this advice and shoving other solutions down their throats that they didn't ask for. That is not what I'm talking about. What I'm talking about is showing your credibility, showing your authority, and letting them know that their business. So, you want to write to things that show that you know their business, that show that you know their industry, that you know their industry trends. You want to speak to things that they might not already know.
(08:50):
So, you could say, for example, "The clients that we work with that are similar to you, one of the things that we've noticed in the last 12 months is X, Y, Z trend. And we're helping our clients shift that because it's a little bit different than the way that they're used to doing business right now."
(09:09):
So, you can say subtle things like that, but just get them thinking and it builds your credibility and your authority, which guess what? Builds trust. Yep, it builds trust. So, we've got these five things, right? Meet the requirements, convey those requirements that you meet those requirements, convey that well, build trust, show versus tell, and then, really know their business.
(09:36):
And then, I'm actually going to add a sixth one in here because I think this is really important. And if you followed me at all, you know I say this all the time and it's like my soapbox, but you got to make it easy on the evaluators. They are human beings. They are trying to map your proposal to an evaluation score tool of some sorts. And if you make it hard on them to find the information, to understand the information, to map the information back to the question, you're going to get deemed. You're going to get deemed. So, the more you can do to make it easy on the evaluators, make it easy for them to find what they need, make it easy for them to read your contents.
(10:21):
Also, please stop doing like massive paragraphs that nobody wants to read. Break it up. Lots of white space. Make it fun and easy for them to read. Make it easy for them to score you where you should be scored. And there is nothing worse than getting scoring sheets back or doing a debrief and claiming out that does not meet when you should have had an exceeds meet. And it's either because you didn't do number two well, which was making sure you translate your capabilities, or because it was just really hard for them to figure it out.
(10:56):
So, I think if you... I don't think. I know if you do these things, you're going to get to the yes so much more often than you get to the yes now. I promise you. I promise you.
(11:09):
I appreciate you being here and listening. Come back, join us next week, and if you haven't already subscribed, subscribe to this podcast so you don't miss a beat. Again, you've been listening to the RFP Success Show, and I'm your host, Lisa Rehurek.
Outro (11:24):
This has been another episode of the RFP Success Show with Lisa Rehurek, eight-time author, speaker, and CEO of the RFP Success Company.
Outro (11:33):
Thank you for joining us. If you have feedback on today's episode, email us at podcast@rfpsuccess.com. No matter your business size, industry, if you have an in-house RFP team or need outside support, the RFP Success company helps increase RFP win ratios by 10%, 20% and even 50%. Learn more at the rfpsuccesscompany.com.