EP090: Intentional Sourcing of Technology Post-COVID – with Dave Hulsen
When the pandemic began, businesses scrambled to create systems for working from home. But now, we have a chance to take a breath and rethink our processes. To be more intentional in our sourcing of technology. To find efficient ways to collaborate, in or out of the office.
Dave Hulsen is a Cofounder and Chief Operating Officer at RFP360, the premiere RFP management software solution for buyers and proposal teams. In his role as a technology consultant, Dave gained years of experience both issuing and responding to RFPs, and today, he is committed to developing software that transforms and improves the RFP process for all involved.
On this episode of The RFP Success Show, Dave returns to discuss the opportunity we have now to question our systems and source with intention, exploring how competition supports product innovation.
Dave explains how his perspective on employee engagement changed through the pandemic, describing what his company is doing to focus on mental wellness and how staff members benefit from meaningful interactions in the office environment.
Listen in to understand how technology works with people and processes to make collaboration more efficient and get Dave’s take on when it’s time to integrate RFP software in YOUR proposal process!
Key Takeaways
How Dave’s perspective on employee engagement changed through the pandemic
What Dave’s company is doing to focus on mental wellness
How staff benefits from meaningful interactions in the office environment
The opportunity businesses have to swap out systems and rethink processes in the next 6 months
Why we anticipate an influx of RFPs in 2021 and moving into 2022
How competition supports innovation
Dave’s take on when it’s time to implement RFP software in your system
How RFP software works with people and processes to make collaboration more efficient
How the transparency of RFP software supports individual accountability
Dave’s respect for proposal teams and buyers producing thoughtfully-crafted RFPs
Connect with Dave
Resources
RFP Success Show EP90 Transcription
You're listening to the RFP Success Show, with eight time author, speaker, and CEO of the RFP Success Company, Lisa Rehurek. Tune in each episode to learn what today's capture on 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. Let's get started.
Lisa Rehurek (00:24):
Welcome everybody. You are listening to part two of my interview with Dave Hulsen from RFP360. And this is a continuation of my discussion that I had with him a couple of weeks ago. Well, I want to switch gears here real quick, Dave, because I hear that you've got great employee engagement and staff satisfaction. And that's something very near and dear to me, I love the topic of this because I think that it has been spoken of a lot in the past, but companies haven't put their money where their mouth is necessarily. They like to talk about it all being important, but they never really do anything about it. So obviously winning RFPs, there is a correlation there, right? Because if you've got a team that isn't engaged, that's going to flow over into your RFP. So what are the non-negotiables that you have when it comes to supporting your own staff members?
Dave Hulsen (01:16):
I Would have said, before 2020, that career development is a really important thing because most of people we hired as a small company, they wanted the activity and the excitement of a small place. And so they knew they would get to do lots of different things. And so making sure, but also there's no director then VP level then wherever, I mean, it's just too flat of an organization. So making sure that somebody had some sort of career progression, whether be new skills that they learned, certifications they gained, something like that. Last year for us, and I'm sure most everybody was about health and safety. And I wish I could have done more, but starting in March of last year we had, I would just do little where we were a slack place also, we would either do a slack check-in or a little Zoom or Google Meets or something.
Dave Hulsen (02:15):
We have 8 million of these tools available to us [crosstalk 00:02:18] but we would check in. I would check in with people individually. And this only worked because we'd grown enough that there are people covering all these critical things. And so in my position as kind of the cheerleader for everybody, I had the time to contact people. But what I learned about people was fascinating. And just asking them about their health and safety, they knew it came from a good place, but people volunteered a lot of really interesting stuff. And I did not know how complex everyone's lives were. It's so easy to paint a broad brush of middle class professional employees, but what they're going through with their own families and children and aging parents and things like that was really outstanding. I learned a tremendous amount about our people. They shared a lot.
Dave Hulsen (03:14):
And since then, we've talked a lot more about mental health, specifically. Mental wellness, I should say. And that has become one of our biggest things. Not just because people want to win, but you don't want to burn people out. But even more than that, we were talking about isolation. We were talking about people being overburdened, resources for parents. We set up little resource areas for parents who are trying to... I called it parents as teachers. I don't care what I call that area. But if you had something you could put out there, people with similarly aged kids could go out there and grab some ideas. And because all of a sudden a lot of us were stuck at home either by ourselves, which is horrible or with a bunch of screaming little humans that needed something to do. And not [crosstalk 00:04:01] just turn on a movie. I mean.
Lisa Rehurek (04:05):
Yeah. And then teachers, all of a sudden they have to be teachers, right. I mean, I don't have kids, so it was brutal to see what they had to... It's like another full-time job piled on top of their already crazy life. Yeah.
Dave Hulsen (04:20):
I'm in my house right now. And our office is technically back open for those who are able and comfortable going. And I am actually just recovering from my second shot today. I'm about 85% right now. But [crosstalk 00:04:36] we have to be much more intentional. And so our return to the office Air Quotes' plan is much more intentional than we ever had with an office plan. But we never had an office plan before. It started [crosstalk 00:04:48] with two people in my dining room and then it morphed from there. And we just never thought about that. It just happened. But now we have to think about, "Well, what does an office mean? How do we get people together to have meaningful relationships?" And while I've really enjoyed working from home and being closer to my family than ever, there's also something to be said for all the cross training, knowledge sharing, comradery, that needs to go on.
Dave Hulsen (05:14):
And there are people who like myself, I found out I'm much more introverted than I thought. I hated going to business development meetings anyway. So I don't have to go to them now. But, I need to be pulled back into the office. And I need that because those interactions are meaningful. And you just, you see somebody getting coffee and you just have these conversations and it's not happening over the way. It's that, so. And I just read something the other night that was about there's something to be said too, with putting on your uniform, put on dress for the-
Lisa Rehurek (05:52):
Oh, sure.
Dave Hulsen (05:53):
... Dress for job. You drive 15 minutes if you're lucky. Some people obviously a long time have to drive to work an hour or so. But just that mental shift is a big deal. And, I mean wearing t-shirt and walking down to the basement every day. And I never had that shift for the last year. And we need that. So [crosstalk 00:06:15] shift into work, shift out.
Lisa Rehurek (06:16):
Yeah. And it's funny, you and I had this conversation before we hit record about, "Okay, well, I've got barking dogs, potential over here, and you've got kids and that's a whole new thing that we've not ever had to deal with. And, it's with Zoom, we put on the top shirt, whatever it looks like. And we won't talk about pajama bottoms or shorts or whatever we have on the people can't see. But I loved your comment about kind of that comradery at The Water Cooler Air Quotes. I think a lot of companies used to frown upon to some degrees, especially old school companies, right. That like, "Oh, you're wasting time." But there were so many indirect benefits to that, that I think we're losing out on as well.
Lisa Rehurek (06:55):
And I know there's companies out there that have tried to do Zoom coffee. They've tried to do all of that open office hours. And so I think there's a lot of good that's come from it, but I know I'm an extrovert. So I'm happy that things are starting to open up a little bit more and we'll be out there more, but employee engagement is such an important topic. And we could probably talk about that for an hour. Right?
Dave Hulsen (07:19):
Oh yeah. You bet.
Lisa Rehurek (07:21):
Well, congratulations to you on having such great employee engagement and that you took the time. Because I would imagine too, for your employees to get a phone call from you, the founder of the company. That's a pretty big deal. And you're just calling them one-on-one. That's a pretty special moment for probably most everybody in the company.
Dave Hulsen (07:42):
I think that sounds better unless you knew that we're 45 people and that I'm also the IT support line. So, people already had that kind of direct communication with me. [crosstalk 00:07:55] but we've always been a very flat organization. We've grown over time. But you're right. It comes up in employee reviews. We do stay interviews. So we have an independent HR executive who does a lot of things around the company, but she also does these stay interviews. And that's one of the things that comes up that people like, that they're being asked, "What do they like about being here? What would create, what would happen for you to think about going somewhere else?" And some things we can't control, but those things we can control, let's do it. Because as we all know, replacing somebody is, super expensive.
Lisa Rehurek (08:33):
Always expensive. And honestly, I think sometimes just being asked is huge. Right? Just feeling that they're being heard, I think is a big deal. Okay. So let's talk about moving forward. So obviously for the past 13 plus months, we've been learning as we go with quarantine, pandemic, all of everything that we're talking about here. But what are you keen to keep your eye on in the industry as we move forward? So what does six months look like? What does 12 months look like for you from an industry perspective?
Dave Hulsen (09:04):
As I think about six months from now through maybe I guess the end of the year of this calendar year. We're going to be adjusting back kind of the what we talked about, the hybrid. The hybrid office model for many. It's still only 30 to 40% of people had the ability to work from home. So this isn't affecting everybody. But-
Lisa Rehurek (09:23):
Interesting.
Dave Hulsen (09:25):
... Because our software and that was from a podcast, I listened to a couple of weeks... Months ago. And I forget where the data came from, but everybody in manufacturing and hospitality, well, there's a lot of stuff you can't do from home. But a lot of the RFP related work that we're seeing is stuff that you can do from a computer, obviously. So I think that there is going to be a lot more intentional sourcing. Because now we're taking a breath. So I'll say, we always used an online platform, like Zoom or go to Meeting and other options out there.
Dave Hulsen (10:01):
But a lot of people just, I think just put their credit card in and started going. I think and I would love to hear from people at Zoom and those, the like. If they got any RFPs in the past year, or if people just came out and said, "We need this." We had one day to move from office to home environment. And so we just bought something. And now we can say, "You know what, hey, Zoom's cool, but what about Teams or Meet or whatever." I think people will be more intentional. And I just use those video conferencing as an example, but I think a lot of people really scrambled for things and now we can take a breath.
Lisa Rehurek (10:40):
I agree.
Dave Hulsen (10:40):
So I see that as being, I think, swapping out of systems and, or maybe things weren't integrated all the way because it was just a hurried thing. 12 months from now though, we're settled in to whatever it is. Whatever that new model is [crosstalk 00:10:58] for some of the normal. The new normal. Yeah, which impacts people differently. I mean, it has huge impacts to socioeconomic lines. We had a nice 2020 as a company and our employees were, I mean, we hired people in 2020 and that's not... You can't pick up the newspaper without reading lots of horrible, horrible things. And that, we know we were lucky. And our employees were lucky. We're professional tech workers especially are in a very good spot. But people will be rethinking a lot of their processes. So for example, I don't know if I would move my legal or tax work to a different company because of this.
Dave Hulsen (11:46):
But some of our firms kept sending us invoices via postal mail to your office. And I've always asked them to stop doing that, to email us this stuff. And in one way, I got their attention this year was to stop paying their bills. Because I didn't get them. Right. Because they were going to the office. And so there are going to be, in the next 12 months. I think again, back to now I can take a break and think about things. People are going to be looking at a lot of these paper or in-person things that they did and say, "Do we really need to be doing it like that?" Onboarding employees is a tough thing. And there is... We got into a gray area. We actually had to send our HR person to the office [inaudible 00:12:28] to somebody's home to verify their I-9s or whatever that is, their documentation. Because by our interpretation, you weren't allowed to just hold up your passport to the computer-
Lisa Rehurek (12:39):
That's true.
Dave Hulsen (12:40):
... Camera. And do this like, how do you onboard somebody in Hawaii when you're in Kansas city? I mean, so.
Lisa Rehurek (12:47):
Right. I mean, that's the challenge anyway. Right? So now we [crosstalk 00:12:53] started looking at ways to fix that.Yeah.
Dave Hulsen (12:55):
Yeah. We took our family to stay with some relatives in California and I was just, we said, "We're working from our basement or bedroom why not work from a different state?" And if there's anybody's from the IRS, I did not say that. But this called into question a lot of the things we do. And anytime I see a piece of paper now, I'm like, "Oh, we got to get rid of that." Or I went to my office and I was like, "Why do I have these whiteboards?" Because I'm not spending time here every day. So I can't make my to-do list on a whiteboard because when I'm home tomorrow, I can't see it.
Dave Hulsen (13:32):
So, little things. And that will change. Now. Our customers are largely in the indirect sourcing arena. So professional services, technology, that kind of stuff. They're not buying raw materials. They're not talking about global supply chains. And I have no clue what's going on with that stuff. But if you're buying professional services and technology and stuff. I mean, it is just, there's going to be a lot of level setting and changes. And so a lot of stuff can go through RFP. So.
Lisa Rehurek (14:02):
Yeah, I agree. It's, it's interesting. We expect to see an influx. Now we saw a drop in RFPs in 2020. I think again, we work mostly as state municipal governments. And I think as they were trying to figure out, what the heck they were doing and how to shift to working from home and all of that. They just extended contracts and sole sourced and did things like that. And most of the RFPs got pulled. I mean, we've got people who submitted RFPs in April of last year and they still haven't gotten an answer. So those agencies and whatnot are still trying to figure it all out. But, so we're already coming into 2021 seeing an influx in RFPs then with the potential infrastructure bill that's going to start coming out later this year into 2022, I think we'll see more. And then to your point, I think people are just going to change. I think we're going to see more RFPs coming out just because they can, and they'll be used to that now. So.
Dave Hulsen (15:02):
It's not just a nuance that there were organizations that pushed a... That's a huge deal. Right? Because there were all these people that have desktop computers at the office. And all the sudden they couldn't go into them. And you're right. People just like, yeah. Our contract got extended. And that's not always good. I mean, that's good for the incumbent obviously, but [crosstalk 00:15:27] it's not good for all these, for the shareholders [inaudible 00:15:30] the tax payers, all this kind of stuff. Competition's a wonderful thing. Case in point. We have extreme amounts of competition on our responder side product. And what that is meant to us has been a lot of late night work. But what it means to our users, is continual innovation.
Lisa Rehurek (15:49):
Great point.
Dave Hulsen (15:50):
I'm not a... I don't even know what that economic term is because I'm pretty, I don't know. I'll say maybe left on certain things, but that is such an amazing thing for me to see firsthand is what competition does. How it makes us sit forward in our chairs, get to work [crosstalk 00:16:10] get new stuff out.
Dave Hulsen (16:11):
And whether customers leave us or come to us, whatever, there is constant change in the right direction for the right reasons. And the bad products will fall apart. And the good products will not take all but share in the market. And that's good for everybody. So, we need that. We need competition. State and local government entities need competition. We all need it.
Lisa Rehurek (16:33):
I 100% agree with you on that. So.
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Lisa Rehurek (17:01):
I love that you all really pay attention. I think there's a lot of companies out there that kind of pay attention and they do what they have to do. But it sounds like you guys are, like you said, you kind of sit up straight in your chair and lean forward and lean into that innovation that makes your company better. So that's great. We love to hear that. All right. So when somebody needs a software system to help them submit RFPs more efficiently, what is the metric revenue or number of RFPs being submitted annually that choosing a best fit RFP software becomes non-negotiable for their progress?
Dave Hulsen (17:36):
Simple answer. If you have to pass up an RFP because your capacity is reached, then that's a no brainer. If you're lucky enough to have a team, let's say you've got 10 people in your proposal writing team, and they're always busy on stuff. A new RFP comes in and you're just like, "Where do we put it?" Then you definitely need to either hire more people or change your process to streamline some things. That's one side. The flip side of that is, if this is a couple of RFPs a year, don't think that technology is a crutch. As they define a system of people process and technology, back to another thing we talked about a while ago, this is a time to really think about your system in general. People process and technology. And so many people, myself included reach out to a technology to solve a problem.
Dave Hulsen (18:32):
And that is only one third of the solution. So if you've got multiple people working on proposals, that means coordinators, writers, even subject matter experts. If you have a bunch of people dipping their toe in the proposal writing process, some sort of technology is really good. Because if you're passing around a Word document or something via email, Anybody who does that knows that the version control is ridiculous. If you're having to check things in or out or something, and people are checking something out and working on it and not checking it back in, that's not ideal either. So is collaborative and real-time, as you can get is important. So, if you've got multiple people touching things, if you've got quick turnaround times where efficiency matters. If anybody, well, and all proposal writers are overwhelmed. So, that's just part of the process.
Dave Hulsen (19:30):
The other I will say, we're seeing more part of the broader trends in the world, just decentralized teams. And so we've got a customer that does, has come to our company meetings to talk about how they do things. And our person is kind of the leader and the proposal writer. But then she relies on all these people from all around the world. The technology team over here [crosstalk 00:19:54] in Europe and the such and such over here, and technology enables her to maintain all of that, across time zones and cultural differences. So it's team structure. So a little... Yeah. But I would say, write down your people process and technologies that you use, and that's the first step. If you can document all this stuff, and you say, "Oh, we've got to figure it out. We only do four RFP response this year." Well, great. But just don't call us two days before your response is due and you want to make it better because that's not how technology works.
Lisa Rehurek (20:31):
Well and I love how you said, "If they've got a tight turnaround" And I'm like, "I feel like they're always tight turnarounds." Even if you have plenty of time, like for us, if somebody has an eight week window or sometimes even a six week, they get on it for a couple of weeks. Because they think that they've got all the time in the world and then before you know the time's short.So.
Dave Hulsen (20:49):
Dashboards help with that. So a lot of these tools, tie into your CRM role or whatever. And I spend a lot of time I'm in our system every day in our application every day. And I've got a bunch of tasks for a couple of RFPs we're responding to right now. And when I go to the dashboard and I see that somebody is waiting on me. Even if it's 10 days out still. I see that I'm the bottleneck for a couple of responses that need my approval, or somebody needs me to write something. That public humiliation is, and I use that term jokingly, but the publicity is important. Just accountability is a big thing.
Dave Hulsen (21:28):
Individual accountability. This goes back to my tenants of transparency. In everything you do is really important. And so sending a document to somebody and saying, "Can you work on these five responses?" And then you send them a reminder and they're like, "Oh yeah. I'm almost finished with that." Well, what they really mean is they didn't start it yet. And so when you do bring it into, if you use some technology where they can be collaborative and you can see that they've actually not written anything or they really are close, you can't hide from that stuff. So [crosstalk 00:21:57]. Yeah.
Lisa Rehurek (22:01):
That's good.
Dave Hulsen (22:02):
A public humiliation. Not a bad thing.
Lisa Rehurek (22:06):
That's fantastic. Well, Dave, this has been such a great conversation. Do you have any final thoughts for our listeners? Anything that we haven't covered that you want to toss out there?
Dave Hulsen (22:15):
I am incredibly appreciative of anybody who is in the RFP space. Both on the buyer or seller side. I'm married to somebody who responds to RFPs all the time. We talk about RFPs all the time. That being said, some of my family members still don't know what an RFP is. And I say, "That's great. You'll live a long and healthy life, not knowing. It is not a glamorous way of doing... It's not meant to be sexy and cool. It's meant to be objective and get the job done." And you go to the APMP or somewhere like that. And you see a bunch of people who are hardworking, team player, writers who I always know are getting the proper credit. [crosstalk 00:23:04] business [inaudible 00:23:04] like salespeople or are like high five in each other and at the bar and I'm generalizing that obviously. But the proposal writers in the personas that I've used for a number of years have been the proposal coordinator who is literally herding cats. That is a thankless job [crosstalk 00:23:23] and the thankless job and so we need more people to appreciate that.
Dave Hulsen (23:27):
And there're even the subject matter experts who realize that they are the cats. Just accept that you are the cats and this person's job is to wrangle the knowledge out of your head, which is why technology is also important. To get that knowledge out of their head and into usable format. Anyway, I appreciate everything that proposal writers do. I also appreciate on the other side what buyers do. I hate poorly worded RFPs, poorly structured RFPs [crosstalk 00:23:54]. There are some really good ones out there. There are some people who were looking for partners. And you can tell it in their RFPs. And thank you to those people who are thoughtful in that.
Lisa Rehurek (24:04):
Great messages Dave. It's interesting we worked with one of our clients on an RFP a few years back and just the nature of how everything worked out. One of the subject matter experts had to go onsite and help produce the RFP. And it was in a different city. They had anyway. Long story. After that experience, he messaged us and said, "I will never miss a deadline again." Because he... Most subject matter experts, actually, most everybody outside of the proposal, coordinators and managers don't have to experience what it feels like at the tail end and when people are missing deadlines and all of that.
Lisa Rehurek (24:41):
And so I wish I could just to replicate that feeling that he was feeling at that moment. Because he's like, "This was hard, and I will never miss a deadline again." So yeah. We need to have all of everybody appreciate that. I think they take it for granted. So Dave, thank you so much for being here and sharing your wisdom with our guests. I greatly appreciate this. And as always, thank you to our listeners for tuning in. You have been listening to the RFP Success Show.
Advert (25:09):
This Has been in another episode of the RFP Success Show, with Lisa Rehurek, eight time author, speaker, and CEO of the RFP Success Company. 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 meet outside support. The RFP Success Company, helps increase RFP win ratios by 10, 20 and even 50%. Learn more at therfpsuccesscompany.com.