EP085: The 4x4 Framework for RFP Success, Part 1—Strategy
To consistently win bids with your proposals, you need four puzzle pieces in place—strategy, process, content and people. And here at the RFP Success Company, we call these components the 4x4 Framework for RFP Success.
For the next four weeks, I’m walking you through each of the four elements of the framework, beginning with STRATEGY.
So, what does a successful RFP strategy look like?
On this episode of The RFP Success Show, I discuss the four types of strategy a company needs to enjoy a win rate of 70 to 80%.
I describe the difference between a business development strategy and a bid strategy, explaining why you need to get clear on your target audience and how your differentiators should change from bid to bid.
Listen in for insight on developing an intelligence strategy around both your targets and competitors—and learn how to initiate and nurture relationships with the organizations you want to do business with!
Key Takeaways
The 4 elements of the RFP Success Company’s 4x4 framework
Strategy
Process
Content
People
The 4 components of a successful RFP strategy
Business development strategy
Bid strategy
Relationship strategy
Intelligence strategy
How digging deep into your target audience helps a company identify what opportunities to go after
Why every RFP requires a different bid strategy
How your RFP theme and differentiators should change from bid to bid
Why your chances of winning are under 5% when you bid cold
How to initiate and nurture your relationships with target clients
Why it’s crucial to research both your targets and competitors
RFP Success Show EP85 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 and 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):
Hello, everybody. Welcome to The RFP Success Show. I am Lisa Rehurek, your host, and this show is sponsored by The RFP Success Company. Today, we're going to do a little series, actually, we're going to start a little series, and we're talking about The RFP Success Company's four-by-four framework. We're going to break this up into four different segments because there's four different pieces of the puzzle in this framework. The reason that I want to talk about this is this is the framework that we use with our clients and it's relatively simple, but it covers all of the pieces of what it takes to be successful consistently in RFP responses.
(01:08):
It was interesting because I had a conversation not too long ago with somebody who said, "Well, I think that win rates, they don't make sense, they're skewed because just because a company has a high win rate doesn't mean that they're better than the companies that have a low win rate, it just means that they're only bidding on things that they know they can win," and I had to chuckle because, yes, that is part of the strategy. Why would we ever want to go eat food at a restaurant that we know we're not going to like? That's what I look at it as. It's like we're going into something knowing that we're probably going to lose. Why would you do that?
(01:48):
It's our mission at The RFP Success Company to make sure that people understand how important it is to have the pieces of the puzzle all together instead of just trying to... Again, if you're trying to put a puzzle together, but you've only got one-quarter of the puzzle pieces, the whole puzzle is never going to come together, and so that's what I want to do with this is I want to walk through each piece of the puzzle, if you will, again, our framework, that is going to allow you to understand what you need to be successful, what you need to be in the 70, 80% win rates instead of the 20, 30, 40% win rates. It isn't just about that RFP and how you respond to it. There's a lot of other things.
(02:36):
The four pieces of our framework, the four elements of our framework, are strategy, process, content, and people. Pretty simplistic, right? We're going to walk through each one of those. This week, we're going to talk about strategy. We're going to dive deep in. These are going to be all little snippets, short podcasts, but I'm going to talk through each one of and all of the pieces of the puzzle that we dig deep into when we're peeling the onion back with a company. Again, strategy, process, content, and people. This week, we'll talk about strategy. Next week, we'll talk about process. The next one, we'll talk about content, and we'll end with people.
(03:18):
Let's dive into strategy. We call this our "four-by-four framework," and the reason is is because there's four key elements, there's strategy, process, content, and people, and then there's four areas underneath each one of those that are the key elements that need to be in alignment in your company in order for you to have that successful win rate, right? The first of the four areas is your business development strategy. This is something that should be happening at the company level. You should have a business development strategy that talks about where your sales are going to come from, talks about how you're going to go about that, and RFPs are one sale's avenue. Now, there's some companies out there that RFPs are a hundred percent of their revenue, but most of the time, RFPs are just a sliver, maybe more than a sliver, maybe 50%, maybe 70%. For some companies, it's 10%, but it's only one piece of the pie of your business development strategy.
(04:15):
But in that business development strategy, the other thing that generally is indicated is who are your target clients: Who do you want to work with and why? The better companies dig deep into that business development strategy around target audience. They dig deep around who do we want to be working with, what industries, what are their demographics, but also, what are their psychographics? Meaning, what is their attitude towards hiring this type of a product or a service? How do they value partners? How do they pay? Things like that, so there's all sorts of elements to that target audience, and the more you know and the more tuned in your company is to who those are, the better you're going to be at identifying the opportunities that you need. You're going to hear me come back to some of these things like target audience because it's that important.
(05:13):
Also, when you know your business development strategy and you have a solid business development strategy, it's much easier, then, to know what opportunities to go after and which ones to stay far away from. It helps you know who you should or shouldn't partner with, who you should be marketing to and building relationships with, and we're going to talk about that here in a minute, so that business development strategy really sets the stage. Something that my dad says, and you've maybe heard me say this, because I say it a lot now, too, a quote that he heard a long time ago is "If you don't get the foundation right, it will follow you all the way to the roof," so if you're not laying the cement foundation with your business development strategy, everything that you pile on top of it has a lesser chance of standing up straight, so you want to get that right, and if your company doesn't do one, you better get on board with that because it's hugely important, so you can help influence that if it's not already being done. That's number one under strategy.
(06:16):
There's so much more behind a failed RFP than just lost revenue. Employee engagement decreases with each loss and a Gallup survey suggests that it costs up to 10 grand in salary per employee with 15% lower profits. If you're ready to increase your win rate consistently and put our winning and repeatable strategies in place, schedule your consultation now at bit.ly/chatrfp, that's Bitly, B-I-T dot L-Y forward slash chatrfp.
(06:42):
Number two is your bid strategy. A lot of times, people think that business development strategy and bid strategy are the same, but they are not at all. Business development strategy, again, is your overarching strategy for the company, whereas your bid strategy is the strategy for an individual RFP that you have on your plate right now. Every single RFP that you respond to should have a different strategy associated with it because that client has different challenges and different wants and needs and wishes and you're going to have different competitors likely on different opportunities, so you really need to understand your bid strategy. What your bid strategy looks like is: What value are you going to bring to this client? What solution are you going to propose? Now, they're going to tell you what solution they want, they're going to tell you what they think they want, but your job is also to make sure that you're giving them what they need.
(07:42):
In number three, we're going to talk about relationship strategy and force intelligence strategy. There's a lot of information that you need to have going into this. You can't bid cold and have any semblance of a bid strategy, so if you're bidding cold, please know that your chance of winning is under 5%. It's probably under 2%. It doesn't mean it can't happen. There are extenuating circumstances. Sometimes they don't have relationships built with anybody for this particular type of a project, and so everybody's on equal footing there, but you probably don't know that going in, so you really need to make sure that you understand the client in order to understand what value you're going to bring, what solution you're going to provide.
(08:31):
What is your theme of your proposal? Meaning, what do you really want them to know that if that's the one thing that they walk away and they associate with your company, what is that theme? What is your competitive advantage? Who will your competitors be and what is your competitive advantage? What are the elephants in the room that you need to address? Those differentiators and distinguishers are very important and they change. This is also something that a lot of companies don't pay attention to, the fact that your differentiators will change from bid to bid. All of that is part of your bid strategy and that needs to be set early on in order for your writing team to write the best that they can write towards the solution, so that bid strategy, very important. Number two, bid strategy. We've talked number one, business development strategy, number two, bid strategy.
(09:27):
Number three is relationship strategy and relationship strategy is all about being proactive, so you can't go build your relationships with people if you don't know who your target audience is, so now, we're already going back to number one on this foundation to say, "Okay, who do we need to be going in after?" It is not a successful culture to just sit back and wait for those RFPs to come to you. You have to be building those relationships. I would say a good 50 to 60% of companies that call us haven't done any of this and they're just trying to bid on something that came across their desk because they can. Just because you can does not mean you should, so you need to be proactive in your relationship strategy. When you're identifying those targets in the business development strategy, now you know, okay, these are the kinds of companies we want to go after, or government entities we want to go after, so let's go build a relationship game plan. Let's have a relationship strategy so that we lay out how we're going to go meet these people and nurture those relationships.
(10:38):
Then last but not least is intelligent strategy. What I mean by that is really researching your targets, kind of a subset of relationship strategy, right? You're going to go out and build these relationships, but also making sure that you have intelligence around your competitors, intelligence around, particularly if you're in the government side of things, bidding on government contracts, on contract lengths and who incumbents are if this is an existing contract out there, all of that kind of stuff. Somebody's got to be owning that function in your organization because all of that information really lends itself to making sure that you can have the right bid strategy, so you can see already how all of this builds on top of each other, and we're only in the first element of our framework.
(11:28):
Again, business development, strategy, bid strategy, relationship strategy, and intelligence strategy. Again, what happens when you don't have a good strategy? If you don't get the foundation right, it's going to follow you all the way to the roof. Once you have this strategy and you know what you're doing, now we've got to take a look at your processes. That's what we're going to talk about in our next episode is all about your RFP processes and what you need to look for, what you need to have in place.
(12:00):
Thanks for being here. Thanks for listening. Again, you've been listening to The RFP Success Show with me, your host, Lisa Rehurek, and we'll see you here next time.
(12:09):
This has been 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 need outside support, The RFP Success Company helps increase RFP win ratios by 10, 20, and even 50%. Learn more at therfpsuccesscompany.com.