EP092: Using Empathy and Self Reflection to Create Success and Get Wins - with Deb Zahn
Crafting your #RFP to get a win is a large and technical undertaking. But telling the story of why your business is going to do something wonderful for this world can be the key to getting on your reviewer’s good side. How can you make sure you are doing everything you can to get your RFP approved? Does taking a moment to step back and reflect on your mistakes help you get ahead as an entrepreneur?
Deb Zahn is the Founder and CEO of Craft of Consulting, a firm dedicated to helping accomplished professionals start, build and grow their own consulting businesses. A practicing consultant herself, Deb has earned a reputation for getting high-value contracts with hard-to-get clients, turning them into her biggest fans and best marketers. Deb also has 25 years of experience with RFPS, yielding over $100M in business for her clients.
On this episode of The RFP Success Show, Deb dives in to what it’s like to work on an RFP from a reviewer's perspective. And why this perspective is necessary to think about when crafting your reports. She also lays out some of the biggest mistakes she has seen in RFPs, reviewers, and consultants.
Deb lays out why crafting a gripping narrative throughout an RFP will benefit a client more than technical writing. She also offers advice for every entrepreneur on how to achieve growth by reflecting on your mistakes.
Listen in to learn more about how being a great reviewer and entrepreneur revolves more around empathy and self-reflection than just getting the technical aspects down. And how not taking the time to cultivate those true feelings will get in the way of your success.
Key Takeaways
Continuing the conversation with Deb about being a consultant
What the biggest mistakes responders make in their RFP responses and how to avoid them
Deb's reviewer horror story and why writing thoughtful RFP responses will not only help your reviewer but your request
How to make sure you actually answer the questions in your RFP
How using your narrative throughout your request is crucial to getting a win
Why empathy and self-reflection are the number one thing every consultant and entrepreneur needs to be successful
Why recognizing your mistakes is a key to success as an entrepreneur
RFP Success Show EP92 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):
Welcome back to the RP Success Show. We are bringing you part two of my interview with Deb Zahn. Deb Zahn is deemed the consultant for consultants. She is brilliant. She has a lot of really great golden nuggets, and we had a very robust conversation. So I wanted to make sure to not cut that off and bring you part two today. So welcome back to my interview with Deb Zahn. So what do you think one of the biggest mistakes responders make in their RFP responses?
Deb Zahn (00:52):
Yeah. Well, can I tell it in the version of a horror story?
Lisa Rehurek (00:56):
Yes, please.
Deb Zahn (00:57):
Okay. So there I was.
Lisa Rehurek (01:01):
Everybody, turn your lights out. [crosstalk 00:01:03].
Deb Zahn (01:03):
Exactly. So I was a reviewer, and I was a reviewer for a federal opportunity. I promised to do it. I was actually doing a favor for a friend of mine, and this was not my normal job. So that meant I had to do it on evenings and weekends, which I didn't think about when I said yes. So I'm like everybody else. I don't really want to review RFP responses on my evenings and weekends. So usually, I'm already tired and grumpy by the time that I get my stack. Then what happened is there were two reviewers that bailed that suddenly they didn't have. So my stack doubled in size.
Lisa Rehurek (01:46):
So how many did you have?
Deb Zahn (01:48):
So I had a total ... I think I ended up with between 40 and 50.
Lisa Rehurek (01:54):
Yikes.
Deb Zahn (01:56):
They were up to 50 pages.
Lisa Rehurek (01:59):
So that's crazy. I always say reviewers are maybe reviewing three to five, but 30 to 40 is a lot. So listeners, pay attention to that. Yeah.
Deb Zahn (02:08):
Yeah. This was one where everybody and their dog was applying for it, so it was really difficult to find reviewers. Now, that meant a couple things. One is you overtaxed the reviewers that you had, but the other thing is they had reviewers that did not know the subject extremely well, because anybody who knew the subject well was being paid to help write a response. So I had a stack that I agreed to, and then it I think nearly doubled, because they had some reviewers at the last minute who for good reasons couldn't do it. So you can just imagine. Just imagine descending into further layers of grumpiness, because I have this in front of me. Then I had a checklist in front of me that followed the exact flow of the RFP, which is quite typical. Anytime I've reviewed, it does exactly that.
Deb Zahn (02:59):
As I started to review the first few, and, again, this is typical, they decided, I suspect because I've heard clients say this, that they should change the order because they wanted the narrative flow to be better. What that meant was that they put it out of order of my checklist. So what they expected me to do was to thumb through the narrative and figure out where they put it or they would put, "This question answered in section four, paragraph B," and they expected me to turn pages and go find where they answered my question. So I might've had that patience in the first two or three-
Lisa Rehurek (03:42):
Maybe.
Deb Zahn (03:42):
... that I reviewed, maybe.
Lisa Rehurek (03:44):
Maybe. Yeah.
Deb Zahn (03:44):
Then after that, I was like, "Forget it. If you didn't tell me when you were supposed to tell me, I'm going to assume it was non-responsive." So that got me increasingly frustrated, because things were out of order. I know where it comes from, because I've had clients who I've been helping who are like, "Yeah, their order doesn't make sense." I said, "Yeah, it doesn't need to. It's their order. They're in charge. This is the order we're going to do it in," or it's repetitive. I'm like, "Right. So we're going to repeat ourselves."
Deb Zahn (04:10):
So I didn't have very long to review it. I basically had a few evenings and a couple of weekends to review it. I was just cranky and bored at the end of it. Then people kept putting in paragraphs that were filled with jargon and literally said nothing. I'm smart. I don't understand what they were talking about, because they weren't talking about anything. It was just filler, and the filler just made me increasingly frustrated. Then occasionally, I would get one that was beautiful. It brings a tear to my eye to this day. It was in the right order. They actually answered the questions and then shut up. I literally would exclaim out loud, "Thank you. How hard is it?" So when I'm doing that, that's the type of thing that I'm assuming. So on good days, I've actually never as a reviewer only reviewed three. I've never reviewed fewer than 10.
Lisa Rehurek (05:13):
Wow. That's a great point, right?
Deb Zahn (05:16):
10 is better than 40 or 50, but when it's a 50-page document, it's really tough. It's really tough to not start to skim. I know I'm not supposed to skim. So I try really hard not to. But I'm tired, and you're making me cranky. That was one instance where suddenly two reviewers bailed. It was a horror story as a reviewer. So I was looking for people who made it easy for me to score higher and who it was a delight to read, because not only did I think that they were going to do something wonderful in the world, but they were making it easy for me to see that they wanted to do something wonderful in the world that matched what the RFP was for.
Lisa Rehurek (06:01):
Don't you think, too, it makes you feel like, "Okay, now I can see also how it's going to be to work with these people"?
Deb Zahn (06:07):
Exactly.
Lisa Rehurek (06:07):
"These people are making easy, and these people are making it really hard."
Deb Zahn (06:10):
That's right. So every experience that you give people, doesn't matter what it's for, tells them what it's going to be like to work with you. Nobody, I don't care how good you are, wants to work with somebody that's going to annoy them like that.
Lisa Rehurek (06:23):
Yep. Yep. Yeah, it's so true. I think we will hope that most reviewers are on the up and up and they're going to, like you, really dive in and do as much as they can to not skim. But at the end of the day, you've got reviewers that are looking for excuses to set that in the no pile-
Deb Zahn (06:42):
That's right.
Lisa Rehurek (06:43):
... because there's so many on their plate. To your point, most of the time, the reviewers have a full-time job, and this is something that's added on top of that. They're pulled in at the last minute, because other people couldn't do it. I mean, there's all sorts of reasons, and then one of the things that I always say, as a matter of fact, in my book ... I wrote a book called the RFP Success Book, and in that book, I've got a fictional character. One day, he comes in and is asked to evaluate a proposal, but he's hung over. So he's not in the mood. We also don't know what everybody's going through, all those reviewers are going through and what mood they're in.
Deb Zahn (07:18):
That's right. Yeah, and how much wine they're drinking while they're doing it. Now, I don't do that, because I don't drink much. But you've got to understand it's the evenings and weekends, and you're taking them away from their family. You're taking away from things they love. You have no idea what's happening in their lives when they're doing it. They might be homeschooling kids because of COVID, and they're freaking tired. This is their only free time, and you're making them angry.
Lisa Rehurek (07:45):
Yeah. So you've got to do something to turn that around immediately.
Deb Zahn (07:50):
Yeah, nice.
Lisa Rehurek (07:50):
I love that. Such great advice. For everybody listening, right, there is so many little golden nuggets in there that you think are so small. One of our biggest things that we tell people is answer the damn question. Just answer the question. I loved your addition to that, and then shut up, right? Answer the question. Every time, people will say, "Well, we answer the questions." I'm like, "Do you?" We do something called an RFP audit. So we'll be going through and we'll be looking at past proposals for them, and I'll circle them. I'm like, "Here's all the questions that you didn't answer." They're like, "Oh, man." It's human nature, because there's anxiety because we're working on a deadline. The RFP doesn't make sense to us. There's a million reasons why that happens. But answer the damn question.
Deb Zahn (08:32):
Yeah. We tell our clients when I work with them that there's a difference between responding to the question and being responsive to the question.
Lisa Rehurek (08:40):
Ooh, I love that.
Deb Zahn (08:41):
You can take that. They have to be the latter. So if I see that they're not being really responsive, I'll just say, "Forget what's on a page. Tell me," and then they'll tell me and I'll either say, "That's not what you have in writing" or "It sounds like you're not really clear on what you ultimately want to do and what you're proposing. So now let's stop there, and let's get that clarity that you need." Again, folks who do RFP work, that's where you get high hit rates, is by doing that.
Lisa Rehurek (09:12):
Yep, exactly. It's interesting that you say that, because we do that all the time, too. I'll ask people, "What's your real value add here?" or "What are your true differentiators in this particular opportunity?" They'll freeze, and I'll ask them to write it, right? They'll send me back some, "We are really good at customer service, and we're really good at this." I'm like, "No, no, no." Then we get on the phone, and I have them talk through it. Once they get into a role, it's amazing how it can roll off the tongue. So it's like they've got it in their brains, but the minute that we try to write something down, we shift gears into some weird abnormality.
Deb Zahn (09:50):
Yes.
Lisa Rehurek (09:50):
Isn't that strange?
Deb Zahn (09:52):
Yeah, like we've lost our ability to tell a clear story, or maybe we never had it. But it's the difference between ... I believe in stories and narratives. I know that when you're responding to an RFP, even if it's disjointed because of the way that they've organized it, I'm taking the reviewer on a journey to yes and that each part of that is almost like a chapter or a portion of a movie where you're drawing them in even further to what you're trying to accomplish. Yeah, and I've seen people who are the most amazing storytellers freeze when it comes to an RFP. Now I either don't know what the heck you're saying or I am so bored, I don't care what you're saying. So how do we liven that up? We do the same thing you do where we'll get on and say, "So just tell me like we're at a cocktail party and you're trying to impress me." Then they'll tell you the most amazing stories, and I'm like, "Why is that not here?"
Lisa Rehurek (10:51):
Right? It's like we forget our own business or we forget. It is kind of crazy. We see it all the time. The other thing that you said that I really want to hone in on is you were talking about getting too boring, and here's the deal. A lot of the proposals and certainly a lot that we work on are very technical, right? So we get technical writers in there that are writing the technical response. I'm here to tell you I get that the reviewers want to know that you can do it and they want to know to some degree how you can do it. But at the end of the day, they don't want to read that technical dribble. So you've got to have somebody that can come in and smooth those edges off and, to Deb's point, right, to really tell the story and weave that story throughout the entire thing, because your technical writers are not going to be it.
Deb Zahn (11:44):
That's right.
Lisa Rehurek (11:45):
They're giving you the ... Yeah.
Deb Zahn (11:46):
That's right. I will reveal to you something I've never revealed. One of the places I learned that is I used to help friends write their match.com profiles for dating.
Lisa Rehurek (12:00):
Really?
Deb Zahn (12:01):
I have three marriages that are the result of those things, but it's no different. I would see it, and I'm like, "Well, you sound boring and crazy. You're not boring."
Lisa Rehurek (12:11):
You might be crazy, but [crosstalk 00:12:15].
Deb Zahn (12:14):
Yeah. "You might be a little nuts, but guess what? They don't need to hear about your family on the first profile." But it's thinking about who the audience is, what they care about, and not being dishonest, but thinking about who's on the other end and what is going to draw them in, make them trust you, intrigue them about what you're trying to do. You're really trying to hit emotions. You've got to pass the first gate, which is are you being responsive and can you do what you say you're going to do? Then after that, you're trying to create an emotional response that gets them to say yes.
Lisa Rehurek (12:49):
Yeah, and would you agree with this? They can't do that. So the piece that you said what they care about, you don't know that from the RFP.
Deb Zahn (12:58):
Right.
Lisa Rehurek (12:58):
So this is why bidding on cold RFPs is going to result in a loss nine out of ten times.
Deb Zahn (13:05):
That's right.
Lisa Rehurek (13:05):
Probably a little bit more than that. So you've got to go in upfront and put your consulting hat on. I tell you what I think any business development conversation is a consulting conversation.
Deb Zahn (13:16):
That's right.
Lisa Rehurek (13:17):
I don't care what kind of business you're in, and having that conversation to make sure that you learn a little bit about what they care about so that you can write to it in the RFP response.
Deb Zahn (13:25):
Right, or look at what else are they putting out? What other types of RFPs are they putting out? What have they put in written form? What have they done videos about? Get some feel. Do your homework enough so you get ... At least make a good honest guess about the things they care about.
Lisa Rehurek (13:40):
Yes. I love that. I love that.
Announcer (13:43):
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Lisa Rehurek (14:08):
Well, let's go a different direction for a second. So of course we've talked about the fact that you're a consultant for consultants. You've likely seen a whole rash of mistakes over and again from a consultant standpoint. So from your perspective, what's one thing nearly every consultant can be better at?
Deb Zahn (14:25):
Yes. So given that I just said just be responsive to reviewers. I am going to cheat here. I'm going to say it. I'm going to say two because they go hand in hand and they need to be cultivated together. So there are a whole lot of strategies and techniques that consultants need to become really good at, but what underlies those is to be self-reflective and have empathy. Consultants who don't have those actually have a harder time getting and keeping business and delivering on their promises, so self-reflection being being able to look at yourself with honest reflection, make changes so that you get a better outcome. Maybe get out of your own way, which is a big thing I see, so that you can actually get to a yes with a potential client. So it's really just interrogating yourself and what you think is true and not true about yourself in the world around you, not in a mean way, not in a, "Oh my God. I'm so bad, and no wonder my confidence is low," but do it with honesty so that you can actually make better choices.
Deb Zahn (15:29):
Then empathy, which is about being able to put yourself in the other shoes. So if it's a reviewer, put yourself in the shoes of a reviewer. If it's a client, think about it from their perspective, the stressors they have, the things that they're hoping to accomplish. That has to come from a place of empathy to come across as authentic and for them to trust you when you present with it. So you can have all the strategies and techniques in the world, but if you don't have those well-cultivated, self-reflection, well-cultivated empathy, you're just going to have a harder time being successful, because those are the things that are going to let you take really smart action based on reality and not based on whatever version of reality is floating around. It's going to let you take more deliberate actions that are going to be closer to a match for who you're trying to engage.
Lisa Rehurek (16:28):
Sounds like also kind of setting the ego aside, which we all have some element of ego, right? Some level of ego. In my opinion, there's a healthy ego, right? To be a consultant, there's got to be a little bit of ego there, because that supports your confidence in going in. But there's a balance between healthy ego and unhealthy ego.
Deb Zahn (16:51):
That's right, and to know, having confidence ... I mean, people ask me a lot, because I tend to be very confident, is where it comes from. What I tell people is I don't think I know everything, and I don't think I have to know everything. It's not because I think I know everything. So self-reflection comes in handy, because I can say to myself, "You know what? I can knock that out of the park. You know what? That thing, yeah, I shouldn't be anywhere near that. I will just mess that up. Let somebody who's better at that than me do it." I will tell you, clients love that. There is nothing more appealing to my clients than when I say, "No, I shouldn't be doing that. You should get someone who knows what they're doing." It endears them to me like few other things do.
Lisa Rehurek (17:39):
So how did you get like that? I mean, has that just been something that comes naturally to you, or did you have to work on your confidence and that ability to say, "This is not my bailiwick"?
Deb Zahn (17:49):
Oh, yeah. I had to work on all of that. No, I used to be an assertive and no confidence and all of those things. I found that those things just got in my way. So I deliberately through many courses figured out how using self-reflection and empathy as tools to essentially become a person who's not only hopefully a really good person, but also a good consultant. Then certain things helped. I used to be a counselor for severely emotionally disturbed teenage girls.
Lisa Rehurek (18:22):
Oh.
Deb Zahn (18:22):
So that helps you quite a bit, because some of the things that they would do, by the way, sometimes you see them in the business world. The stakes are just different. So there's things like that. Working retail was actually ... I worked at video stores. I waited tables. I mean, those are things that if you really want to make people happy and figure out what makes people tick, those are great places to do it. Then I took those experiences and I sort of gleaned from them in some of what I did. Then some of it was just starting off and making mistakes and then being willing to step back, get past any shame or embarrassment that I may have had about what wasn't working and say to myself, "Okay, what am I doing? What am I not doing? Who knows better about it than I that I can go to and ask for help? What else do I want to try? What do I think's going on?" and just taking that time to more deliberately make choices about what I'm going to do.
Lisa Rehurek (19:25):
Beautiful. There's a lot of golden nuggets right there in what you just said. I love that point about self-awareness and that self-discovery piece that we just have to open our eyes and be willing to do that. I know that that has been something for me as well. I never knew starting my own business would be such \a journey in self-discovery, right? More so than corporate America.
Deb Zahn (19:48):
Oh, goodness. Yeah, and even if you've been successful in the work world before, anytime you start something new, that happens. So as a consultant, I hadn't had imposter syndrome in a decade. I had it at the beginning, and then as I became successful, I didn't have it. Then you start a different business, and suddenly you're like, "Wait, I don't know what that means. Wait, what?" It all comes crashing back.
Lisa Rehurek (20:14):
True. Yeah.
Deb Zahn (20:14):
You have to have grace with yourself so that you know this is part of the deal.
Lisa Rehurek (20:20):
That's beautiful. That's beautiful. Okay. So I have one more kind of last question for you. You recently did an article in which talked about escaping analysis paralysis. Analysis paralysis sometimes can come into play in RFP responses, for sure. For any of you real technical listeners, this for sure is going to hit home. So in that article you shared, I think there was 10 pretty killer tips. Would you be willing to share a few of those with us here?
Deb Zahn (20:45):
Yeah, yeah. So the first one, which is going to be really hard for technical people to hear, which is perfectionism is actually a mistake.
Lisa Rehurek (20:55):
Ooh. Love that.
Deb Zahn (20:57):
So you have to embrace that good enough decisions can get you farther than being stuck in perfectionism. So if you make enough good enough decisions, you can be wildly successful. If you get stuck in trying to be perfect or even figure out what perfect means, you're just stuck. You're not actually moving forward and doing anything. So perfectionism is, I think, one of the biggest mistakes that people make, and it causes them to be paralyzed when they could be out in the world and doing things and it's going to be good enough for them to take the next step.
Deb Zahn (21:33):
Then with that, and this is also really hard for folks, is you've got to just recognize mistakes are going to be a normal part of the process. If you're wise, you use mistakes to be informative and to inform your choices. So I was coaching someone recently who made a mistake, and something happened in a group that she was working with. She felt awful, and she just kind of wanted to hide under the covers and not think about it. I said, "Well, let's break it down because it sounds like you got some really helpful data out of that." She's a data person, so she's like, "Wait. What?" I said, "So let's look at this and sort of think through what did it tell you that you didn't know before? Now you're going to make better choices."
Lisa Rehurek (22:20):
Wow.
Deb Zahn (22:20):
That's a normal part of being an entrepreneur. It's a normal part of responding to an RFP. You absolutely want to know what the mistakes are, not to beat yourself over the head about them, but because they're informative.
Lisa Rehurek (22:34):
Wow. Super helpful, super helpful. I learned some stuff in reading this article myself, so I know it's out there that people can grab. How can people get in touch with you? Because I know people are going to be wanting to. So what's the best way for them to get in touch with you?
Deb Zahn (22:51):
So the best way to get ahold of me is go to my website, which is craftofconsulting.com. If you go there, there's a few places I would direct you to. One, you can go to Start Here, and there's a whole bunch of cool free tools that you can use to start building your business, get your mindset in a better place, prepare for potential meetings with clients. I have a whole checklist for that. Then there's also Get Help. So Get Help as your get help, which is if you need to figure out how to decide what your scope is, who it is you want to serve, how you're going to price yourself. I have a whole bunch of things there that can help folks figure out the sort of nitty gritty things of building a business and growing it over time.
Lisa Rehurek (23:39):
There's great stuff out there. I know I've downloaded tons of stuff from your site. So it's super helpful. Also, Craft of Consulting is your podcast.
Deb Zahn (23:48):
Yes.
Lisa Rehurek (23:48):
So for anybody interested there, please make sure you go subscribe and listen. I listen to it frequently. So it's a fantastic podcast. So Deb, thank you, Deb Zahn, consultant to consultants, for being here and for all of your wonderful insight and golden nuggets. We appreciate you.
Deb Zahn (24:05):
Thank you so much for having me. This has been great.
Lisa Rehurek (24:09):
Wonderful. Well, thank you all for listening. You have been tuning into the RFP Success Show. We'll see you here next time.
Announcer (24:16):
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 or 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.