Climbing the RFP Mountain
Where are you going?
Sometimes a request for a proposal, for information or for a quotation can feel like climbing a mountain.
The request comes in at the last minute, and you scramble to get your team together for the assent. But you don’t know how high this mountain is yet, what the route above looks like and sometimes if it’s something you should be climbing in the first place. You may get to the summit only to find another company had their flag firmly planted on top all along.
It might sound like we’re stating the obvious here but there are reasons why this is an arduous process. Before you understand the full picture there are many hurdles to jump. You have to read your way through the information carefully, fully understand it, find the people in your organisation who are best equipped to differentiate the information and feed it back. Not to mention scanning it for legal and GDPR compliance and numerous other processes which can leave you with a feeling of vertigo.
So what can we do?
Well, you need to change the way you look at it. Climbing a real mountain might earn you a badge for bravery but there are no prizes for unnecessary effort when it comes to RFPs. If there is a train to the top (and there is) take that instead! Technology can do the heavy lifting for you, allowing you to look out of the window and enjoy the view.
Getting a clear road map before the wheels touch the ground is key, otherwise you’ll be permanently readjusting as you go. The Public Spend Forum released a helpful guide to dealing with government contracts. The video outlines just how tough and tricky this stuff can be. A few of the problems identified are multiple attachments, numerous agencies operating in a myriad of different ways and of course, time. The Public Spend videos themselves run at just under three hours long and in them they state that reading 120 pages in an hour is impossible, and it is… without the right tools for the job.
We’ve developed solutions to remove the unnecessary leg work. When the request arrives, Avnio will read the document instantly then begin to answer the questions based on your knowledge library, improving it’s confidence each time with machine learning. It will then use a confidence score to tell you how well matched you are to the prospect and then to the project as a whole with one simple “Go/No Go” percentage figure.
If you can understand what’s being asked of you quickly, if you can unpack the information intelligently then use this to position yourself in the correct way, you’re well on the way to winning more business and climbing that mountain. It all comes down to context. In order to deal with a request in the right way you have to know what it is that you’re actually dealing with before you start, not after.
Theodore Roethke beautifully said “Over every mountain there is a path, although it may not be seen from the valley”.
That may well be the case but we’re offering you a birds-eye view of the situation, to help you make the right choice before you gear up.
We’ll see you at the top!
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