3 ways to de-stress your RFP process right now


RFPs are a team effort, requiring hours and resources companies often feel they don’t have to spare. But to source new business and win clients, responding to RFPs is crucial to an organization’s success.

The manual approach to RFP response is a common one among businesses—even today, with the wealth of technology at our fingertips. But someone has to do the job of responding to RFPs, so we might as well make it as stress-free as possible. With a few important tweaks, your sales team can spend less time on administrative tasks and more time generating revenue.

Here are 3 ways to de-stress your RFP process, so you can focus on growing your business.

1. Centralize RFP answers

A known pitfall with RFPs is the low win rate chances, and inconsistent responses are often the culprit. It’s no wonder when teams across departments are using spreadsheets and emails to store their answers—hunting down responses in a hurry when the deadline is looming, and rushing to get the RFP out the door in time for submission.

Fortunately, RFP management solutions minimize that risk by automatically storing responses as the RFP is completed. A Content Library has the power to become your organization’s knowledge base, not only for RFPs but also as a repository your sales team can always refer back to for intelligence.

2. Optimize your SMEs

Your subject matter experts are valuable for your business—and so is their time. Let them do what they do best…help your business grow and thrive. Answering the same questions over and over again is not the best use of their time, and most high performers avoid these tasks in favor of other priorities.

Why send a person to do a machine’s job? Instead, use technology to automate the response process. These tools apply adaptive learning to understand the questions, and automatically recommend the most accurate answers based on your past responses. The time-savings alone will benefit your business, which on average is 40% with a robust RFP management tool.

3. Automate RFP assembly

Typically the most time-consuming part of responding to an RFP is assembling the answers in a cohesive format. The importance of a quality delivery can’t be overlooked, because sloppy responses can reflect poorly on your brand and harm a potential deal.

With several different authors providing input, it can be challenging for the proposal manager to gather, organize, compile, and construct the response package so it’s client-ready. RFP management software can automate the whole assembly process to help you deliver the highest quality product that will impress your client and potentially win business for you.

RFP management technologies have come a long way. It’s time for us to leave behind the old-fashioned approach of spreadsheets and docs, and enter a more efficient era through automated solutions.


Ganesh

A highly experienced product manager, Ganesh Shankar has successfully led product development and software implementations for Fortune 500 enterprises as a product manager. It was then, surrounded by an outdated approach to responding to RFPs, that he pursued his dream to create proposal management software that would make a positive impact on the industry.

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