What to do when your agency can’t avoid responding to an RFP

Agency Leadership Podcast

If you’re a regular listener, you know that Chip and Gini have strong feelings about staying away from RFPs when possible. But sometimes they can’t be avoided.

In this episode, Chip and Gini discuss offer practical tips for handling RFPs efficiently, like templatizing repeat information, asking insightful questions, and focusing on building relationships. They also touch on strategies for incumbent agencies facing potential renewal through RFPs, emphasizing the importance of not burning bridges and maintaining a full pipeline of business opportunities.

Overall, they highlight the necessity of minimizing effort while maximizing the chances of success in the RFP process.

Key takeaways

• Chip Griffin: “A lot of RFPs are just giant wish lists. Don’t fall into the trap of thinking you’re only going to win this if you respond in original detail to every single question. Because you’re not. That’s not how they’re making their decision. You need to provide enough information to keep moving through the process, but your only goal is to get to the next conversation. You don’t win it on the RFP alone.”
• Gini Dietrich: “If they want to see the way you think, you don’t have to create new material. You don’t have to invest a bunch of time in design and copy. You can definitely use stuff that already exists.”
• Chip Griffin: “Ask some questions and get clarifications. Don’t make assumptions, particularly if your assumption is going to require a lot of work.”
• Gini Dietrich: “Templatize some of the work. Every RFP usually asks for the same thing about the agency, about your team. Sometimes they ask for financials. The things that are standard in almost every RFP, you can templatize that. You don’t have to recreate it every time.”

Related

• Conversations are key to successful RFP responses
• Should Chip stop blindly hating RFPs for agencies?
• ALP 7: The pros and cons of RFP’s for agencies
• Common mistakes agencies make when pursuing new business

View Transcript

The following is a computer-generated transcript. Please listen to the audio to confirm accuracy.

Chip Griffin: Hello and welcome to another episode of the Agency Leadership Podcast. I’m Chip Griffin.

Gini Dietrich: And I’m Gini Dietrich.

Chip Griffin: What’s that?

Gini Dietrich: How did I say my name?

Chip Griffin: I don’t know.

Gini Dietrich: gibberish

Chip Griffin: and usually it’s me screwing up the opening here. I think we’re going to keep this in though, just so people understand that Gini is not perfect.

I am not the only one who flubs things. Gini does too. I didn’t even hear it cause I wasn’t even listening cause I was, I was trying to think of my witty opening. And so now I can blame you for not having a particularly good one. I was just going to say I was going to request your proposal for how we should move forward with the show going forward.

That wasn’t a great one though, but, but that’s because you threw me off.

Gini Dietrich: Sorry.

Chip Griffin: And interrupted my thought process, so.

Gini Dietrich: Okay, I’m good.

Chip Griffin: In any case, she is Gini Dietrich, I’m Chip Griffin, this is the Agency Leadership Podcast, and if you’re surprised by anything that’s happened in these first 30 seconds, you haven’t been listening to this show for very long.

Welcome.

Gini Dietrich: Welcome.

Chip Griffin: So today we are going to talk about RFPs, and we’re going to take it a little bit of a different angle. on it, because normally when we talk about RFPs, we’re sitting here pounding our fists on the table, desk, wherever we’re at saying, stay away, don’t do them, avoid RFPs at all costs, but we always include, because we always say it depends at the end of every show, we include an asterisk, which is sometimes they’re unavoidable. And the primary times that RFPs are unavoidable for agencies are, one.

If you’ve got an existing client that wants to renew with you, but is putting the process out to an RFP, if you want the business to stay with you, you’re going to have to participate. You don’t just get to say, nope, sorry, peace out. Chip and Gini told me not to do this. So I’m just, I’m either going to let you go or you’re going to have to keep me without making me go through the RFP process

Gini Dietrich: Without the RFP.

Chip Griffin: Because most clients don’t care what Chip and Gini have to say, so.

Gini Dietrich: No, they don’t.

Chip Griffin: You’re out of luck.

Gini Dietrich: Unfortunately.

Chip Griffin: And the second is there are some industries where it’s just so standard to do RFPs that trying to convince, you know, travel and tourism, for example, most travel and tourism boards do RFPs.

And so, if you are an agency that specializes in that, you probably don’t have any choice because like many government or quasi governmental organizations, they love the RFP process. And it’s, it’s very difficult to avoid. So if that’s your specialty, you got to play. So if you meet one of these exceptions and you are absolutely compelled to participate in a RFP process, how can you make the best of it, Gini?

First off, I’m really,

or at least avoid the worst.

Gini Dietrich: Yeah. I love it when, somebody will say, so I was listening to the Agency Leadership Podcast and you and Chip said we shouldn’t participate in RFPs, but I do a lot of government work and I’m not sure how to get out of it. And I’m always like, it depends.

That’s our asterisk. I would love it if we didn’t have to do RFPs because I think that as an industry they’re, they’re not useful at all. But, yes, there are going to be some, and I have some clients who, that’s all they do is government work. So, they have to do RFPs. But to your point, there are some things that you can do to make it easier.

And, and one of those things is to for lack of a better term, templatize some of the work. So every single RFP usually asks for the same thing about the agency, about your team. Sometimes they ask for financials, you know, the things that are standard in almost every RFP, you can templatize that. You don’t have to recreate it every time.

And I think I see. There’s, I see a lot of people, a lot of agency owners try to recreate all of those things every single time, which adds to the time that they are investing in the RFP. You don’t need to do that. You can absolutely standardize, standardize your response. To all of the standard questions.

Chip Griffin: Absolutely. I mean, there is so much repetitive junk in RFPs that you should be able to reuse a significant portion. And I think, in general, when you are compelled to respond to an RFP, you should make it as, as little burden on you and your team as possible. You should not be creating a lot of original content for the RFP, even when it looks like maybe that’s what they want.

Sometimes you just need to say, look, I’m drawing the line. I’m not, because some of these RFPs, they’re insane with the things that they ask for. And the reality is that a lot of it isn’t even going to be used in the decision making process. It’s just, you know, some person is sitting down and they’ve either copied and pasted from something else that they found, or they’ve surveyed their internal team and said, what, what are all the things we would like?

And so you basically, you know, when I was a kid, you’d take the Sears catalog and you’d go through it, build your Christmas list with all of the things that you wanted. It was this like monstrously long thing with all sorts of crazy, stupid things that, Even if I ever got them, I wouldn’t use them more than once because they were just novelties.

Gini Dietrich: Sure.

Chip Griffin: That’s what a lot of RFPs are. They are just giant wish lists. And so you shouldn’t fall into the trap of saying, well, I’m only going to win this if I respond in original detail to every single question. Because you’re not. That’s not how they’re making their decision. You need to provide enough information to keep moving through the process, but really responding to that RFP, your only goal is to get to the next conversation.

You don’t win it on the RFP alone.

Gini Dietrich: Yeah, because you’re going to have to do the dog and pony show and all that kind of stuff. And that’s typically where you want it because that’s the, the chemistry check. you know, I think the other place that agencies tend to fall into a trap is where they’ll say, they’ll give you an example and say, create new copy, new creative, new, whatever, like we want to see your thinking.

And I think we, we tend to fall in the trap of, Oh my gosh, we have to create a whole campaign for this. And you don’t. Like you can definitely speak to your past experience. You could showcase examples from past experience that relates to what they’re saying, but you don’t necessarily have to create new for that either.

You don’t have to create new creative. You don’t have to invest a bunch of time in design and copy and all those kinds of things. You can definitely use stuff that already exists. And say, when we did this for client X, this is how we handled it. And this is what it looked like. So that they can see the work, but that you’re not necessarily giving them a bunch of ideas for free.

Chip Griffin: Right. I mean, that’s, that’s a great suggestion, you know, where you’re saying, you know, my, my thought would be, it would be something like this. Right. So you kind of illustrate it. You can say a few things in your commentary to tie it back to what their particular challenge is. But the reality is most of these RFPs don’t give a lot of useful information for you to work from anyway.

So you’re really just flying blind in any case. And so, you know, spending a lot of time and money on this doesn’t make a lot of sense at that stage. And, and frankly, I’ve seen a lot of even small agencies spend in the tens of thousands of dollars in labor and materials and research and all that in order to respond to a single RFP.

And that’s bonkers. You need to find a way to do it much more efficiently if you are someone who is going to have to respond. The other thing I would say is you need to start by asking questions. And so you need to get some basic questions answered before you decide if you’re even going to participate, and this goes for even if it’s an account that you already have, even if it’s an account that you already have, you have to ask questions like, how many people are you sending this RFP request to?

Right. I mean, you know, have you, you’ve sent this out to hundreds of agencies and are just waiting to see who responds? Have you sent it to five people because you pre screened them? Makes a big difference. If you’re one of five that have been pre screened, it may be worth putting in a little bit of extra effort.

You have to ask, is the incumbent part of this process or is there an incumbent? Because if there is an incumbent and you’re not it, you need to ask yourself really that deep question. Do I really need to respond to this? Do I really have enough chance? Or if I do, maybe I, you know, I don’t fully half ass it, but I kind of, you know, I kind of, you know, phone it in a little bit.

And I just kind of, you know, give the very basic, very copy and paste, send something in and see, do I get lucky and move to the next phase of the process? Because if there is an incumbent and you’re not it, your odds are very low. Unless they tell you, You know, the incumbent is someone we’re definitely moving on from.

Oh, even then I wouldn’t fully trust them when they say things like that. Cause sometimes they’re just trying to lure you in because a lot of times procurement just tells them they need to get a certain number of responses before they can move ahead. And so they will tell agencies pretty much anything just to get the document in hand.

If you’re going to be one of those people, don’t put a lot of effort into it at least. Save yourself some time.

Gini Dietrich: And I think, I mean, to your point, which is excellent, that if there’s an incumbent agency, usually the reason they’re doing it is because there’s a time period that they have. Like, we’ve been with the agency for two years, for instance, or we had a five year contract and now we have to put it out to bid again, and we have to get three to five RFP responses. So usually the incumbent agency is always going to get the business, especially because the marketing and communications teams don’t want to upset the apple cart and everything’s working and relationships and all those kinds of things. And procurement is the one that has to go out and do this.

So there’s that. To your point, if they, if there’s an incumbent and they say the incumbent is being fired or the incumbent is no longer working with us or something like that, then I think you have a better chance. But yeah, usually, usually when there’s an incumbent also participating, it’s because Procurement is required to go out after a certain number of years to get bids again, just to keep things fresh and make sure pricing is correct and all those kinds of things.

Chip Griffin: Right, and we’re not saying that the incumbent always wins, but they certainly have an edge because they have the relationships, they know the client, when they’re responding to the RFP, they get to respond with a whole lot more knowledge than every other participant.

And so, you know, knowing if they’re involved is vitally important.

I think the other thing from a question standpoint is most RFPs have some sort of a question process where you either submit questions in writing or they do a zoom call where, you know, prospective vendors can come in and ask questions then. Take advantage of whatever opportunity you’re given to ask questions before you put in a lot of work. Because this can help you to refine your answers. It can help you, you can ask things like, you know, what are you looking to change from what you’ve done before? Or what do you think has worked and what hasn’t? A lot of times they won’t give you a lot of detailed information, but it doesn’t hurt to ask.

Right? At least try to pull something out of them. And if you’re going through and you look at the RFP and you’re like, there are some of these things that would require monstrous amounts of work, ask if that’s really what they intend. Because a lot of times they’re not even thinking about it. And if you say, well, this, you know, putting together this plan would be a 12 hour process and they’ll say, Oh, we’re not expecting that.

We’re just looking for off the top. Now, sometimes they may again be fudging. But at least ask some of those questions and get clarifications. Don’t make assumptions, particularly if your assumption is going to require a lot of work.

Gini Dietrich: Yeah, and I think, you know, we’ve talked about this in the past as well, but in any new business meeting, when you go in with a prospect and you ask really thoughtful questions, and you’re curious about their responses, and the response creates a deeper set of questions, you’re having a conversation where you’re curious and you’re asking a lot of questions. The prospect leaves that meeting always thinking, wow, that agency is really smart or wow, I really like the way that they think. And all you do is ask questions. And the same thing goes in the RFP process. If you’re asking really insightful questions and you’re digging deep, you want them to leave with that feeling of, Oh, I really hope these guys respond to RFP because I like the way that they think. I like, I think they’re really smart.

You give them that, that opportunity to start to think that way before you even submit the RFP and it’s like I said earlier, it’s about the chemistry. It’s about building the relationship and that’s one way to do it really quickly off the bat to at least get you to the next level.

Chip Griffin: Absolutely. And the chemistry is so important.

So, you know, if you don’t have any relationship at all going in, With anybody with the account, I mean, that to me, that’s a red flag and suggest that that’s probably not, if you’ve never had a conversation with them at all, ever, your odds are going to be pretty low, but let’s assume that that’s the case.

You know, you can try. Not all, not all RFP processes prevent actual conversations with someone at the client. A lot of them do. A lot of them will say, you know, only, only questions submitted in writing will be. You know, but it doesn’t hurt if it doesn’t prohibit it, it doesn’t hurt to try to have some kind of a conversation with somebody on the client side who might be able to give you some more color, some more information, and also to build that chemistry. Even if you do have a prohibition in place and you can’t do that, guess what those folks are on places like LinkedIn, you can start building relationships by commenting on their posts, liking their stuff, reposting it. You don’t have to do it in an obvious, you know, Hey, looking forward to seeing, you know, how we do in the RFP process, but just, you know, kind of doing things that gets you on their radar screen in other ways can be productive. Particularly because a lot of the folks at the client who are part of the process may not even know who the RFP has been sent to. So they won’t even see it as you trying to curry favor.

They just see it as your name is out there. And oh, by the way, now when they see the RFPs and they’re reviewing it in their little committee meeting, they’re like, Oh, I just talked to Chip on LinkedIn the other day. I just saw him do this or that. Right. So find ways to manufacture that chemistry within the bounds of whatever the restrictions might be.

Gini Dietrich: And I think that goes across the board in general. Like that’s some advice I always give to college graduates is find the places that you want to work and start commenting on their content. It works for media relations too. Journalists and influencers. So that’s such good advice. Let’s switch gears though and let’s talk about if you’re the incumbent and you fear that the RFP has gone out because you’re about to be fired.

How do you handle that?

Chip Griffin: Well, I think you need to take an honest look at the relationship and ask yourself, is it over? Right? I mean, are there, because there are certainly times where, as the agency, You know you’re done, right? You know that they’ve basically made the decision that they’re moving on.

They’ve got a new CMO. They’ve got, you know, business has gone bad. I mean, some, there’s some relationship issue, who knows, whatever it is. There are times where you just see the handwriting on the wall. So you have to ask yourself, is it even worth participating? Should I even go down this path? Because if you know it’s gone, why are you wasting the time on it?

Why not spend that time pursuing other business that is more likely to land? I will say most of the time, it’s not that clear. And most of the time, the client is playing their cards close enough and giving you just enough hope that even if they’ve kind of made up the mind to let you go, they’re not going to fully rule it out. Because honestly, they may not be able to find that, you know, greener pasture out there.

They may not find someone who is promising them the sun, the moon, and the stars for a lot less money that they think they can find. So in general, it’s worth continuing to pursue it. But at the same time, I mean, I would look at the RFP if I’m the incumbent more as my general planning process for that client.

And so just as in that general planning process, I’m not going to create all sorts of brand new spec ideas and that kind of stuff. I’m going to lay out, here’s the roadmap. I would take the same approach to the RFP. But keep in mind, you’ve got a huge advantage because you know what’s worked, you know what hasn’t, you know what the client’s tastes are.

It ought to be a heck of a lot easier for you to respond to that RFP than anyone else. So don’t make it more difficult than it is.

Gini Dietrich: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And I would say, I mean, to your point, you know, my husband went through a, an RFP process with an agency that they use, late last year. And it was actually fascinating from my standpoint to watch the incumbent agency and how they behaved.

And he was honest with them. He said, listen, I can’t afford to keep paying you at this level. I’m willing to take the scope back a little bit and, and roll it back. But this is, this is what we’re looking for, for 2024 and he outlined it really specifically. I mean, from my perspective, I was like every, every agency wants a client like this because he outlined it specifically what they were looking for and what the budget was that they had to spend.

And the incumbent agency was like, never going to find it. Not going to do it. And we, we’re, we’re, we can’t do it. Like the, the amount of combativeness and defensiveness that the agency showed, he was willing to continue working with them if they could scale back the budget and the scope. But instead they went on the defensive and they were really rude and combative.

And he was like, I don’t want to work with you guys anymore. You just ruined it. Right. So you have to think about that too. Like, I always say that when somebody leaves your organization, they’re remembered by how they left. By how they behave when they left, not all of the great work that they did while they were with you.

And the same thing with the agency. Don’t burn bridges. If you feel like the relationship is over, or you can’t meet their demands, or whatever it happens to be, Don’t burn the bridge. Please do not burn the bridge because that’s going to come back and bite you tenfold.

Chip Griffin: Yeah, I mean, it’s a relationship that you’ve had.

There’s no reason to set it on fire 99. 9 percent of the time. And even that 0. 1%, I probably still wouldn’t do it because who knows what’s going to happen in the future. They may fully deserve it or whatever. But, you know, so you need to, you need to be having these conversations if you’re the incumbent, so you know where you stand.

You should not, even if they say to you, by the way, on the flip side, we’re definitely keeping you, procurement’s just making us do this. Don’t accept that either. Right? I mean, understand that anytime you’re going through an RFP process, even if you’re the incumbent, even if the client says, you know, we’re happy with you, you are at risk.

It’s sort of like if you’re engaged and your fiance says, well, I’m going to go out, you know, cruising the bars tonight. Just for fun, just, just to kind of see what’s out there, you know, but don’t worry. Don’t worry. I’m coming home. I’m coming home at the end of the night to you. Don’t worry. It’s fine, right?

I mean, that’s a risk. It’s just, I mean, because that’s what it is, right? They’re saying, and they may believe it, that the relationship with the agency is great. But now they’re going out and talking to all these other agencies, many of whom are going to over deliver and provide all sorts of promises and great ideas and cool looking graphics and, you know, and they’re going to sit there and say, Oh, I could have that.

Do I want that? Maybe I want that.

Gini Dietrich: Maybe I want that. Oh, you know. The agency we’re with right now, they, they don’t do that. It kind of drives me crazy. Yeah, you’re definitely at risk.

Chip Griffin: So, I mean, you’ve got to be honest with yourself. And so you, if you are the incumbent, you’re going through RFP, don’t get too high, don’t get too low because you don’t know what’s going to happen.

Gini Dietrich: Yeah, totally.

Chip Griffin: And by the way, you should always be looking for other business anyway.

Gini Dietrich: Yes, you should. Your pipeline should be full no matter what. It doesn’t matter how long the contract is, how many years you have it. How many years you think you’re going to have it after that, you should have your pipeline full all the time.

Chip Griffin: So bottom line is avoid RFPs if you can, but we understand that there are times when you can’t. Hopefully we’ve given you some decent tips on how to make that process as

Gini Dietrich: Definitely will never forget that example.

Chip Griffin: There you go. I mean, it’s, you gotta, you gotta find ways to relate to people. And that’s what I do.

I’m, I’m a, I’m a people person, Gini. That’s what people think of me as, for sure. But, but try to minimize the amount of work, maximize your odds of success, pick the right ones, invest your time wisely, and then if you have to participate in those RFPs, you’ll hopefully win more often than you lose and, or at least, you know, it’ll all come out positively once you add up all the numbers and all that kind of stuff. So

Gini Dietrich: yeah,

Chip Griffin: be smart.

Gini Dietrich: I still think generally RFPs are bad, but you’re right. There are some industries where it can’t be helped.

Chip Griffin: If you gave me no information at all, and you just said, I’ve been asked to do an RFP, I would say, don’t do it. Kind of like if you asked me how, you know, is your pricing good?

I’ll say, no, you need to increase it. With no other information those are going to be my answers. Obviously information can change things because as we always say, It depends. So that’s how we’ll draw this episode of the Agency Leadership Podcast to a close. I’m Chip Griffin.

Gini Dietrich: I’m Gini Dietrich.

Chip Griffin: And it really does depend.