What Clients Want in RFPs

When your agency is invited to respond to an RFP, do you get excited or cringe? While new business is the lifeblood of any agency, agency RFP responses drain resources and are poorly executed. I was recently cited in the PR Council’s The Firm Voice article, “What Clients Want in RFPs: Firms Can Win More New Business by Tapping Nine Hot Buttons in Proposals” and provided suggestions on how agencies can respond more effectively to an RFP.

Here are my top tips:

• Don't hold out—offer real, strategic insights. Each agency has a different approach, a different perspective on how to drive the client's business. Clients need to know yours. There's world of difference between sharing a strategic vision and giving away the store.

• Ask questions. You are not working on their account yet, so don't assume you have all the answers, or know the client's business better than they do. You don't have to have the answers—but you want to show you've thought through the issues.

• Carefully consider the case studies. Before you throw in the boilerplate, think about how relevant the case studies are to the client’s initiative. Is there any relevancy in areas such as industry, market share, and budget or brand recognition?

• Talk ROI—focus on business outcomes, not just PR outputs. Show value for the money. Be very clear about what the client is buying. For example, "What can they expect in the first 30 or 90 days? What will they get for the fee?"

• Focus on the frontline team—not figureheads. A common complaint among clients is meeting Team A, working with Team B. You can tout your management—but if possible, let the client see whom they'll be working with.

• Avoid sloppy mistakes. It happens to the top agencies in the industry. It’s embarrassing. Try having someone else who wasn’t involved in developing it proofread it last.