For those businesses on a calendar-based fiscal year, Requests for Proposals (RFPs) are already hitting the street. Whether you are on the issuing side or the responding side of bids for print and other business communications services here are some tips to keep in mind based on my many years sitting on both sides of the RFP table.

Issuers of RFPs

These days, most businesses rely on some sort of strategic procurement group for all or part of their RFP processes. In addition, the business group(s) requiring the services, their respective IT organizations and potentially a separate legal and compliance group may also be involved. Everyone is busy so the goal is typically to avoid “bothering the business units.” That’s mistake number 1 – bother the heck out of the business units and anyone else who can ensure a better result. If they don’t participate in the definition and weighting of requirements you might as well not bother issuing an RFP. You won’t get what you need and you will waste a lot of time and money not getting it. There is always a tradeoff between designing an RFP that takes the least effort for your business to evaluate and one that gets you the best and most creative bids. The latter will be more work in the short-term but can pay off for years.

Speaking of not getting what you need – that leads to mistake number 2: simply asking for bids on what you have now. What you have is not necessarily what you need and may not be the lowest cost, highest quality or most effective solution available. Tell the suppliers what you have now, what your goals are and get bids on their recommended solutions – you may want to get bids on what you have now also for an apples-to-apples comparison – but don’t limit yourself to what you think you know. I guarantee that the people who deliver the services for a living know a few things that you don’t about the best way to do it.

Top Tips for Issuers:

1. Get all stakeholders to participate in both defining and weighting requirements up front
2. Get all stakeholders to rate existing vendors on those requirements in advance of issuing the RFP (you really should be rating suppliers at least 2X per year anyway)
3. Get an expert consultant (internal or external) to review requirements to ensure that they are complete, up-to-date and stated in a manner that will make sense to suppliers
4. Don’t rely solely on “check the box” and “fill in the blanks” RFP formats. This may make it easier to score the RFP but will limit the quality and quantity of information you get to score.
5. Don’t rely solely on “catalog pricing” for price comparisons. Have specific jobs estimated where possible. Catalog pricing, particularly for variable full-color printing jobs will likely cost you more in the long run.

Responding to RFPs

Let’s face it – responding to RFPs is not fun. They are typically poorly constructed; a lot of work and often you have no idea if they will ever really be awarded or if they are just a fishing expedition or post decision justification exercise. It’s easy to start off the process with a bad attitude. Well… don’t. That would be your first mistake.

If you don’t think an RFP is a good fit or a “real bid” then don’t respond. Quite frankly, many RFPs are not worth the time and effort. But once you make the decision to participate – go after it with your best people and your best effort. Participate in every possible aspect of the RFP process – ask questions on calls, ask questions in writing, make suggestions for improving the RFP and – at all times – play by the rules of the RFP. Also – if you decide not to respond – write a really kickin’ “No Bid letter” explaining exactly why you have chosen not to respond and under what circumstances, or for what types of services, you would like to respond to a future RFP. I’ve written no bid letters that ended up getting the whole RFP process changed for the better. I’ve also seen vendors barred from future RFP opportunities for failing to respond to the invitation to bid.

Top Tips for Responders:

1. Follow the rules. If you are not supposed to call anyone but procurement – Don’t! If you are supposed to respond in a certain format – Do! By all means – meet the deadlines.
2. If the RFP is poorly constructed – try to get the rules changed. During Q&A sessions make the case for changing the format to allow suppliers to provide more effective responses or suggest expanding requirements. Explain why this will benefit the Issuer. If the Issuer won’t budge – see Tip #1.
3. Put the boilerplate at the end (and eliminate anything that is not pertinent to the Issuer.) Keep answers in the body of the RFP succinct and to the point. It takes more work to write fresh answers for RFPs – but the shorter you can make your answer the more likely it is to be read and understood.
4. Make sure that the person responsible for writing your response can actually write. Some of the responses I’ve seen would embarrass a 3^rd grader. Even if you have multiple people responsible for responding – there should be one voice and one responsible editor. And SPELLCHECK!
5. The right references are important. If possible, give more than they ask for and make sure that the references will be pertinent to the Issuer (same or similar industry, company size, services provided, level of complexity.) Just providing a reference to say you’re a great company is not enough – it needs to relate to the particular RFP you are responding to.

RFPs are a lot of work for both Issuers and Suppliers. They work out best for everyone when it is a respectful process. Issuers don’t get the best bids when they treat suppliers like second-class citizens of the business realm. Likewise, suppliers don’t get the respect they deserve when they don’t play by the rules or fail to state their case in an effective manner. I wish everyone a prosperous and efficient RFP season and a Happy New Year.

If you want to get connected with some experts – comment on this post or find me on LinkedIn.

I love the member polls from Print Buyer Online. It’s always fun to go in there, poke around the archives, and see what print buyers think about different issues and compare them to how printers think about them. You can learn a lot that way.

PBO’s most recent closed poll (7/13/2010) is on the issue of monochrome digital printing. How is it being used? The results are interesting. Here’s what poll respondents said:

a) Black-and-white is dead. We’ll never go back now that we print in color (12%)

b) We’ve stayed with monochrome but have added a transpromotional touch to our statements with personal and relevant messaging that helps to cross-sell our products and services (18%)

c) We integrate monochromatic design themes occasionally to reduce printing costs (24%)

d) We use monochrome print and divert print cost savings to fund online elements that support campaigns such as email, mobile messaging and personalized URLs (6%)

e) Our print jobs are a mix of color and monochrome and our printer utilizes “job splitting” (printing color pages on color printers and B/W pages on B/W printers) to help keep costs down (41%)

The number that jumped out at me is the 18% of poll respondents who say they are integrating variable messaging into their black-and-white documents. When we think of selling 1:1 printing, we normally think about the need to go around print buyers, whose job is to hold the line on price. But this poll suggests that print buyers are increasingly tasked with understanding value and marketing content than they used to be.

Also standing out is the 12% who said that they’d permanently switched from black-and-white to color. Again, we normally think of print buyers as holding the line on price. Although the cost-efficiencies of color have come down greatly, black-and-white still costs less. Again, the print buyers in this poll are showing preference for value over price.

This isn’t yesterday’s print buyer.  Got any stories to tell?