WHY WINNING HAPPENS BEFORE THE RFP

We’ve all been there. We receive an RFP with requirements that one of our competitors have influenced. You cringe as you read through requirements that were practically written for your competitor. You know you might as well respond to requirements in semaphore because they’re probably not going to read your response in any serious way.

While you blindly guess at the best response strategy, your competitor already has inside knowledge and is writing each response (to requirements that they influenced) directly to the decision maker’s needs and worries. And quite frankly, the buyer has probably already made a decision before they sent you the RFP.

So how do you stop this from happening? There isn’t a magic bullet, but the best way to combat this is by meeting the buyer before the RFP. Your competitor most certainly is.

Meeting the Buyer Will Decide Whether or Not You Win

The buyer needs to know you actually care about them

People buy from people.

The actual buyer is just a regular human being who’s going to want to buy your product from a person she actually likes and trusts. If you build a genuine rapport, while showing the buyer you’re truly interested and excited about their company, they’re going to do anything they can to try and buy from you, instead of the faceless company they have never met. You may have mentally won the RFP before it’s even released.

You need to know who is making the decision

Without meeting the customer pre-tender, you’re never going to know who the real decision maker is.

While growing up, my mom tended to take charge in making the big decisions. Salespeople often made the very stupid mistake of pushing their sales pitch on my dad or the whole family. But when the salesperson took a moment to get to know us, they very quickly figured out that they needed to understand what my mom’s concerns and buying reasons were. Needless to say, when that happened, mom chose to purchase a car from that salesperson.

In the same way, the whole bid needs to be written to that one decision maker or group of decision makers, instead of to the full organisation. But without meeting them pre-tender, you’re never going to know who that person is, let alone how to write to them and their concerns.

You need to understand their issues and goals

When was the last time you read an RFP and thought, “Wow! I really get them. I totally understand what they need and what their pain points are!” Yeah, probably never. RFPs are usually poorly written, copied and pasted from twelve other RFPs, or purchased for someone else; they’ll never reflect the organisation's actual needs.

Conclusion: Meet with the Buyer or be OK with Losing

Always go into the RFP informed. You will know how to make sure your message resonates with their goals, while calming their issues. The buyers will like you, trust you, and in turn, you will actually know and care about them, leading you to a winning tender, before they even put out an RFP.

Now it's your turn! How do you influence your customers' decisions before the RFP? Let me know in the comments!