Die, RFP, Die, Die, Die!
Today I’m hoping this post inspires you. Today I’m swapping the words “press release” for the acronym “RFP” in the hope that we may collectively change what I view as a deeply flawed process of engagement.
My hope is that together we can create a better, more streamlined way of sharing agency credentials with those who would like to hire us. And I’d like to hear your ideas about what works and what doesn’t.
But first, something has to die.
To my fellow PR, digital and social media agency practitioners, and to the marketers looking to us to extend and elevate the conversations about their brands, please join me in throwing shovels full of dirt on the outlandishly time-intensive evaluation mechanism known as the RFP.
Suggested epitaph of the RFP? “I asked too many questions. I asked too many of the wrong questions. I asked too many of the wrong questions too many times, to too many people.”
I’ve been at this game a long time and I’ve grappled with more than my fair share of RFPs. And SHIFT fortunately has a great track record of clearing the RFP hurdle en route to the pitch (95 percent, I’d say). I’m not writing this post because RFPs prevent us from winning business, or because I don’t appreciate the invitation to participate. I certainly do! I’m writing it because RFPs are a colossal timesuck for all parties – for those compiling, issuing and reviewing the RFP, and for the agencies of all stripes invited to complete them. The joy of receiving a new RFP dissolves into abject anguish the moment its contents, so familiar and yet just different enough to require days of work, are revealed.
A typical RFP means expensive senior talent must devote several hours (sometimes days!) to complete an assignment that five or 10 other firms also are completing. Best case scenario: 20 percent chance of winning. Worst case scenario: your work isn’t even read.
Sometimes the firm must undergo training just to complete the RFP response via a system such as Ariba or Citrix. Other times the questions are so specific and far-reaching that it’s as if an alien nation descended upon earth to gain a comprehensive understanding of what PR is, what social media is, and how earthlings measure with granularity the impact of the firms’ proposed interactions with the planet’s influencers.
The thing is, we get invited to participate in the RFP process based on our well-documented track record in both traditional and social media. We are being considered precisely because of our previous work and reputation. Couldn’t a 20 minute phone call erase any lingering concerns? Couldn’t we all save a lot of time, trouble and trees if we just … had a conversation?
But I’m not naïve. The reality is, marketers need to both show their value and cover their behinds with a documented review process. They are accountable for their decisions, especially when budgets are six or seven figures. If an agency lays an egg, there needs to be a paper trail showing the decision to hire that particular group was based on a thoughtful process.
So the question is, how do agencies make marketers look smart while dramatically reducing the tedious and often redundant work of today’s RFP?
I personally don’t think technology is the answer. Maybe in 10 years it will be, but for now most execs want to touch and feel the hard copy document. They want to pour over stacks of proposals and mark up the pages with notes and scores and questions.
No, I think we’re still dealing with a better, more useful set of questions that can quickly establish credentials and reveal differences between the competing firms’ skills, expertise and philosophies. A set of questions that can be broadly applied to almost any agency by almost any sized company (publicly traded companies are more challenging, obviously, given the degree of governance involved).
Some smart folks have already taken a stab at the social media piece, perhaps making the process easier, but I don’t think they’ve necessarily made short work of the process.
Can we together create a 10 question RFP template that should reasonably satisfy any marketer looking to hire an agency? What are those questions? How much space should be allotted to answer each question? What percentage of the questions should be “creative assignments?” Are such assignments even fair?
Please share your thoughts, gang. And I want to hear from my marketing friends, too! In my next post I’ll share some of my own ideas as well as the best of yours. We’ll keep iterating until we’ve got something close to perfection. I will then, as always, share the final template with everyone to use and share freely.
Who’s first?
Posted on: March 28, 2011 at 1:53 pm By Todd Defren
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I completely agree, RFPs should be brief and to the point. It would be great if the national PR counsel would hold a convention and we can get together and make a new PR RFF template, I am sure that it will be a benefit moth to the client as well as the PR agency.
I agree with the Social Media News Release.
RFPs are a sort of double-edge sword. When a prospect tells you to look for one in the mail, we get excited for the inclusion. But when it actually arrives, it’s “here we go again.” How many times has a prospect asked you to send them examples of “good RFPs” as an aid for them to pull one together? Happens all the time. And as a result, often what you get back is a “camel,” a hodge podge of several RFPs melded together, with redundancies throughout.
Short way of saying I agree that some standardization would save lots of time and energy on both ends and will help the prospect find the best fit. After all, that’s the end goal, isn’t it.
FYI, I wrote about this issue recently too. Guess it’s on everyone’s mind: http://bit.ly/gPHzto
Todd – I’m in the middle of an RFP now, with another on its way to me. DIE sounds like just the ticket. Thanks for the post. It would be GREAT to have a standardized RFP with 10 questions that all clients would have to use. Guess I’m living in lala land!
Your thoughts are great here Todd. I support the 10 question RFP as well. Yet the RFP’s should be quick to the point. Agreed with the comments above.
Good luck! In the mean time perhaps visit the RFP Database at http://www.rfpdb.com or consider playing the RFP Drinking Game: http://blog.confluentforms.com/2011/03/requests-for-proposals-rfp-drinking.html
Important topic, Todd, which is why I just started a new consultancy called RFP Associates, LLC (www.rfpassociates.net) with the principal goal of streamlining the process and creating certainties for both hiring entities and agencies.
Our interest is to ensure the process is fair and thorough by eliminating the voluminous responses and cattle calls. We’re in the business of helping hiring entities not only write RFPs that make sense and lead to reasoned, fair hiring decisions, but supporting the management of the entire agency hiring process . . . which from our perspective is really what needs to be fixed — but not killed.
In fact, the RFP process should begin with a 10-question document, as you describe. Its called an RFQ or RFI -a request for qualifications/information which can efficiently identify those agencies most qualified, experienced, and interested to be considered for another, more detailed round.
Depending on the scope of work and the size of the hiring entity, selecting and contracting with a PR or social media agency is the equivalent of hiring one, two, perhaps even six or eight full-time staffers. A company is presumably not going to hire someone based on a single conversation or a 10-question survey, but on a comprehensive process that includes research and interviews, and which compares candidates on an apples-to-apples basis. It does need to be transparent and not a waste of either party’s time.
Let’s fix the PR/social marketing agency hiring process so that it’s good for us all, but let’s not pretend that all it takes is a 10-question RFP. There’s too much at stakes for both sides.
Great post, Todd, and great comments and suggestions so far. Some months back I helped Tellabs, a telecom equipment provider, put together 10 practical questions that their clients, the big telecom firms, should include in RFPs to make sure they received useful responses. The frustration there was that RFPs were ridiculously long and involved, and yet failed to ask some basic questions that were critical to making the best selection.
A bit self-serving, of course, but most if not all of their 10 questions are quite relevant in the agency world, as well:
- What relevant experience do you have in similar situations, and what lessons did you learn?
- how will you facilitate a comfortable and productive fit between your team and our culture and environment?
- how will you ensure sufficient knowledge transfer to make sure we can take full advantage of your work?
- what are the most important metrics for business impact and how will you measure them?
- how will you minimize the time it takes to get business value from your work?
- what are the most important risks to project success and how will you minimize them?
- what do you need from us to make sure we succeed?
- what’s missing from this RFP that is essential to success (my favorite)?
You can see the paper here: http://www.tellabs.com/resources/papers/tlab_rfp_wp.pdf
Totally agreed. I think there should be a good guideline for potential clients. Time and time again, my experience working on RFPs at a various agencies is that that the potential client has no idea what they want or that idea changes once they are in the process. Often, the person facilitating the process is a communications person, but has never worked at an agency so is hard pressed to develop the kind of questions needed to cut through the bells-and-whistles.
Additionally, I’ve come across potential clients who don’t have the proper authority to hire a PR agency because it has not been properly vetted internally. Finally, I’ve been in situations when I’m in the presentation, and those in the room had not even read the RFP that they issued themselves.
I believe that the ad agency industry came up with a fairer RFP process in which they are somewhat compensated for their time and travel…would love to see something closer to that than what exists, which is nothing.
I’d be happy to colloborate on this 10 question idea and others…
Todd, great post, I love the title
and thanks for the link to the Social Media RFP Template v2.0 we issued in December.
I, for one, am in violent agreement with you that poorly-written RFPs can be a terrible time-suck. That was the whole idea behind the template, and definitely the concept behind the “RFP Bill of Rights” we included in the most recent version. I personally think the answer is a combination of tools (10-question RFPs) and respect on the part of clients for the work effort required to respond. I wrote a post to that effect here.
I am reminded of the saying, “garbage in, garbage out”- clients looking for quality vendors would do well to remember it, too.
Todd, we appreciate the frustration with RFPs.
The Council of Public Relations Firms has worked with firms, clients, procurement specialists, and search consultants to develop a reasonable approach to RFP process.
We developed a tool called RFP Builder (rfp.prfirms.org ) that is designed to help clients, looking to hire a public relations firm, write a clear and concise request. RFP Builder guides the client through a free, four-step process complete with sample text and an instructional video, similar to your 10-question approach.
We encourage all clients to use this thorough but reasonable approach to a firm search.
Hi Kathy – thanks for weighing in! Any data on how often this tool is used?
About 30 visitors a week. If your readers think it’s a useful tool which encourages best practices (or better practices), we’d appreciate their help getting the word out that RFP Builder is available for clients to use.
Great post! Often, the use of an RFP means that the soliciting organization has put the cart before the horse, having ten or twenty firms (including firms that may or may not have a snowball’s chance of being hired) respond to a lengthy Q&A. At the least, a soliciting firm should 1) winnow the process down to a few marketing firms in which it might have genuine interest in working and 2) spend a few minutes talking with each marketing firm’s representative, even if by phone. It’s amazing how matches can be (rightly) initiated or dismissed through this initial personal contact.
On the marketing/PR firm’s side, it’s best to decline to respond to many (most?) RFPs. At van Schouwen Associates, we certainly feel a twinge of regret putting requests aside, but if they seem off-base, poorly thought out or truly onerous, we don’t get involved. Life – and the work week – are just too short.
Todd, I agree with your assessment of RFPs. I think that the RFP should be posted as a blog post, with a link to a survey tool such as Survey Monkey. Ten questions, tops. The first question should be philosophical and the rest project scope and budget related. I would immediately disqualify those agencies who talked too much about themselves.
Our experience of public sector RFP is particularly depressing. It is if they are simply going through a paper trail process because that’s what their auditing rules require.
The result is that they need half a dozen agencies to complete a lengthy procurement process when the reality is they know already who is going to get the work. That is why we’ve started taking Joe and others approach with a thanks but no thanks. The time spent on a RFP that you know is just a paper trail exercise on behalf of the prospective client is time better spent on business development work that might actually result in some gainful employment.
I like the idea of 10 questions to cut to the chase. Other than the benefit of documenting the process you called out, companies may feel they need a more complex RFP approach because in some cases they aren’t even sure which TYPE of agency to bring on. The agency landscape is quite grey these days. So perhaps the lengthy process also helps them figure out if they should go with the interactive shop that also does PR/blogger relations, the PR agency with in-house developers, the branding agency with celeb endorsement services, etc, etc!!?? All that said, I agree with the need to simplify. At the end of the day, if I made the move in-house, I’d want to know just two things before bringing in an agency: how do they think (with an exercise aimed at showing both creativity and strategic capabilities) and what would it be like to work with these people day in and day out.
You realize that by asking for an “exercise aimed at showing both creativity and strategic capabilities,” you are asking for A LOT of free work, right?
You know I know that these take a lot of work!
The assignment need not be lengthy. A narrow and focused assignment would still give a company a glimpse into the agency’s “brain” – without days of labor on the part of the agency – to showcase creativity and strategic skills with more relevancy than just case studies can. This approach would actually require extra work from the company since it would have to be carefully tailored to each specific agency search.
Maybe my idea is sort of a step-down program vs. a cold turkey one?
From my perspective as a client for many years:
1. What is your experience in “my business”?
2. What do you know about “the Industry”?
3. What is your pricing structure?
4. Who is working on the business?
5. What are the backgrounds of the pros on my account?
6. Why should I hire you?
7. What is your track record?
8. Who can I reference?
9. Why do you want to work for me?
10. When do we launch?
Thanks for this post; it hit the nail on the head for many issues we face in the PR business. Another way for an agency to make marketers look smart is to use storytelling techniques. By digging into the businesses of their clients and create more than just a “preachy press release” or blog about their product or service, agencies will find more success both with the media and with clients. Its not just about creating an angle, its about creating a story that will resonate with audiences. I recommend you check out this post http://bit.ly/ecVIqu. You may find tips on how to better convince clients of your offering. If you comment, you’ll be put in the running for a brand new read on business storytelling.
An easier solution is to just “Thanks, but we don’t participate in RFPs.” I know a bunch of agencies who just won’t bite. Or send the capes deck, with some specific information geared towards their business, and call it a day! Easier said then done, though – right?
So I should walk away from a million-dollar oppty cuz I don’t want to hassle with RFPs?
Excellent perspective on the time-worn RFP process. One point – nearly all RFPs take days of work by senior staff (not hours!), in addition to background research and creative input by other team members in the agency. One of the best RFPs I’ve ever seen was a short, multi-question RFP for hotel PR, issued a few years ago by the Outthink marketing agency and Revel hotel teams. Straightforward, no BS. They wanted to know three things: how the agency thinks (and solves problems), relevant real-world experience (not a 20-page list of credentials) and team chemistry. They stayed with their chosen agency for years, with great success. Food for thought…
Todd,
Just as important as the questions being asked of the agency is the information shared by the company, and the one item I usually find missing (which I always then ask prior to completing the RFP process) is what does success mean in their eyes. And while yes, we can all agree successful campaigns will have moved the business forward, I also like to get a feel for the value of the relationship between company and agency so I ask the question as “what do you hope to say has happened a year from now that means you know you chose the right PR partner.”
Last week, I received the best answer yet to that question so thought I’d share:
“As for success criteria, I would put at the top of the list:
- relationship; a firm we feel really comfortable with and we feel is truly a partner when it comes to making decisions.
- honesty; a firm that we have mutual trust with.
- Initiative; we want to develop a plan, then let the firm execute on the plan, within our budget.
- contacts; a firm that has media contacts and industry contacts that will support our goals for messaging and value creation.
- passion; a firm who cares as much as we do about building a brand new XX.”
And with that, I dove into the RFP response with a new fervor because that’s the kind of client we love to work with. We find out this week if such will be our luck.
Will think on the 10 questions, but yes, agreed, a conversation should do the trick.
Thanks,
Starr
Todd,
Preach it, brother. I try to avoid RFP responses at all costs and focus on word-of-mouth referrals and inside track to work because of this very problem. So, I’m with you and this isn’t an easy problem to solve – even if we did attempt to design a 10 question RFP.
First, inside the corporation, there’s huge push for cost management and (at least the illusion of) objectivity when hiring vendors these days. So the push for multiple bids, in a certain format is strong.
Second, today’s “marketing solutions” have become much more complex as we add CS, Sales, IT to the review mix. Without a unilateral way of coordinating all (lead, departments, vendors) around the bid — it becomes a train wreck to manage internally and externally.
Third, also inside the corporation, there’s also insufficient time for business stakeholders to hash through requirements, answering the same questions from 10+ vendors. If they did, most of it would be review anyway, as I’d venture a guess that MOST vendors worth their salt will come up with pretty similar questions.
On the flip side, that there are WAYYYY too many people looking for solutions that have no idea of the true scope of the undertaking. So the RFP may suck in its entirety (lots of them do) — or it may not even accurately represent scope of the undertaking…. and this just compounds the process.
Also, I have found it very difficult to frame the solution based on the information provided in an RFP because MOST companies don’t provide any idea of their expectations in terms of cost – or even roles & responsibilities.
While they shouldn’t give away the farm (in terms of budget), the lack of information provided can make it nearly impossible to do a solid bid that isn’t a broad, Chinese-menu based bid…. and that is a heckuva complicated proposal to create. But there’s like, little way around this.
I’ve been asked on many occasions to help assemble RFPs (which I hate). The thing is, it pays — and I have found the process of doing it helps clarify the scope and educate the client – resulting in better bids. Here’s some of the stuff I try to capture. In a nutshell and hastily penned.
1. Expectations – what are the specific outcomes desired for “the ask” (engagement/project/services)
2. Resources – how are they currently structured for PM and the ongoing management of the ask. Obtain R*R chart and areas with gaps.
3. Budget – what is the high level, reasonable price range they have considered for the ask and are there any special conditions or stipulations
4. Timeframe – What are their short and long-term goals and how quickly (realistically) do they hope to move on the ask?
5. Digital / Marketing Footprint – What specific channels are they currently focused on (I ask for a detailed outline of their digital footprint – 2/3 companies don’t even have an accurate count of the digital properties they manage) as well as an overview of digital outreach (emails, newsletters, acqusition/retention programs)
6. What are the key components of “the ask” – framed under discovery/analysis, strategy&planning, design & development, launch & maintenance.
7. What specific SKILLS are they looking to hire… e.g. they may feel they have the marketing strategy/branding stuff down – but they need IA, Interaction Design, Social Media Tool expertise, etc.
8. What partners will be engaged (external) and how?
9. What solutions are being used (CMS, SM Management, Monitoring, CRM systems, analytics etc.)
Ran out of time – going into a meeting but maybe that will serve as some food for thought. Sorry for length. If I’d had more time would have been more brief! LOL!
Come back after your meeting and give us more, Leigh!
Also, I hope our new directory, helps brands narrow down their initial RFP agency target list. http://investinsocial.com/agencies. I think if brands had better online research tools, much of the process would be easier.
Love it. Great thoughts here Todd. I support the 10 question RFP. I would be willing to help put it together. I smell Google Doc collab
First question must be expertise in the area of work being offered. A portfolio perhaps?