Proposal Writing:Not All RFPs Are Alike

Proposal writing, many times, leads to wasted time, wasted effort, and wasted information. All this waste occurs when salespeople mistake an RFP for an immediate call to write a proposal.

Before you begin the proposal writing process, carefully consider what RFP means to your clients or prospects. You might save yourself a lot of time, money, and effort.

RFP - REQUEST FOR PRICING

Many sales people confuse request for pricing with request for proposal.

Request for pricing simply means the company is comparison-shopping. They might not even be ready, willing, or able to place an order. Salespeople who mistake this as a proposal writing opportunity often waste time, effort, and information.

Send a price quote, a big response, or, sometimes, do nothing.

Whatever you do, don't spend time creating a proposal when your chances of receiving the order or contract are limited.

RFP - REQUEST FOR POSITIONING

Many times, prospects will ask for a proposal to determine if the company they plan to award the order or contract to is actually giving them the best price or value. They will use your information to justify their decision to go with someone else.

RFP - REQUIRED FOR PUT OFF

Prospects sometimes use the RFP ploy to limit your access to them.

This can mean many things. It could mean they already plan to use a preferred vendor. Or, they know little about your company, or, they have received bad, although unfounded, reviews of your organization.

They may also have had a bad experience with a previous salesperson or principle from your company. The reasons are endless in terms of why they might not want to deal with you.

But, they need to keep up the appearances of being fair.

After all, strange things can happen during and after the process of vendor selection, and they might be compelled to use someone else as a last resort.

Before you spend the time, money, and effort writing a proposal, examine the odds of actually being considered as the selected vendor.

For more information, please visit http://www.proposalwritingsuccess.com