Business Development Consulting Services
An RFP opportunity is won or lost in the 24 months before the RFP is published. Are you ready?
When faced with making a procurement decision, responsible decision makers usually invest time educating themselves about whatever it is they anticipate buying. They learn about the relevant vendors, meet with the experts in each of those companies, understand each vendors’ organizational approaches to service and pricing and delivery and support, and in general, do all of the things that responsible decision makers do before making an important buying decision.
So...when do buyers make their decisions?
Sellers need to understand that the typical buying process doesn’t happen after the buyer receives proposals back from vendors, it typically happens in the 12-24 months before the buyer issues an RFP.
If buyers are making their decisions in the 12-24 months before the RFP is issued, why aren’t you talking to them, then? Why are you waiting until you receive an RFP before you launch your response effort?
If you wait until the RFP is released, you’re arriving to the party too late. The decision has already been made.
Moving from reactive to proactive selling
If you want to start winning more RFPs, more consistently, stop being reactive. Stop believing that an RFP received “out of the blue” is a real opportunity. Instead, refocus on selling. Real, honest-to-goodness selling.
Instead of being reactive, instead of waiting for an RFP to fall in your lap, you need to proactively identify opportunities ahead of time, and then you need to go get them. You need to qualify those opportunities. You need to work through the investigation and discovery steps. You have to go out and meet people, build relationships, and identify each buyer and their individual motivations. You have to configure solutions, establish your credibility, identify the antagonists, enamor yourself to the influencers, discover where the competition is falling short, and do all the other things salespeople do.
But you need to do all of these things 12-24 months before the RFP is issued.
Talk to us
At The Seibert Group, we can help you win more of the RFP opportunities you pursue by showing you how to build a proactive selling program that wins the sale before the RFP is ever issued.
To learn more, contact Dave Seibert at David.Seibert@ProposalBestPractices.com.