James Breen and Amy-Louise Tracey explain why 87% of top-performing sales teams use a centralized RFP system. They show how it cuts response time and automates repetitive work, though someone still needs to review everything. A 5% revenue boost is possible if you reuse content, involve the right people, and keep answers current.
Chapters
1, 2, 3, 4.
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And the last one is around having a centralized system. So we absolutely recognize that this is going to be an option for a lot of organizations on the call. Maybe you already have a centralized system in place, maybe you're using your existing tech stack to respond to RFPs. But based on our benchmarks, we found that 81% of average software sales teams use a centralized response. For the top-performing RFP responders, it's actually up to 87%. And this can range across a number of different systems and solutions that you can have that maybe aren't necessarily RFP response software, but they have a lot of the components of being able to collaborate, tools like a Slack or an MS Teams, having that centralized database like a SharePoint or a Google Drive, and then driving some of those automation features if possible with some of your existing solutions. We talked to, you know, the people that do have a system in place, and they— we asked around, you know, what are you finding in terms of the benefits of that software? We wanted to point out 2 of the benefits here that are probably the most important is number one, time savings. So how do you get back time in your day to drive more attention to those customized responses, those out-of-the-box questions that you haven't seen in the past? And then also automation of tedious or Or more manual tasks. One of them that's top of mind for me is when you tap a subject matter expert with the list of questions and you don't realize they're on PTO, and 3 days later you're tapping them again, manually asking them, hey, have you followed up on this? There's a lot of repetitive back and forth that could be saved through trying to automate some of that, trying to set up automated reminders, whether that's calendar invites or little nudges along the way. These are really the things that are time sucks out of the RFP process. Especially doing that first draft of those commonly answered questions, which really, depending on the industry, could be, you know, 50 to 80% of that initial draft is spent on copying and pasting from existing repositories. And it's just not the best use of anyone's time, whether you are an individual contributor or to the person who mentioned like their CRO, like hopefully it's someone with, you know, that position within the company isn't being reduced to like more of those manual tasks. We found that top performers can submit responses faster because they're already taking those best answers from the library. So at the very least, you know, taking your repeatable content, centralizing it somewhere so that yourself and other people can access is going to be a way that you can save that time. And whether that's using your existing software or investing in a tool, it's a great kind of first step. And The other thing is, you know, any system, you know, uh, and sorry, I think my audio might be cutting out there a little bit, but I think we're back. But any system, um, will require that kind of human ownership and maintenance. So sure, you can rely on some of these tools, but, you know, the nature of content itself within your organization is that it's always evolving. Your number of customers, your product releases, um, you know, the different aspects of your services that you're providing for customers is constantly evolving. evolving. So you need to have that same eye of updating content as well as the internal systems that you're using. And then how do you add that human touch and element to it? So use the system actively. And what that means is, you know, build in a final read-through into the process. So you wanna trust your answers that you're getting to respond to these RFPs, but you will still need to do that final review, probably catch those 1 or 2 answers of, Oh, actually we updated that product feature 3 days ago, or I remember that legal actually came back and we've updated our policy on that. And you sometimes won't be able to catch that regardless if you're using automation or a system or not. The next one is having a regular cadence to review answers. And a lot of people, you know, think that this is extra work, but in reality, you know, the cadence of which content needs to be updated will change depending on the nature of it. So something like Lupio, for example, as a product, we have an annual SOC 2 report. So we know that once a year we'll have to go into our internal systems and make sure that we're using the 2022 version, the 2023. That's an annual review process. Something like your software and platform, if you're more on the software side, that might have 3 to 4 week sprint cycles where it might need that more frequent review process. And then the last one as well, like, don't use— don't let all of that hard work that you put into a winning bid, or even one where you were really close to winning and maybe there was something that was out of your control, like, you need to capture that information and not rinse and repeat every time. So this is where it's a great opportunity to— maybe we talked about a go/no-go process at the beginning, but I think also a debrief when you do win an RFP is really critical. What did we learn here? What did we do differently? And which of these answers can we use in the past? Anything to add there, Amy Louise?
Just around the, like, regularly reviewing answers as well. Like, again, initially that might seem like it's more work, but you're likely decreasing the amount of SMEs you have to bring in each and every time too. So again, if you have those standardized answers that marketing has vetted, They have approved it. It's in the brand voice. You're not going to have to go to marketing for every single RFP response that you're responding to, to get their buy-in from it. They're gonna have that standard answer. They're gonna regularly update it. Maybe it's annually, maybe it's every 6 months. But once you're pulling from that single source of truth that's been vetted by the correct people in the business, that proactive review cycle is actually really helpful and saves time holistically across your entire process.
Yeah. And any time that you have the opportunity to say like a last reviewed by date or have that indication of how up to date that content is, make sure that your subject matter experts are including that. That way they're not getting tapped on the shoulder every time asking if it's okay to use. So in summary, you know, now that you've got thinking about how this all works in theory and you're trusting Amy Louise and myself, we want to help you out with this. So we've built out a number of different resources that will help you regardless of your business and that will help you with some kind of quick actionable takebacks. So again, what we wanted to say for 4 winning habits that you can use today, and these are realistic, these are things that I think, you know, regardless of your position at your company, there are suggestions that either you can implement or you can bring to your team. Number 1, don't start from scratch every time. At the very minimum, you should be pulling from that centralized database, those previously won RFPs, and trying to rinse and recycle, learn from this process, and try to centralize it as much as possible so that the people that are involved in the RFP process are learning together, and that you're all aligned on what you need to succeed. The next one, include that best mix of contributors. Not everyone in your organization is going to participate in the RFP process. You know, there are people that are frontline supporting your customers, or they could be building the software that you're selling if you're in software. So really focus on who is the right people to get involved in getting their buy-in. Third one, qualify, qualify, qualify. So making sure that you're doing that thorough read-through, making sure that you're maybe bringing in a small group of people to get their opinion. So if you're not sure, for example, if you can satisfy one of the key requirements, you're bringing in someone from your team that can vet that and give you a little bit more perspective. Like, is this doable? Is this, you know, a yellow flag, or is it something that's not gonna be able to go through? And we really wanna clarify that with the vendor, maybe through a Q&A period. The last one is finding that centralized system. So being an active user of that system, so making sure that you're regularly putting in content that's up to date, that you're asking subject matter experts to update that, and finding as much streamline and efficiencies in your processes. These are all of the things that we found are part of those award-winning teams, those teams that are winning more than half of the RFPs that they're responding to. And again, you know, the numbers may not seem like a large delta between 46% versus 51% of their bids, but saying that you can increase the annual revenue of your business from, from RFPs by 5%, like, that's a huge thing that you can lean into and a fairly easy process in terms of implementing some of these tips and continuing to iterate on them.
That was a lot of information. We know.
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