by Sudeepa Nair

Created on: February 05, 2009

Writing an effective response to a Request for Proposal (RFP) can help you clear one of the many hurdles while clinching a deal with a buyer that of standing out amongst your peers. On the flipside, some common mistakes can make you slip down the ranking ladder. Of course, for every one thing that you do right, there can be hundreds that you could do wrong, but here are some common mistakes to avoid like plague while writing a response to an RFP.

1. Thinking that the buyer will not have the time to read your response.

This is a common refrain among proposal writers that the buyer may not really have the time to go through our proposal, so why bother to make it perfect. Wrong! Remember that for the buyer, reading and evaluating your proposal is an important aspect of their decision making process. Although not everyone will have dedicated proposal evaluating teams, someone surely has to go through your proposal to either eliminate or select you for the next step in the process. Your proposal will carry considerable weight as one of the selection criteria, even if there is no elimination at this stage, for instance, when a proposal is followed by a trial or a demo of your product/service. If the buyer outsources the proposal evaluation to external consultants, then it becomes even more imperative to keep in mind that every word in your proposal will be read because that's what the consultants have been hired for!

2. Assuming that the buyer has all the time in the world to read your response.

Do not assume that the buyer has only one task in the whole wide world, that of reading your response. (I know you would like to double check the first point. Please do!) Imagine you are a buyer who wants to know all about digital cameras in the market before investing your money in one. You want to be absolutely sure that the one you bought is perfect for you. Would you like to scour through a 50 page document on how a digital camera works, what is the physics behind it (or is it the chemistry?), in order to find a one pager on camera specifications/features? No! You would rather drop the idea of buying a camera. Well, but that's what proposal evaluators have to go through more often than not. Would you then blame them for relegating your proposal to the trash can?

3. Presuming that the buyer will not be bothered with the presentation (or the lack of it).

Proposal writers, often, get so lost in the content and the message that they wish to convey; they ignore how they convey

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