Where are those RFPs?

Time for a rant post. 


                                                                                                                                                                            

When I moved from Bid Management to Sales, one of the first things I realized is that those good, winnable, set-piece RFPs are not so easy to come by. Wait a minute, if I can do well in a certain type of RFP and give the customer a good proposal - that's got to be a win-win right? The market should be able to help make such things happen, i.e. bring the sellers and buyers together on those RFPs. 

Well, reality is a bit different. 

Often, the right vendors dont get the right RFPs. Especially in the private sector. The government RFPs are open to at least all who qualify. There are some qualification criteria and these are often meetable and so you will more than likely get an RFP that you want from a government agency than achieve the same from a private company.  Of course, winning the bid is something else.

Why is this so? Because, in private enterprises, other factors come into play. There is no machine choosing all those blessed RFP recipients based on a set of rigid criteria. Here a human being or several of them are making judgements on whom to invite to a bid. Of course, the idea is that the human discretion applied reduces time wastage and helps lead to the correct vendor soon. The flip side is that the right vendor may not even be in the radar of the buyers because, often, they are unknown to them.

Why do corporations allow this apparently subjective process to live on? Because, it would appear, the comfort of a manager making the vendor selection is much more important than the vendor selection itself.  In that sense, in the private sector, the decision maker is empowered. The underlying rationale is that vendor selection is only one tenth of the way in getting the project done. The remaining nine tenths depends on that chemistry between the buyer and the provider. So, while the government may end up selecting the right vendor, their project itself may not succeed, whereas the corporation typically gets its project done well with or without the best vendor. 

So, now tell me, where do I go for those RFPs which I so need...