Presales 101 - How to respond to an RFI

Every year without fail, a client who has plenty of free time on his hand comes up with a bunch of questions to throw at his vendors to spoil their Christmas holidays. I am referring to that very predictable new year eve present from clients called the Request for Information or RFI, and I am suggesting some cool ways to coast through this nightmare every bid manager must endure periodically!

When you are responding to questions in an RFI, ask yourself even more questions (it works a bit like vaccines - if you get my drift :-) ) like the ones below:

1) Does my response address every part of the Customer Question or am I responding to only the beginning of the question? Or only the end?

BTW, Did I check my eyesight recently?                

2) Is the response understandable? Does each sentence in the response make sense to a sane person like me?
 
How about if my 12 year old nephew were to read it?  

3) Are all acronyms expanded in the response? Even very obvious ones like ISO? - 
Don't say "the customer didnt expand RFI when he sent it to me so why should I expand PMO?" 

4) Are there any boilerplate or motherhood statements (‘We put our customers before everything else’. ‘We have profound understanding of your business’ ‘We are eagerly waiting for this deal’ etc.) that I need to obliterate? 

Don't plead with the customer, especially around Christmas time!

5) Does the response mention at least one of the following?

- A previous experience or Customer Story (with or without customer name)
- A specific plan of something we will do for the client
- A metric or result or outcome
- A specific approach

...anything at all that hides my hard cut and paste efforts?

6) Does it stick to some reasonable length or does it go on like a Tolstoy novel? - A response too short means we are not using the opportunity to differentiate ourselves. A response too long won't be read.
When in doubt, chop-chop-chop!!!

7) Have I included a one line summary message  at the bottom of each  response - Customers like it sweet and short, so give it to them in one sentence after you have polluted the environment for half a page.

8) Does it differentiate us in any way? Can we mention an award, a unique methodology, a tool we use, an endorsement from someone, a unique metric, or at least a unique message? At a minimum does it sound honest and sincere?


You see, it is just like proposing to someone...everyone can't emulate Shakespeare and write sonnets, but vomiting the truth should be easy?