9 ways CRM vendors can improve their RFP responses…

May 27, 2008 Richard Boardman

As I’ve been writing ‘10 tips…’ type lists, and as I’ve been slogging through RFP responses for several days I thought I would compile a ‘9 ways CRM vendors can improve their RFP responses and make my life a bit easier (and ultimately increase their sales)’ list, so here goes:

1. Develop a coherent structure to the document – In virtually every other field of communication there are accepted structural norms, but for some reason these go out the window with RFP responses, with different sections often randomly sequenced together. Ultimately a RFP response is meant to be a persuasive selling document; few are.

2. Differentiate – I figure most marketing managers don’t get to see the RFP’s that get sent out, but they should – and I suspect they wouldn’t be happy. The fundamentals of marketing are differentiate or sell on price. Few CRM vendors succeed in differentiating themselves. Terms such as easy to use, fast to deploy, scalable, 360 degree view, any time anywhere access are used by everyone. It strikes me there’s plenty of potential to differentiate, but it generally doesn’t happen.

3. Just because you have it don’t feel you need to tell me about it – I see whole swathes of text written about features functions and attributes that are of entirely no relevance to my client. I’m sure it’s wizzy technology but if it’s not relevent I’m not really interested.

4. Customers don’t care about you – sorry, they just care about them. You may have the best help desk in the world or project managers second to none but if the client doesn’t understand if and how these are going to be beneficial to them, it’s meaningless.

5. Which means that… – Clients in the main don’t want technology so much as business solutions. Few RFP responses contain much reference to benefits. If in doubt apply the words ‘which means that…..’ after every feature.

6. Be open about the hidden costs – vendors tend to see the world in terms of their costs not the costs of a project as a whole. Implementations will generally require investment in hardware, database software, administrative resource, reporting software, project team time etc etc. Don’t con the customer and pretend these costs don’t exist – they are going to find out sometime. And before a software as a service (SAAS) vendor pipes up that these costs don’t apply to them, I’ll add a postscript and say and if you are a SAAS vendor don’t pretend that you aren’t going to need implementation services.

7. If it’s going to take 20 man weeks to develop a capability it’s not ‘fully compliant’ – applying the most lateral interpretation of a question in order to indicate compliance is not being open and honest, and as buyers will buy from people they trust, it’s not doing you any favours.

8. Answer the question – questions are posed in RFP’s for a purpose. Answering a different question to the question asked, but one you like better, is not answering the question.

9. I want to read one document – I don’t want to slog through 47 different attachments or yomp through a 500 page technical addendum to find the answer to the questions asked. If you’ve got good relevent material makes sure it’s in the main document where it’s going to get read.