Your RFP response is decided before anyone drafts

How to respond to an RFP worth winning

A tender pack of several files has arrived; its deadline is set, and your team is already working on other bids. The question is how to take this RFP from receipt to submission so the team’s effort goes into a response the buyer can score, on a bid worth winning.

An RFP response is largely settled before the first answer is drafted. The bid/no-bid decision comes first, taken before the team commits its effort. Then the RFP is shredded so every requirement has an owner, an answer, and the award criterion that scores it. With both in place, the team’s hours go into a response the buyer can score, on a bid worth winning.

The failure that costs most is a mandatory requirement or returnable form that never makes it to the compliance matrix. In public procurement, a response that does not conform to all of the RFP’s requirements is rejected as non-responsive, so it is never scored.

What to have in place before you start

The response to an RFP belongs to the supplier’s bid team, and you, as bid manager, own it and give the final sign-off. Before the first step, have the whole tender pack in hand. For the facilities management RFP, that is the instructions to bidders, the specification, the evaluation annex, the pricing schedule, the draft contract, the list of returnable forms and any addendum the buyer has issued.

Put a name against every part the response depends on. The mobilisation method statement depends on the operations lead as subject matter expert, and the draft contract needs legal counsel’s review, so set aside time for both before drafting starts. Name the commercial lead for the pricing schedule, and the bid writer and colour-team reviewers too. Last comes a library of approved answers the team trusts enough to draft from.

Decide whether the RFP is worth answering

Make the bid/no-bid decision before anyone drafts, formally and with leadership behind it, based on the return the contract offers, your chance of winning, and the risk it carries. On the facilities management RFP, that means deciding before the operations lead is asked for the mobilisation method statement, because a bid you cannot win still takes them away from live sites to write it.

Read the specification’s mandatory requirements and the draft contract for the facts the decision needs. They show whether the organisation can deliver what the buyer requires, on the buyer’s schedule and at a price that pays. Weigh your position against the competitors and any incumbent on the buyer’s sites, then judge whether the chance of winning justifies what the bid will cost.

Much of that cost never shows on a budget line. In New Zealand, for example, government guidance for suppliers counts staff taken away from their regular work among the hidden costs of bidding, and says that sometimes not competing is the right decision.

Shred the RFP into a compliance matrix

Shred every file of the tender pack into the compliance matrix as soon as it arrives, before anyone drafts: its requirements, instructions, evaluation criteria and deadlines. The rows include the specification’s mandatory requirements, the signed form of tender on the returnable forms list and the page limit in the instructions to bidders.

Each row follows APMP’s compliance matrix template: the requirement stated with an active verb and where it sits in the RFP, whether you comply fully, partly or not at all, and where the response answers it. Add the award criterion and weighting that score the row, taken from the evaluation annex. The buyer’s documents must state every criterion and the weight it will apply, and it may use no other, so the annex tells you how each row will be marked.

That same set of documents fixes the minimum a response must meet to count as responsive. A response that falls short of any requirement is rejected, and only a minor deviation that leaves its substance untouched may be accepted. A mandatory requirement or a form of tender left out of the matrix can disqualify the whole response before a single answer is scored.

In SEQUESTO aOS, you upload the tender pack to the project, and Agent Force’s specialist agents extract its requirements, questions, word limits, mandatory attachments, and evaluation criteria. Each appears in the project as a tracked item, ready to assign to its owner now and to confirm before submission.

Plan back from the submission deadline

Count back from the submission deadline to set dates for writing, each review and submission, and assign responsibilities to every contributor, so each row in the matrix has an owner and a date. The deadline is the one date with no slack: a response that reaches the buyer after it is not opened or considered, so the plan ends with an upload finished before the portal closes.

Input from subject matter experts outside the core team needs the earliest date in the plan. In New Zealand, for example, suppliers are advised by government guidance to set an internal deadline for external input, well before the due date, and a review schedule inside the plan. Set the operations lead’s date for the mobilisation method statement with that margin, ahead of the red-team review, your sign-off and the portal upload.

From day one, the tender pack’s dated requirements appear in the project as a task list. James adds the organisation’s sign-off stages and resource review gates as milestones, each with its time and a named reviewer.

Ask clarification questions early

Log every ambiguity, error and conflict between files that the shredding turns up, and send your questions in writing to the contact the RFP names, within the period it sets for them. The service in the specification that the pricing schedule has no line for is one such question, because a price based on your own reading commits the organisation to a figure for work nobody has scoped.

Ask early. The buyer has to answer a request in time, before the deadline, so you can use the answer and send the clarification to every bidder holding the documents without saying who asked. Every competitor will read your question about the missing pricing line, so word it to get the answer without revealing your solution.

Each answer and addendum changes the documents and binds every bidder, so it applies to every matrix row it touches. In the EU, for example, EU procurement law requires that additional information be requested in good time and reach all bidders at least six days before the deadline; a late request, or one of little importance, earns no extension.

Write each answer to its award criterion

Draft each answer from its row in the matrix, with the award criterion and weighting it is scored on in front of the writer. Evaluators combine the scores for each criterion, multiply by its weighting, and sum them, so the heaviest weightings in the evaluation annex determine where the team’s best hours go. If the annex weights the mobilisation method statement heavily, that answer gets the most weight.

The buyer scores the quality of an answer. On an illustrative scale of 0 to 4, an answer scores 0 when nothing shows how the requirement is met and 1 when the information is insufficient or unclear. It earns 2 when it shows the requirement will be met, and 3 or 4 when it shows the requirement will be marginally or significantly exceeded. The mobilisation method statement earns its weighting only with evidence of how mobilisation will be done on the buyer’s sites.

Answer each question in the buyer’s order, using the numbering and format provided, and answer every part. In the EU, for example, the buyer must state each award criterion’s relative weighting under EU procurement law, which allows a range, and must list the criteria in decreasing order of importance where it cannot weight them.

Tailor every answer you reuse

Take an approved answer from the library as a starting draft, and rewrite it for this buyer’s question, its requirements, and its terms before it goes in. The mobilisation answer in the library was written for another contract, and its staffing and timeline were set for that one.

The commitments in a reused answer need the most care. Under the UNCITRAL Model Law, a contract on the terms of the winning response can come into force when the buyer dispatches its acceptance, while the response is still in effect. Review the mobilisation answer’s staffing and timeline with the operations lead, and keep only what the organisation can deliver under this contract.

When the bid writer opens the mobilisation question in the project, a draft built from approved answers in the Knowledge Hub is already there, attributed to the sources it was drawn from. Anything past its expiry date is flagged before it reaches the draft, and the operations lead edits and approves the answer inside the workflow.

Settle pricing and contract terms early

Send the draft contract to legal counsel and the pricing schedule to the commercial lead at the start. For each clause the organisation cannot accept as written, such as the liability clause, decide early whether to raise it as a clarification question before the question deadline or to state it as an exception. Deciding early matters, because a major deviation or reservation that would defeat the bid’s purpose, or prevent a fair comparison with compliant bids, gets the bid rejected at the preliminary examination, before detailed evaluation starts.

Raise only the clauses that matter. In Victoria, Australia, for example, state government guidance tells suppliers to avoid disputing the buyer’s terms unnecessarily, since compliance with the proposed contract is one of the evaluation criteria, and never to claim anything the organisation cannot deliver.

A price that looks abnormally low draws a written request for detailed price analyses, and the bid is rejected if the commercial lead cannot show the organisation can deliver the contract at that price. Set the pricing schedule against the solution the mobilisation method statement describes, the win themes and the buyer’s budget.

Review the response before sign-off

Hold the colour-team reviews on the dates the plan sets, and have each one read the draft as the evaluator will, for compliance and for how fully it answers the RFP’s criteria. At the red-team review, that means reading the mobilisation method statement against the pricing schedule and the matrix.

Before submission, check the whole response for errors and for statements that contradict each other. One example is a staffing level in the method statement that the pricing schedule doesn’t cost. Sign off once every change the review asked for is closed, because that contradiction would reach the buyer as the organisation’s offer and lower the quality of the response the evaluators read.

Check compliance, then submit

Run the final compliance check row by row against the matrix and the returnable forms list. Then upload the response as the instructions to bidders require, and confirm the buyer has received it.

The buyer’s first look comes at the preliminary examination after opening. It checks for forms signed by an authorised person, a joint venture agreement or manufacturer’s authorisation where needed, a bid security if required, and a bid that covers the required scope in full. It also checks the signature on the form of tender.

In public procurement, after the deadline, the buyer may ask a bidder to clarify its response. Still, it may not seek or accept a substantive change, including one that would make a non-responsive response responsive. Confirm the authorised signature on the form of tender before uploading, because you cannot add a missing one once the portal has closed.

Ask for a debrief, win or lose

Ask the buyer in writing for a debrief as soon as the award notice arrives, whether the response won or lost. Buyers commonly offer one to every bidder, and the window to ask can be short: an unsuccessful bidder has three business days from the notification to request a debriefing in writing under the World Bank’s rules, and receives it within five business days.

Ask for the strengths and weaknesses the evaluators recorded against each criterion, including those on the mobilisation method statement. Evaluators record them in the evaluation report, and the debrief draws on that record.

The lessons-learned exercise and the win/loss analysis belong in the bid’s record at closeout: the success factors if the bid won, the buyer’s feedback and the gaps if it lost. Archive them with the bid’s other records, so the next bid/no-bid decision and the next mobilisation answer start from them.

Once the response is submitted, the answers the team approved, including the mobilisation method statement, go back into the Knowledge Hub, where your organisational knowledge lives. Each keeps its content owner and review cycle, and the team updates them there after the debrief.

RFP response checklist

• The bid/no-bid decision is taken and recorded before anyone drafts.
• Every requirement, instruction and returnable form in every file of the tender pack has a row in the compliance matrix, with its award criterion and weighting.
• Every row has an owner, and each review, sign-off, and submission has a date ahead of the deadline.
• Every question went in writing to the buyer’s named contact before the question deadline, and every answer and addendum is in the matrix.
• Every answer covers each part of its question, in the buyer’s order and format.
• Rewrite every reused answer for this buyer, and confirm its commitments with the owner.
• Legal counsel has cleared each contract clause, and the price matches the solution described in the response.
• Close every change from the reviews, and have the bid manager sign off.
• Mark every matrix row as complied with, sign every form, and confirm receipt with the buyer.
• Request the debrief and record the lessons.

When the next tender pack arrives, start with the bid/no-bid decision and put it on record before anyone writes a line of the response.