Keeping an eye out for new opportunities and staying ahead of the curve is crucial for winning new business, achieving greater revenue, and landing new clients. However, not every RFP is worth pursuing. This is a lesson that, unfortunately, many organizations learn the hard way by overworking their proposal teams from, essentially, throwing spaghetti at the wall by responding to any RFP that remotely sounds close to their line of business. This leads to (1) burnout, (2) quantity over quality, and (3) significantly lower win rates.
Vetting incoming RFPs is an essential step in ensuring that your organization pursues valuable opportunities while minimizing risk. A thorough vetting process can improve your proposal win rate and optimize resource allocation. Carefully vetting your opportunities requires having a proper Go/No-Go Process, which can be very similar to a SWOT analysis.
How to Vet your Opportunities
1. Assess strategic alignment: Determine whether the RFP aligns with your company’s strategic goals, capabilities, and market focus. If the opportunity deviates from your business strategy or does not match your core competencies, it may not be worth pursuing.
2. Evaluate financial viability: Examine the project’s budget, payment terms, and potential profitability. Ensure that the opportunity provides a reasonable return on investment and doesn’t pose a financial risk to your organization.
3. Review project scope and requirements: Analyze the RFP’s project scope, deliverables, and requirements to ensure your organization has the capacity, expertise, and resources needed to fulfill the contract successfully.
4. Investigate the client: Research the prospective client’s background, reputation, and financial stability. Assess their communication style and determine whether they have a history of successful partnerships. A problematic client can lead to project delays, scope creep, and other issues that could negatively impact your business.
5. Analyze the competition: Consider the likely competitors for the RFP and evaluate your chances of winning against them. Assess the competitive landscape and determine whether you can provide a unique value proposition that sets you apart from other bidders.
6. Consider timeline and resource availability: Review the RFP’s deadlines and project duration to ensure your organization can meet the required timeline without compromising existing projects or overstretching resources.
7. Assess risk factors: Identify potential risks associated with the RFP, such as legal, regulatory, or technical challenges. Determine whether these risks could be manageable or could jeopardize your organization’s success and reputation.
How Our Opportunity Monitoring Service Can Help
With so many factors to consider when evaluating every RFP that comes through the door, it can be difficult for your proposal team to actively vet new opportunities while also responding to and focusing on active proposals. Leveraging the keen eye and additional resources from an outside company, such as Theme, to take care of monitoring your opportunities will mean that the opportunities you do receive are tailored for your business and are aligned with your organization’s services.
Think of us as your first line of defense in the funnel. We remove the noise so you can focus on the opportunities that truly deserve your attention. Our team carefully looks at and considers factors that are most important to you such as the complexity of the bid, geographic targets, scope of work, and any other unique requirements or red flags.
Our opportunity monitoring service can help streamline your vetting process and make bidding much more efficient.
1. Time Savings: Focus on Core Business Activities
Searching for new RFPs can be a time-consuming task, requiring hours of sifting through websites, databases, and email alerts. By outsourcing RFP monitoring to us, you free valuable time for your team to focus on core business activities, such as developing winning proposals, nurturing existing client relationships, and refining your company’s strategic direction.
2. Cost Savings: Leverage Expertise and Technology
Outsourcing RFP monitoring can lead to cost savings in the long run. As a professional consulting service, we have access to resources to find and evaluate RFPs more efficiently than a standard in-house team. This means reduced overhead costs for you since you no longer need to invest in additional staff, training, and technology to manage the RFP discovery process.
3. Tailored Opportunities: Access High-Quality, Relevant RFPs
Our team’s experience and deep understanding of several industries and sectors guide us to find RFPs that are tailored to your specific needs and strengths. This targeted approach can lead to high-quality opportunities that are closely aligned with your organization’s core competencies and market positioning, increasing your chances of winning contracts and growing your business.
4. Competitive Intelligence: Stay Ahead of the Curve
By partnering with us to monitor proposal opportunities, you gain access to our wealth of industry knowledge and insights. You stay informed about emerging trends, new competitors, and regulatory changes that may impact your business. While positioned ahead of the curve, you can make informed, strategic decisions and maintain a competitive edge in your market.
5. Enhanced Scalability: Adapt to Changing Business Needs
Outsourcing RFP monitoring enables you to scale your proposal efforts according to your organization’s needs. As your business grows or your focus shifts, you can easily adjust the scope of your RFP monitoring services without having to invest in additional in-house resources or infrastructure
6. Bidding More Efficiently: Opportunity Summaries for Your Team
In addition to saving your team time from having to scour the business horizon for RFPs, our team saves you the time of reading through complex and long RFPs. We provide your team a curated, comprehensive summary of each opportunity with the key pieces of information highlighted for your review and consideration.
Contracting with us to monitor proposal opportunities can bring significant benefits to your organization, including time and cost savings and access to tailored opportunities. By leveraging our expertise, you can streamline your proposal efforts, focus on core business activities, and secure material contracts for your business. Reach out to us today about how we can help you monitor your opportunities.
