I 100% agree with Michele’s point about pre-qualifying the client before you respond to the proposal. Is the client relationship oriented? Who is the incumbent? What is the decision making criteria? How many competitors are we bidding against? Who are the decision makers (very important!). The answers to these questions help us size up the potential.

It is a two way street and I think you can build both rapport and respect from the client by asking the right questions about the process, setting your expectations as well as theirs, etc.

It usually only takes a few minutes to figure out that your probability of winning is high or low.

There are many opportunities that we politely decline to bid on because the probability of winning is too low or they are not a fit for us. This allows us to focus our time on the right opportunities.

John’s right on the money here. If you and your staff are not actively soliciting feedback, then as far as I am concerned you are not doing your job. This is not to say it’s easy – certainly one of the last people I would want to talk to is the guy I DIDN’T select to redo my pool or something, but if they were persistent, I would let them know why they didn’t get my business. Why? Because hopefully in the future it would benefit ME the next time I needed something. Unfortunately, not all clients/prospects feel this same way, but many do.

While traveling recently, I was involved in an in-depth ONLINE RFP process, where the end client held a one-hour conference call as a tutorial on how to use the online response system to reply to the RFP. I made sure to dial in early, and was literally the first person on the call. I heard 25 other BEEP-IN’s come into the call – that’s a potential of (minus the two people I knew were on the call from the client side) 23 other bidders!!!! While I don’t believe with such a process like this that I will ever get the feedback I would want if we are not awarded the study, you can be sure that I will be doing all I can to solicit whatever feedback I can, if for nothing else to simply try and find out what may need to be different next time in order to win the business.

By the same token, I have recently had discussions with a few prospects (one in particular comes to mind) that had sent me an RFP and I told them I would not be responding. When asked why, I simply stated that about a year ago I had mentioned to them how we had bid no less than 35 opportunities over as 2-year period, and had received neither a project award or any feedback on why we did not win the project. I told them unless something were to change, I didn’t see the point in continuing to bid their RFP’s, which tend to be quite complex. Sometimes, you need to determine that a client is not the right client for you if they are not equally vested in the process of moving the relationship along, and things like feedback on why you may not have been chosen are good tell-tale signs of where the relationship might or might not go.

Did you include our numbers in your proposal?
If you win it do we win it?
If we lost it, why? Who did you go with? (sometimes very hard to get at-why a big secret is always a mystery).

In my experience, clients are less likely to ignore someone with whom they already have or are developing a relationship with and to whom they have made a commitment to communicate the decision, regardless of whether it is positive or not. We need to follow-up with the client (especially if we were not awarded the project) to find out why we did or didn’t get it and whether or not it will be worthwhile for us to respond to a future RFP.

FYI, not all business is worth getting and that is part of what the pre-qualification call is about.!