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You are correct that it is usually not worth the effort unless you already have established relationship with that client and you are talking about $100,000 or
by codegeek 6y ago
You are correct that it is usually not worth the effort unless you already have established relationship with that client and you are talking about $100,000 or more per year. We sell B2B SAAS and a few times, I was daring enough to try crazy RFPs only to find out that they anyway went their existing preferred vendor and RFP was just a checklist they had to do for compliance needs. A lot of companies float RFP because they have to in order to select a vendor and in many cases, vendors are already decided internally (usually existing vendor) and is just a formality/paper work/checkbox. Not to mention crazy requirements. One RFP needed everything on paper (yes paper) and we literally printed 100 pages and had to mail it physically. :) Then it was radio silence. I literally got someone in our team to call a point of contact (we were not supposed to) and ask for status after a few weeks and all we got was "we went with existing vendor. sorry". That was the last RFP we did until now.
- pkrotich 6y agoThank you! This was my exact fear - being a checklist item.
- The_DaveG 6y agoAll of these things are fairly common in the RFP process. Not that going to find somewhere to print and FedEx on a Saturday morning isn't always fun... One suggestion I would offer for future RFP's is to call/meet/show up for the pre-bid meeting. In person is always better if/when that happens again for your industry. Most of the time, they will tell you about preferred vendors list. Or explain how they are going to go about making decisions. You can also tell who they know at the meeting.