I have must have sat in hundreds of Go/No-Go decision meetings and reviewed just as many Go/No-Go submission forms over my decade in this industry. While they bring good discussion and heated debates, there has been a theme to the pleas I get from Project Managers, Business Developers and Principals as to why we should spend time and resources chasing RFPs. Below are about a dozen of the most common pleas I have received over the years.
“Great” Reasons to Pursue an RFP
- It will get our name in front the client.
- We have a project that is similar in scope.
- The procurement officer asked us to submit.
- We live in the city (county, area or school district).
- Our lead architect or project manager went to that school.
- The submittal is not much effort.
- We can use the exact proposal we submitted last time.
- A teaming partner brought this project to us. We don’t want to jeopardize the relationship.
- Work is awarded in a rotation. If we don’t submit we will get skipped.
- It’s our turn to win one.
- We need to get our foot in the door.
- We did one project with this client (although it was 10 years ago and no one who worked on it is no longer at your firm).
Of course, these are not good reasons to submit a proposal. Needless to say that if they are using these reasons, they haven’t positioned your firm and team properly. However, they are sometimes used and the marketer is left getting overturned.
Has this happened to you?
Do any of these sound familiar to you?
Have you heard others that are even “better”?
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