Whenever you have a lot of disruption in the world, it usually ends up disrupting your business and your job too. Over the past couple of years, we’ve had the pandemic, inflation, supply chain issues, and now a major war in Europe.

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During periods of tumult, you’re likely to see some buyers and sellers behaving differently. As an example, I’ve had a few clients tell me that they’ve had more clients asking them to answer Requests for Proposals (RFPs) lately.

Those who know me well know I am not a fan of RFPs. I rarely respond to them. Clients who expect me to participate in an RFP are generally not good candidates for my customized, high-value services.

I hate RFPs, because they are one-sided, manipulative tools that reduce your offerings to disposable commodities and ultimately deliver mediocre results to the client. Everybody loses in the RFP process:

1. A company decides it needs a new vendor, so several employees sit down and think of all the things they do and don’t want and then dream up a bunch of hoops for would-be vendors to jump through.
2. They send the RFP to every potential vendor they can think of.
3. Prospective vendors practically do backflips trying to meet all the RFP requirements and end up rushing to meet the deadline.
4. The company that issued the RFP then examines all the proposals that were submitted and compares them. Ultimately, they decide that some of the proposals are basically offering the same products/services, so they choose the lowest-priced bid.
5. And it can get even worse. The finalists are sometimes pitted against each other in a bidding war to see who is willing to discount their price to the lowest number. It’s a race to the bottom.
6. The “winner” ends up doing a lot of work for too little money.
7. The client gets a product or service that is watered down or delivered by an inferior vendor who was willing to “give away the farm” in order to get the business.

This is not a recipe for happiness and high profitability.

Generally speaking, I recommend you respond to RFPs only when your relationship with the client is so strong that you are essentially guaranteed of winning. Some companies have policies requiring that vendor relationships go out to bid periodically. If this is the case at one of your best client companies, tell them you will help write the RFP. You can then write the RFP to favor you and the way you do business.

If you don’t write the RFP, or at least have heavy influence on the RFP, it very well could be an expensive waste of your time replying to the RFP. An exception would be when the RFP is a mere formality designed to make shareholders feel better and you are the pre-chosen winner.

Now, I realize that there are some industries where RFPs are a rooted part of the culture. In other words, they’re so common that there’s no getting around them. That’s not the case in most industries. When at all possible, avoid RFPs. You have little chance of winning. Meanwhile, you spend tons of time and money preparing a proposal and get no revenue in return. If by some miracle, you are chosen, you’re probably going to get skewered on price.

When at all possible, just say “no” to RFPs!

Clients Who Lack Urgency

From 1980 to 1995, Gary Larson had a syndicated, single-panel cartoon known as The Far Side. It ran in thousands of newspapers and was pure genius in its simultaneous hilarity and simplicity.

I could always relate to the cartoon especially one captioned, “Same planet, different worlds.” The cartoon panel is divided in half. In the top frame, there is a man lying in bed staring at the ceiling with a thought bubble above his head that says, “I wonder if she knows I exist…Should I call her? Maybe she doesn’t even know I exist? Well, maybe she does…I’ll call her. No, wait…I’m not sure if she knows I exist. Dang!”

In the bottom frame, there’s a picture of a woman lying in bed staring at her ceiling with a thought bubble above her head: “You know, I think I really like vanilla.”

That cartoon cracks me up, because it’s such a metaphor for anyone who sells for a living.

As the cartoon so effectively illustrates, people have different priorities and different levels of urgency. As a sales professional, your level of urgency is often greater than that of your prospects.

Think about it. Your job depends on selling products or services. You don’t get paid until you close a deal. Because your livelihood depends on deal making, you have a vested interest in the process moving quickly and the purchase decision being made promptly.

But your prospect could (and often does) have a very different timeline for a variety of reasons:

1. Your prospect might have to go through multiple layers of decision making inside his or her company
2. Your prospect might be considering additional options/vendors in addition to you and your offering.
3. In addition to making a decision on your proposed offering, your prospect has a hundred other things to worry about, some of which are more pressing and stressful.
4. Your prospect could be dealing with things in his or her personal life that take priority over a business decision, even an important business decision.
5. Your prospect’s “clock” might be different from yours. Different people think and move at different speeds. What’s “fast” to one person might be “slow” to another.
6. Perhaps you haven’t done a good enough job of proving that your offering creates so much value that it deserves to be the prospect’s top priority.

If you find yourself in the sales equivalent of The Far Side cartoon, what should you do?

Stick to the basics. Be persistent and focus on value-led messaging that focuses on the prospect’s outcomes.

When you discover exactly which part of your product or service most closely meets what the prospect most values at the time he or she most needs it, the prospect’s level of urgency suddenly will match and sometimes even exceed yours.

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