Unlock efficient revenue growth
with Realm
You know the feeling: the chaotic, unclear, and frustrating scramble to submit an RFP response. Without a clear project management approach, proposal teams often find themselves drowning in disorganized information, missed deadlines, and ultimately, unsuccessful bids. That wasted time is a total loss.
RFP project management is the essential strategy that brings order to the people, tasks, and information involved in the proposal process. It's the groundwork for executing a faster, easier, and more effective bid.
In this guide, we'll explore the ins and outs of RFP project management. We'll cover key definitions, proven frameworks, and a step-by-step guide to implementing a strategy and best RFP software that will transform your proposal process from chaos to control.
What is RFP project management?
Project management (PM) is one of the three core skills required for successful proposal management. It is the defined strategy for planning and executing the processes, tools, roles, and knowledge needed to accomplish a specific, time-bound goal. Ultimately, the purpose of PM is to improve efficiency, consistency, and outcomes.
Definition of RFP in project management
In this context, RFP stands for Request for Proposal. An RFP is a formal document sent by a buyer to potential vendors, seeking a product, service, or solution. Vendors submit their answers in a proposal document, allowing buyers to make data-driven decisions based on consistent criteria.
Why project management principles apply to RFPs
RFPs are notoriously difficult to manage because they involve dozens of elements, people, and tools that must converge at the right time. Since RFPs are projects with a set beginning and end, project management creates a helpful framework for organizing the entire response process. The core problem in most proposal processes is a lack of communication and accountability, which PM is designed to solve.
The role of the RFP project manager
The proposal manager acts as the project manager for the RFP response. They are ultimately responsible for the completion and on-time delivery of the proposal.
Effective RFP project managers are:
- Team leaders and highly organized
- Critical thinkers and detail-oriented
- Collaborative and creative problem solvers
- Patient, communicative, and strategy-focused
Their core responsibilities include:
- Advocacy: Acting as an advocate for the organization, escalating problems, or recommending a "cut losses" decision if the desired outcome is no longer achievable.
- Intelligence aggregation: Summarizing the capture management plan and collecting/inserting answers from subject matter experts (SMEs).
- Meeting facilitation: Scheduling and running all key meetings, such as kickoff, update, review, and debrief sessions.
- Expectation setting: Creating and enforcing the RFP response timeline, setting milestones to ensure on-time delivery.
- Problem solving: Clearing roadblocks, managing bottlenecks, bridging communication gaps, and correcting blind spots to keep the project moving forward.
- Communication flow: Ensuring tasks with chronological dependencies move promptly to the next person.
- Buyer point of contact: Centralizing communications with the buyer, asking about evaluation criteria, and seeking feedback on lost opportunities.
- Compliance verification: Ensuring the final proposal meets all RFP evaluation criteria and requirements before submission.
Why project management is essential for winning RFPs
Project management is more than just a checklist; it's a strategic investment that defines your goal and provides a step-by-step plan to reach it. By breaking the project into individual tasks and workflows, it becomes exponentially easier to manage.
Here is how project management improves your proposal process:
- It ensures team alignment and clearly defines objectives.
- It improves process predictability and promotes consistency, which enables data capture and optimization.
- It enhances clarity between teams by defining RFP terminology.
- It provides quick updates for inquiring executive leaders.
- It creates an organized approach, making it easier to respond to unknown factors.
- It enables fast adaptation to challenges by identifying impacted parties.
- It reduces the risk of including inaccurate, unapproved, or unreviewed responses.
- It improves the team's understanding of the meaning and intent of RFP questions.
7 steps to bring structure to your RFP process
Regardless of the framework you choose, a few core steps remain essential for a successful implementation. Follow this process to formalize your RFP project management strategy.
1. Identify and define the project goal
While the obvious goal is to win the RFP, you must look deeper. Define why this RFP is a good fit and the projected business impact if you win. This step often involves referring back to your initial go/no-go decision discussions.
2. Define and sequence all project tasks
After setting the goal, clearly state every task your team must accomplish for success. Identify which tasks can be accomplished concurrently to save time.
Your task list should include:
- Creating the project brief
- Scheduling the kickoff meeting
- Collecting and submitting follow-up questions for the buyer
- Reviewing your RFP content library for reusable answers
- Customizing reusable answers for this opportunity
- Assigning new questions to SMEs
- Writing, reviewing, and formatting the proposal document
- Ensuring all business requirements are met
- Final review by marketing, sales, and executives
- Final submission and requesting feedback
- Holding a debrief meeting and optimizing the knowledge library
3. Build and assign your proposal team
Review your task list and match people to the tasks they are best suited for. Determine if they need input or review from others. Your team will likely include stakeholders, support staff, SMEs, department heads, and executive leaders.
4. Explore and centralize information and tools
You must ensure your team has the necessary resources before the project begins to avoid delays. Do your SMEs have access to the knowledge library? Do you have the required performance data and customer references? Has the capture management team provided their research and win themes? Centralizing your knowledge is critical. Instead of relying on shared drives, RFP tools like Realm provide your subject matter experts with instant access to a centralized, always up-to-date knowledge library.
5. Create a comprehensive project brief
Bring all the elements together in a single project brief. Start with the project goal, then share key milestones (e.g., follow-up question deadline, SME answer deadline, submission deadline). Finally, provide the project tasks matched with assigned staff and any necessary context for contributors.
6. Execute the project and maintain momentum
You are now ready to execute. At the kickoff meeting, ensure everyone understands the chosen RFP project management approach and how to use it. Your primary job as the project manager is to keep the process on track.
7. Track, save, and optimize key data
The consistency of proposal project management is a massive benefit because it allows you to gather RFP data. You can track response cost, time spent, answer quality, and final outcome. Once you have enough data, review it for patterns, roadblocks, and opportunities for improvement.
Tips for sustained RFP project management success
Take charge and deal in facts
When your proposal team gathers, remember your purpose: you are dealing in facts, not asking for opinions on the process. Ask the team for insight on potential gaps, blind spots, or workload issues. You are not asking for input on the project management style or responsibilities. Don't let uncertainty derail your project.
Adjust the process, but only when necessary
While consistency is essential for reaping the full benefits of project management, not every RFP requires the full treatment. If a proposal is brief and only requires input from two people, you can abbreviate your process and accelerate the timeline. If you are the incumbent vendor and the RFP is a formality, the approach should also change.
Remember that these methodologies are best used to manage big projects. If an informal process is significantly more efficient for a small project, use it and spend the time saved on higher-value work.
Seek visible executive support
Inevitably, you will encounter roadblocks caused by people outside your chain of command. This is why visible executive support is crucial. When executives support your process, you benefit from improved workload prioritization, necessary mediation, enhanced responsiveness, and a higher awareness of your team's value.
Centralize the process with technology
Many proposal teams struggle with miscommunication and a lack of clarity. By centralizing everything, every team member has access to the information they need to make informed decisions and execute their next steps.
While shared drives are a start, the most effective way to centralize the process and improve efficiency is with dedicated RFP software. Your solution should feature workflows, collaboration, knowledge management, automation, and integrations.
Realm is an AI-powered RFP tool built exactly for this, automating 80% of all questionnaire responses and streamlining workflows with in-built collaboration features.
Don't change your process to solve temporary problems
As a project manager, you must identify the root cause of challenges. You will encounter unusual circumstances, unique barriers, or uncooperative people. It is tempting to immediately alter the process to solve the perceived problem, but you must resist this urge.
Instead of permanently altering your RFP project management approach, focus on identifying the likelihood of the issue recurring and improving buy-in and accountability with individuals.
Give the new process time to stick
You are unlikely to have a seamless process the very first time you use a new strategy. In fact, the first few times may even feel less efficient. However, you must persevere. As your team becomes familiar with the proactive RFP management process and expectations, you will see remarkable and measurable improvements. Reverting to a reactive process will prevent you from reaching your full potential.
Final thoughts
The ultimate goal of RFP project management is simple: reduce the hours required to create a proposal while simultaneously improving your likelihood of success. The hours you put into a proposal are not free. A more efficient RFP process saves your company money and frees up time to answer additional RFPs, further growing your business. This creates a compounded impact that any proposal team can achieve with the right knowledge, process, and tools.