Chasing Every RFP? Learn How to Use a Bid-No Bid Log to Focus on Winnable Deals

Is Every Opportunity Truly an Opportunity?

Does your team jump into action the moment an RFP hits the inbox, regardless of the source or your chances of winning? Do you find yourself stretching resources thin, chasing deals you have little realistic hope of securing, simply because the RFP exists?

Something I see constantly with enthusiastic, growing firms is the tendency to pursue everything, fearing they might miss out. But this scattergun approach often leads to burnout, wasted effort, and a depressingly low win rate.

The Strategic Cost of Bidding Blindly

Chasing unsuitable RFPs isn’t just inefficient; it carries significant hidden costs. Every hour your team spends on a long-shot proposal is an hour they can’t spend on:

• Nurturing existing client relationships.
• Developing stronger proposals for opportunities where you have a genuine competitive advantage.
• Proactive business development and strategic planning.
• Even just catching their breath to avoid burnout.

Furthermore, consistently losing bids after significant investment can demoralize your team. It fosters a sense of futility and distracts from focusing on your core strengths and ideal customer profile – the very things that make a proposal customer-centric and likely to succeed. Saying ‘yes’ to every RFP often means implicitly saying ‘no’ to more strategic activities.

Making the Smart Choice: Implementing Your Bid-No Bid Process

The solution is to introduce a formal Bid-No Bid decision-making process, anchored by a Bid-No Bid Log. This isn’t about avoiding bids; it’s about making informed, strategic choices before committing significant resources. Here’s how you can implement this vital filter:

1. Establish Your Log: Create a spreadsheet (again, Excel or Google Sheets works well). This log will track each potential opportunity as it comes through your RFP Schedule (see previous article) and document the decision process.

2. Define Your Evaluation Criteria: This is the heart of the process. For each potential bid, assess it against key factors. What I find most effective is a mix of objective and subjective criteria, often scored (e.g., 1-5 scale) to allow for comparison:

   • Strategic Fit: Does this align with our company goals, target markets, and core competencies?
   • Win Probability: Do we have a strong relationship with the client? Unique differentiators? Understanding of the requirements? Knowledge of competitors? (Be honest!)
   • Resource Availability: Do we have the right people available now to put together a winning proposal and deliver if we win?
   • Profitability: Is the potential return worth the investment in bidding and delivery? Are the margins acceptable?
   • Risk Assessment: Are there unusual risks (technical, financial, contractual)? How manageable are they?
   • Client Relationship: Is this a current strategic client, or a new prospect? What’s our history?
   • Competition: Who are we likely up against? How do we stack up?

3. Hold a Bid-No Bid Meeting: For significant opportunities, gather key stakeholders (sales, technical lead, delivery manager, proposal manager) to review the RFP against the criteria. Discuss openly and make a collective decision: GO or NO-GO.

4. Document the Decision: Record the decision (Go/No-Go) and the reasons why in your Bid-No Bid Log. Tracking the ‘why’ behind No-Go decisions is valuable for future strategy refinement.

5. Be Disciplined: Stick to the process. It might feel difficult to say ‘no’ initially, but focusing your efforts will yield better results over time.

Using a structured template can streamline this evaluation. The Proposal Templates suite from Klariti includes templates that help you organize these evaluation criteria and document your decisions effectively. Remember, good procurement processes involve smart qualification, not just response. Even AI tools used for proposal writing are only valuable if applied to opportunities you’ve strategically decided to pursue.

Next Steps: Measuring Your Success

Implementing a Bid-No Bid process is a crucial step towards improving your proposal efficiency and effectiveness.

By filtering opportunities, you ensure your team focuses its energy on the deals you are most likely to win and that align best with your business strategy. But how do you know if this (and your overall proposal effort) is actually working? How do you measure the impact?

Next up, we will explore the Success Ratio, a vital metric for understanding your win/loss outcomes and analyzing your bid performance over time.