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Written by Justyn Howard
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Monday, 01 September 2008 00:00 |
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If you deal with RFP's (or RFI's or any formal bid process) in your professional sales career, you can likely relate to the following;
I have a wonderful team of people who draft RFP responses for me (not because I'm special, just because we deal with a lot of these in my industry). Up until about 6 months ago, I spent 2-3 days fine-tuning the responses before I delivered them to prospects. My logic was, "this is my first impression, and if my name is on it, I'm going to make it the best it can be".
One day I had a long discussion with myself (not the creepy kind, or the Bluetooth headset kind, just good ' ole internal dialogue). After some reflecting I proved a new theory. Some of the responses which I was most proud of didn't even make the final round, while some mediocre ones were scored very high.
What really made a difference to the success of my responses was the prospects willingness to engage in discussion and mutual exploration. This isn't news to me (or you), but my actions contradicted this truth. I was devaluing my expertise by having one sided conversations (RFP responses).
From that day forward, any RFP in which the prospect insisted on dysfunctional blind buying practices, would get a response untouched by me. I owe it to myself and the prospects who are not caught up in traditional buyer/seller etiquette to spend my time on the projects where success is likely. I don't just mean my odds of winning the business, I mean the chance that the project itself will be a success.
I cannot participate in buying practices which all but guarantee failure because of the dysfunctional buying practices which have been perpetuated for decades. That said, buyers are not to blame. These practices were adopted because of poor selling.
My hat is off to all those sales professionals who actively work to reverse this cycle!
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