Improve Your RFP Odds

Hey everybody, Drew McLellan here from Agency Management Institute, this week coming to you from Savannah, Georgia. You know, I'm here with a bunch of agency owners and we were talking about RFPs and how to increase your odds of actually winning in an RFP pitch. One of the agencies was talking about how they dramatically increased their win rate with one simple change or decision. And their simple change or decision was that when they get an RFP, the first thing they do is they reach out to whoever sent out the RFP, whether it's a search firm or it's the actual brand or organization, and they ask for an informational meeting and they say, "We have some questions that will help us respond to the RFP differently or better. Can we get an hour of your time? Or can we get 30 minutes of your time?" And if the answer is no, they don't respond to the RFP. If the answer is yes, then they go, they spend that time to ask their questions, and they have more than doubled their win rate for RFPs if they get the informational meeting. So, as you are trying to decide whether or not you should participate in a pitch or in a request for information or request for a proposal, consider always asking for that informational meeting and maybe, like this agency, make that the deal-breaker if you're not allowed to get one. All right? Simple idea, hope it helps. I'll see you next week.