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Ask HN: RFP Worth the Effort?

4 points by pkrotich ↗ HN
My feeling are - it’s a distraction because of outrageous number of requirements and effort/cost required. To me, the process is geared towards more established players and as SMB it’s not worth it.

I’m curious to hear from the community on your experiences with RFP - do you respond to unsolicited requests? How did it work out for you? Have you won a big contract/license out of RFP?

9 comments

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ApolloRising
For individuals it is a waste of time unless you are exceptional and rare in some way for that particular job. Companies get lots of rfps for ideas and then go with their favorite vendor. Rule of thumb: Do you carry liability insurance for your company? Have a contract lawyer that you know and use? If not then you are probably not big enough for the major RFPs.
allwein
> Do you carry liability insurance for your company? Have a contract lawyer that you know and use? If not then you are probably not big enough for the major RFPs.

I just wanted to dispute this. I highly recommend carrying liability insurance regardless of size (I'm a single person shop). It's relatively cheap. A million dollar policy will run you just a few hundred bucks. It's a huge protection and also a marketing plus since it acts as a quality indicator.

I also recommend having a contract lawyer, even for single person shops. Again, a little money up front can be a huge time and aggravation saver down the road.

ApolloRising
Never said it was not a good idea to have the insurance even if you were a freelancer, he wanted some possible criteria to see if he should spend all that time filling out an RFP.
pkrotich
I have general liability but some RFP require specific policy/amount in millions.
alltakendamned
Imo, it only makes sense for individuals/small teams when they have an established relationship with the company and are explicitly asked to take part.

Unsolicited is used mostly just to support their decision to go with the one they expected to go with in the first place and it would just be a waste of time.

codegeek
You are correct that it is usually not worth the effort unless you already have established relationship with that client and you are talking about $100,000 or more per year. We sell B2B SAAS and a few times, I was daring enough to try crazy RFPs only to find out that they anyway went their existing preferred vendor and RFP was just a checklist they had to do for compliance needs. A lot of companies float RFP because they have to in order to select a vendor and in many cases, vendors are already decided internally (usually existing vendor) and is just a formality/paper work/checkbox. Not to mention crazy requirements. One RFP needed everything on paper (yes paper) and we literally printed 100 pages and had to mail it physically. :) Then it was radio silence. I literally got someone in our team to call a point of contact (we were not supposed to) and ask for status after a few weeks and all we got was "we went with existing vendor. sorry". That was the last RFP we did until now.
pkrotich
Thank you! This was my exact fear - being a checklist item.
The_DaveG
All of these things are fairly common in the RFP process. Not that going to find somewhere to print and FedEx on a Saturday morning isn't always fun...

One suggestion I would offer for future RFP's is to call/meet/show up for the pre-bid meeting. In person is always better if/when that happens again for your industry.

Most of the time, they will tell you about preferred vendors list. Or explain how they are going to go about making decisions. You can also tell who they know at the meeting.

The_DaveG
What are you selling?

Who is the market?

This is going to cause a huge variation for the answer.