Eight Tips for Putting Respect into RFPs

WHEN I STARTED MY CAREER IN PR, I didn’t know what an RFP was. I quickly learned: Request For Proposal. But after more than 20 years in the business and after responding to an especially large number of RFPs in the past year, I’ve come to think of them as Rising Frustration and Pain. While I’m happy to say some are very well done, the majority are better suited as tests for paranormal powers; you’d have to be a mind reader to understand them. As my friend Brian Cox might say, “This isn’t rocket surgery.” Putting together, issuing, and managing responses to an RFP is mostly a matter of respect — respect for agencies’ time, money, intelligence, and ideas. So here are eight tips for putting respect into RFPs.

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