In today's post, I am going to focus on a touchy subject: drafts. Why are drafts a touchy subject? Many business executives and leaders are woefully blind to the effort and artistry required for good RFPs and assume the final polished document "happens" in one go. They may think this way from a mistaken belief that they've provided you with all of the information you need, so why can't you pull it all together perfectly? Alternatively, it may come from a false sense of superiority or hubris.
Whatever the reason, don't listen to their short-sighted voices. It's not you, it's them. Trust in your own expertise. You know that a good RFP is the result of an intense and collaborative process between the writer, many subject matter experts, and business leaders. It takes many drafts to capture the right message and answer the RFP's questions. RFPs that win are never produced in a vacuum, and the good, successful ones come to life from multiple revisions and reviews.
There is no right answer to the question, "how many drafts?” In the last 25 years, we’ve only seen one RFP come together in one draft—and that was because our client decided to bid the night before it was due (not something we recommend!). In our experience, multiple drafts are always required if for no other reason than the collective intelligence of the firm, when captured in various reviews, is generally smarter than the intelligence of a single individual.
In a perfect world, we produce the first draft from available content and expect to have many areas where content needs to be added, enhanced, or positioned. We then produce the second draft and send it to our SMEs to "fill in the blanks." Once we've gathered all input from SMEs, we create the third draft for executives to look at holistically from a business positioning standpoint. Why do we do this? Because business executives and leaders understand the strategic goals of the business better than anyone! Lastly, we review the third draft for style and format and then create the fourth draft for submission.
In the real world, the second draft has multiple SME inputs (so multiple drafts need to be produced). When we get to the third executive draft, even more drafts need to be produced because the content is interpreted differently depending on the client’s strategic goals and which executive has the final say. The typical RFP we see has from eight to twelve revisions, and often more!
The average executive may find this excessive. However, they are wrong to think this way. Reasonable people know that good work takes time, and there are no shortcuts to quality. When you take shortcuts, as our client with the night-before-it-is-due submission found, you may not be able to put your best foot forward (although in their case, they just got lucky and won the RFP—hey, it happens!). So go ahead and write as many drafts as you need to—remember that the number of drafts is not important, but the quality of the RFP is.
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