What Do Agencies want in an RFP?
By Lauren Fiedler, Vice President
Obviously, this is only one agency's insight but through my experience I can say, RFP’s (Request for Proposals) are a pain point in a lot of agencies. It's not that agencies don’t want to receive them and have a chance to respond, it's that they usually struggle with the non-relationship feel and lack of back and forth communication an RFP brings. Agencies usually like to build a one-on-one relationship with potential partners to really bring that to any proposals, but if you have to issue an RFP it might be helpful to know what agencies look for to be able to give you the most effective response. The last thing you want to be doing is going back and forth with multiple potential agencies answering the same or similar questions.
Here are five things you should include in the RFP’s issuance to get the most out of your responses.
Introduce your internal team that will be working with the chosen agency. This should include who the person is, what their role is, and what their responsibilities are that may be relevant to the agency relationship. For example, if you have a marketing coordinator and they like doing the implementation of social media but just need assistance in creative execution, that lets the agency know what their role would be in that tactic. Also, ask the agency to introduce their team who will be working on your account if they are chosen.
Outline your pain points. The way to get the best response from agencies is to tell them what has gone wrong in the past or how previous relationships with agencies have fizzled out. This also helps weed out any agencies that wouldn’t be a good fit for your organization. Was the last agency not prioritizing you as a client? Say that so the agency responding can outline how they would allocate resources to your organization to alleviate the pain points.
Identify your overall goals for your organization. This helps the agency recommend and respond with what they believe are the best tactics, which may not be what you originally anticipated were the best tactics. Let the agency come to you with a recommendation based on your goals; the creativity of an agency will help you more in the long run instead of just making them execute a list. Also, be clear on what goals this RFP looks to focus on.
Be clear about expected deliverables and overall expectations of the relationship. Now, this doesn’t mean listing out exact tactics necessarily but really digging into what you are trying to accomplish, over what timeline, and within what budget. This also circles back to number 1, letting the agency know what elements your team has covered and where they will fit as a partner with your organization. Where are the holes in your team that an agency can help fill?
Give the agency time to respond. I know sometimes this is hard to do because of how strapped smaller teams and organizations are for time and resources, or you are at the will of board approval, but the more time you give an agency to really develop a thorough response to your RFP, the more time and thought will go into it. My suggestion is to at least give a month for a response once the RFP is issued.