What does RFP compliance really mean?

RFP compliance means demonstrating fulfilment of all the instructions and requirements contained in the RFP. RFP compliance is mandatory for some bids, such as Federal Government RFPs. The problem is that full RFP compliance often cannot be achieved.

Proposal managers are taught from birth that:

1. Proposals must be 100% compliant or they will lose and it will be your fault.
2. Do not parrot the RFP. It even says so in the RFP.
3. Do not merely state compliance. That is not compliant enough. You must explain how you will be compliant and do it in your own words.

All are wrong. But only sometimes. And that's what makes compliance so much more challenging than we have been taught.

Unfortunately "you must be fully compliant with the RFP" is a mandate that contractors repeat as a mantra. It began in a time when people had to be convinced to write in compliance with the RFP. Today this only comes up rarely, making a compliance mantra unnecessary. Especially when the mantra is frequently wrong. RFP compliance is non-binary.

It’s not pleasant to be responsible for full RFP compliance when it is not possible to achieve. RFP compliance is not an absolute. When the customer releases a hundred-page statement of work but limits you to a 20-page proposal that must address both the technical and management responses, full RFP compliance simply is not possible.

So what is RFP compliance?

Compliance with the RFP is simply meeting the customer’s expectations. But what are the customer's expectations? RFPs often (usually?) fail to communicate the customer's expectations unambiguously. Have you tried asking the customer what their expectations are? If you haven't or can't, all you can do is try to interpret the RFP and guess when you have to. The company that makes the most informed guesses has a significant competitive advantage.

We want RFP compliance to be simple. "Are you fully compliant with the RFP" sounds like it should get a yes/no answer. " But wanting things to be simple does make them so. We want to avoid being to blame for non-compliance. But something subject to interpretation shouldn't be the subject of blame. RFP compliance requires a strategy and that requires judgment. Being absolute in your response to someone else's expectations when they are arbitrary in how they apply them is not good judgment. 

RFP compliance depends on what matters

What matters about RFP compliance is totally and completely up to the customer. Only the customer gets to decide whether your proposal is any good. The customer picks and chooses which things said in the RFP they care about, and they get to ignore a lot that they don't care about. It's good to be the customer. Your job, in responding to the RFP, is to guess at what matters to the customer. This will require a combination of RFP interpretation, research, customer awareness, and good judgment instead of a mantra.

Your bid strategies depend on what matters to the customer. Do you know what matters to the customer about what they are buying? And do you know what matters to the customer about RFP compliance?

If the customer is buying a commodity, they will evaluate it completely differently than they would if they are buying complex services. Sometimes the specifications are the only thing that matters, and sometimes they are more concerned with what they are going to get and only give a minimal consideration to the RFP specifications. With commodities, sometimes the only thing that matters is price, and sometimes they want every specification met, and sometimes they can accept a little less if it lowers the price. 

Government proposal evaluators are themselves supposed to comply with everything they put in the RFP. But there is often room for interpretation and judgment. The proposal evaluator may not be the person who wrote the requirements. Their priorities may be different.

Keep in mind that the customer is more than one person. What matters to the contracting officer is different than what matters to the end users. What matters to the executives can be different from both the contracting officer and the end users. The contracting officer is concerned with making sure the acquisition process requirements are fulfilled, while the end users are concerned with getting their needs fulfilled. The executives may have goals, budgetary concerns, and a strategic vision that are different from the contracting officer and the end users. For each of them some of the requirements matter more than others.

Some of the requirements in the RFP exist because they are required by the procurement process. Some must be responded to, while others get incorporated into the contract and really don’t need to be talked about in the proposal. This is an example of the importance of being able to interpret the RFP the same way the customer does.

Some of the requirements in the RFP tell you what the customer wants, more or less depending on the level of subjectivity. If the customer must inspect what you are offering to make sure they are getting what they asked for, they’ll need to validate that the RFP requirements are fulfilled in the proposal. If they don’t trust their vendors or if that fulfillment is complicated or subjective, they’ll need to see how you fulfill them and may care more about your approaches than your promises of delivery. If the requirements are routine, they’ll focus more on the results or what they are getting as evidence that the requirements were fulfilled. This is an example of the importance of having customer awareness and good judgement regarding which requirements to address and how.

Some (most?) of the requirements in the RFP will be poorly worded. Are they ambiguous? Overly specific? Realistic? Feasible? Routine? Some critically affect the results. Some don't. Some imply that a written response is required. Some are simply stated and may or may not require written acknowledgement. This is another example of the importance of being able to interpret the RFP.

Writing for multiple audiences

The decision to accept a proposal is almost never done by one person in isolation. Proposal evaluations may include junior staff, senior staff, procurement specialists, subject matter experts, executives, stakeholders, and random people who got drafted into participating in the evaluation. The proposal should be written to address what matters to all of them. Luckily, some messages will work for multiple audiences.

If the customer expects to receive a lot of RFPs they may divide the evaluation into two or more parts, with one focused on compliance and the other focused on more qualitative evaluation criteria. The compliance review is often designed to be a quick, low effort pass to eliminate as many proposals as possible before the more substantive review. Understanding how to pass the portion of the evaluation that focuses on compliance is critical for you to even have a chance at winning.

Whether the customer evaluates this way formally or not, compliance is not enough to win. It just gets you to the review that counts. This review is where they consider what matters to them. If you don’t push past compliance and address what matters you will lose the review that counts. The trick is to address the aspects of RFP compliance that will get you past the initial review. This makes being able to interpret compliance the same way the customer interprets it important, but not the most important part of winning.

What should you do to achieve compliance?

Give the customer what they need to address their concerns as decision makers. Those concerns will depend on what they are buying. Your job is not simply to establish RFP compliance. It is to add value to the evaluation process. You can do this even in a low price, technically acceptable evaluation by making it easy for them to satisfy their concerns.

If you don’t know what their concerns are, you shouldn’t be bidding.

Even if you don’t know the customer, you should be able to look at their circumstances, the nature of what they are buying, and the competitive environment and anticipate at least some of their concerns. If you can define compliance the same way the evaluators do, you can try being fully RFP compliant in the ways that matter for what they are buying. Try to be fully compliant every way you can, but when the number of pages of RFP requirements exceeds the page limit for your response, you’re going to have to make some tough decisions and take some risks.

Following the instructions vs complying with the statement of work (SOW) vs scoring against the evaluation criteria

RFP compliance starts with following the instructions. If they are well written (good luck with that), this will be straightforward. But what about fulfilling the requirements of the SOW? While that also requires compliance, the SOW is often where judgment calls have to be made. Do you need to address every keyword mentioned in the SOW? Is that even possible? What does SOW compliance mean? And what do you need to say in the proposal to achieve it?

Then there are the evaluation criteria. The evaluation criteria are not really a compliance item. But if you don't get the top score, it's doesn't matter that you were fully compliant. If you think that "compliance comes first" you overlook that compliance is not the top priority. Winning is.

Winning requires earning the top score based on the evaluation criteria. You can win if you are minimally compliant. You can't win if you get a minimal score. Do not allow an obsession with compliance to take too much time and resources away from optimizing your proposal to get the top score. Proposal management requires balancing the instructions, requirements, and evaluation criteria against the page limitation. This requires exceptional judgment.

A mantra can't save you from the risks

All proposals involve taking some risks. Take your risks strategically. If you try to not take any risks, you’ll still be taking risks — you’ll just be doing it unintentionally. Take the right risks on purpose. This means the most effective proposal process is one built around risk assessment and not CYA RFP compliance.

Avoid the blame game

A culture of blame and shame makes people fear for their jobs. It makes them avoid taking risks that are necessary. A culture that obsesses over RFP compliance to avoid blame will cause the company's win rate to suffer. Risks should be anticipated, considered carefully, and taken deliberately after validating the decision. Interpreting an RFP requires risk assessment. Compliance is about risk management and not reciting mantras. Obsessing over compliance means that for every loss you possibly prevent to make yourself feel safer, you've lost many more by not focusing on winning.