34 reasons why the RFP requirements were worded that way

Writing an RFP is harder than writing a proposal. If you are a proposal writer and have never written an RFP, especially for something you need created or developed, you should try it some time. It is a great way to improve your ability to see things from the customer’s perspective.

Even if you can clearly express what you want, doing so in a way that someone else won’t misinterpret is challenging. And most RFP writers are not experts, either in articulating what they want or in writing RFPs. They tend to word things poorly and get lost in the complexity of their own needs. If you’ve tried writing a complex RFP, you’d understand.

Unfortunately, the result is that even though proposal writers have to follow the RFP precisely, the RFP is fallible. If it says something that’s clearly wrong, it can be fixed. But most of the problems people have responding to RFPs are when it’s hard to tell, like when the RFP requirements are ambiguous, open to interpretation, convoluted, or just a little… strange.

Issues like that make you scratch your head and wonder why someone put it in the RFP that way. It’s easy to psych yourself out and develop conspiracy theories related to what they are really trying to do based on the assumption that they said it that way on purpose. The odds are more likely that it was just poorly worded. But the problem with conspiracy theories is that no matter how far-fetched, they could be true…

If you are a proposal writer, you can’t just leave it alone. Understanding why the customer wrote the requirements the way they did helps you understand their motives. Understanding their motives is critical to winning in writing, because that is how you not only respond to the requirements, but fulfill their unwritten needs.

So take a look at this list of possible reasons why the customer wrote something the way they did:

1. They had to
2. They want to keep things the same
3. They want something different
4. They didn’t know what else to say
5. They are afraid
6. They are ambitious
7. They were lazy
8. They are cheap
9. They want what they want
10. They don’t want to be tied down
11. They aren’t an expert in what they need to buy but have to write the RFP anyway
12. Someone else suggested it
13. They misinterpreted what you suggested
14. They forgot
15. They didn’t know how to quantify it
16. They didn’t want it to limit them in the future
17. The Powers That Be don’t trust their own people
18. They don’t agree
19. They have a deadline
20. They've been burned
21. They already know who they want to win
22. They don’t want to keep the incumbent
23. They want new ideas
24. They are resistant to change
25. It was in the RFP they recycled
26. Bad copy and paste
27. They changed their mind
28. Their needs changed but they forgot to update the document
29. They didn't realize they contradicted themselves
30. They're short sighted
31. They haven't figured it out yet
32. Their priorities aren't what you think they should be
33. They can’t predict the future
34. They know more than you think they do

How many of these could explain what you are seeing in the RFP?

How many of these represent issues that you could have helped the customer with? Too bad once it's in the RFP it's probably too late. You need more information than just what's in the RFP. But if you know why they did what they did, you can strategize a way to work around it. Or better yet, you can address the requirements in a way that fulfills what their real motivation is.

If you don't know the customer well enough to understand their motivations before the RFP is released, all you can do is guess. But as you can see from the list above, it will be easy to guess wrong. And you should assume that at least one of your competitors won't have to guess.

Wouldn't you like to be the one making RFP suggestions and confuse your competitors instead?