5 Reasons You Aren't Getting Enough RFP Responses

Have you ever written an RFP only to spend day after day watching grass grow and listening to crickets as you await a response…?

As it turns out, you’re not alone.

Many agencies and municipalities tell us that the compliance and budgeting tasks required to effectively navigate the RFP process are not only time-consuming but, worse, expect you to be an expert in the products and services that you’re evaluating and purchasing.

Nowhere was this more apparent than during the early pandemic when the difficulty of finding suppliers who might still be in business was combined with evaluating the viability, cost, and quality of deliverables.

…But now, in the aftermath, how can your procurement department address these challenges?  Fortunately, finding qualified suppliers needn’t be such a frustrating experience.

• Optimize your bidding site for modern search algorithms
  
  On average, users spend less than six seconds browsing your website.If, in that short time, bidders can’t find a straightforward way to search for and download solicitations, they simply move on.
  
  In the last several years, many agencies lost a vital member of their team who was in charge of keeping their website updated, and so even if potential bidders were able to find the site, the RFP information wasn’t worth the time it took for them to find and access.The path to addressing this buyer-to-bidder disconnect, though, is often fraught with technology that’s difficult to set up, maintain, and operate.

That is, many agency websites require emailing a purchasing officer for the scope of work or bid documents, and these details can be overlooked or lost in a busy inbox.  So, if you're not tracking bidders who view and access your solicitations, then it’s unlikely they’ll ever receive updates and amendments during the RFP process.

TAKEAWAY: Ensure your e-procurement provider has an automated plug-in to your website that keeps your RFP information current and easily searchable.

• Capture attention with a previously-proven bid title
  
  It’s important to remember that, every single day, contractors receive dozens of bid alerts via email.The title of a bid, then, is a lot like the subject-line in an email in that wordy or generic RFP titles may simply be overlooked.If a bid isn't titled well, it won't grab their attention.
  
  Does your RFP title primarily consist of and/or rely heavily upon commodity codes as the method for matching?If so, you may unintentionally be limiting the amount of responses you receive because many bidders are either unfamiliar with commodity codes or often select incorrect codes.
  
  TAKEAWAY: Select an e-procurement provider who not only can consult with and guide you through the most effective RFP strategies but who also offers example RFPs that can provide you with a proven “best-practices” approach.
  
  
• Bidder registration takes too long
  
  While it’s important to keep bidders updated with important changes to a solicitation, too much information and/or heavy requirements will invariably deter bidders, and nowhere is the RFP process more prohibitively frustrating and tedious for prospective bidders than among the small-to-medium-sized businesses and/or new companies focused on work in the public sector.Many agencies understand this but are stuck with rigid enterprise systems that are overly complicated.In a survey conducted in 2022, 68% of procurement professionals reported that complex registration or fees negatively impact their ability to source vendors.
  
  

  On average, suppliers are required to fill out a staggering 54 fields just in order to register.  Imagine if you were a bidder who had to provide that much information just to see whether or not an opportunity is a good fit!  I mean, would you spend the time registering, or would you just move on to some other opportunity better worth the effort?
  
  TAKEAWAY: Simply your RFP registration process by requiring no more than company name, contact name and email, and number of employees.

• Your e-procurement system charges bidders a fee to view or download
  
  RFP access fees are, by far, the greatest deterrent to suppliers who want to access your bids. In our 2022 survey of bidders, about half of suppliers indicated that they would rather skip a potential opportunity than spend $5 to view or download it. 
  
  We’ve conducted a lot of research on the practice of offsetting fees and discovered that these policies and practices are, hands-down, the most frustrating for suppliers. Reasonably, if fewer suppliers participate in these bids, then it inevitably ends up costing the agency more in the long run.
  
  More than 100,000 suppliers provide services to the public sector, and while it may be tempting to think that a majority of these are Fortune 500 companies with deep pockets, this is simply not the case.How many quality providers, then, are you leaving out?
  
  TAKEAWAY: Don’t select an e-procurement provider who requires access fees.

• Rigid or vague bid specifications that ward off bidders
  
  Many bidders won’t participate in your RFP process if it requires specific brands and/or involves a narrow timeframe for the delivery of services/goods.That is, due to post-Covid supply-chain shortages, many bidders simply aren’t able to procure certain materials or products.
  
  On the other hand, we’ve often seen bid specifications that are too vague.Though ongoing RFP amendments do help clarify requirements, 92% of purchasing officers disclosed that they often resort to using internet search engines in order to find other agency documents prior to writing a new RFP.
  
  TAKEAWAY: Select an e-procurement provider who can be a “trusted advisor” in developing proactive best practices and won’t leave you stranded without day-to-day support.
  
  

HOW PARTNERING WITH BEACON CAN HELP

We believe that by listening to purchasing agencies and procurement professionals, we can bridge the gap that often exists between the two.  Suppliers lean on our sister company, BidPrime, for a solution to reduce the headaches in submitting to RFPs, and—from the agency side—Beacon assists with accounting for the practices and sourcing methods of tens of thousands of agencies that want simplicity and ease of use.

In short, the process of accessing and submitting compliant, reliable, and price-conscious bids cannot become a “loss-leader”.  As agencies consider their own challenges in reaching enough bidders, they should consider the supplier experience.  Ensure that your suppliers can freely find and access your agency's solicitations without complex registration requirements, fees, or other hassles imposed by many outdated approaches.

Register here for access to Beacon Bid's FREE E-Procurement Solution.

Stephen Hetzel is a Co-Founder and Principal at government contract intelligence and procurement services firms BidPrime, GovOptics, and BeaconBid.com.