Wait for your pitch.
In baseball, when you’re at bat, it is important to wait for your pitch. It can be tough, you’re up there to get a hit, and you can’t get a hit if you don’t swing. The important thing to remember is that you only get so many pitches and each miss costs you a strike. But if you’re patient, if you wait for your pitch, you can get a hit.
RFP’s are similar in some ways. You can win if you don’t bid but you can’t chase every one; chasing the wrong ones costs you and you only get so many to swing at. The same advice then should work too:
Wait for your pitch.
RFP’s don’t come out every day and they don’t come out at regular intervals. As a result, it can be even more tempting to chase the ones that are just a little outside your zone. After all, you never know when the next one is coming and it might be even worse.
You can’t chase every RFP though, it is just too resource intensive. When a great fitting opportunity arises, that is, when you get your pitch, you don’t want to be spread thin responding to other, lesser opportunities.
Chasing bad RFP’s is costly too. First, it costs literal money to bid. The employee time to formulate a good response and the costs to travel to demo. Another cost, often overlooked, is winning opportunities that aren’t a good fit. These wins seem great at first but lose their luster later. You won’t be able to deliver your best solution at a great price because your product and expertise won’t quite fit perfectly leaving your staff more stressed and your client at a minimum, slightly less satisfied than you normally like.
So you have to wait for your pitch. To do that, however, you have to first know which pitch you’re waiting for. So use your time between RFPs to sit down with your team and define where your sweet spot is. What type of budget, scope, and schedule is ideal for you? How far from the ideal can an RFP be before you won’t bid? Then once you know your pitch, wait for it.
