7 Things to Consider Before Issuing Your Next RFP
Trust us client, you’ll be better off for it.
Looking for a new agency? You’ll find a better fit if you:
1. Give us a f*&#ing budget. Seriously, give us one.
Prevailing wisdom says that by withholding budget information, you will increase competition among agencies and therefore you’ll get better value from them. Or you might feel like revealing your budget too early will give away too much, leading to ideas and scope beyond your means. Trust us, ad agencies have heard all of the reasons. We simply ask you to remember these things:
Every agency will interpret your RFP differently, and therefore scope it differently. So even if your RFP is fairly detailed, you’re still getting an apples to oranges comparison dictated by the whims of the agencies responding, which generally defeats the purpose of a full RFP.
How giving us a budget will benefit you:
Like most businesses, agencies must consider the scale when taking on projects. Not giving a budget range can potentially waste your time and theirs as agencies figure out if the relationship is a right fit. Additionally, you need to take into consideration the size agency you want to work with as well. We understand the process of looking for a new agency just adds to your day-to-day responsibilities. Providing a budget range will help you narrow down to a short list more quickly.
2. Don’t ask us to give you “initial thoughts” of your website or other vague requests.
When you ask questions like this, agencies will spend time looking at your website or other marketing materials and trying our best to extrapolate what’s right and wrong with it without knowing what they’re trying to solve. Without the benefit of your business objectives, goals and results, you’re asking an agency to speculate (at best), or provide actionable insights (at worst), which will impact your opinion of them early in the selection process without ever speaking with them. Do this early in the process and you’ll receive feedback that isn’t much more insightful then looking into a crystal ball.
How it will benefit you:
Instead, consider sharing things that aren’t working in your marketing plan, your website, your content, etc, that you’ve already identified based on your expertise and brand knowledge. Those are the types of issues (along with your knowledge) to provide to agencies you’re evaluating to see how they would solve them.
Not only will this give you insight into how the agency thinks (which should really be the main objective of any RFP), but once you choose an agency, that will be the ideal model for the first stages of the relationship. It will also give you a much better apples to apples comparison of the agencies you’re evaluating.
3. Be realistic about your timeframes.
This includes not only the project you’re looking to get done, but the time you’re giving agencies to participate in the RFP itself. If you are expecting agencies to turn a full response in 7–14 days, and they do so, please be courteous and stick to your own deadlines as well. On the agency-side, we’re constantly evaluating prospects as potential partners too. And if you slide your own deadlines in the RFP process, it makes us wonder if pushing internal deadlines will be a cultural thing we’ll have to work with when we’re facing feedback and approval schedules.
How it will benefit you:
Allocating time to allow for questions will help your agencies tailor their responses even more effectively, and will again give you good insight into their thinking processes. And, being respectful of the time agencies are putting into their responses shows your ability to partner when both parties are knee-deep and on deadline.
4. Provide a budget.
Yes … see #1. But really, this is such a big point, it can’t be over-emphasized enough. Even if you truly don’t (or can’t) have a specific budget in mind, you likely have a maximum budget tolerance in your head. Even that would be a good starting point for an agency.
How it will benefit you:
Trust us, not all agencies are wired to scope to the highest budget amount. If you tell us you have a maximum budget of $250,000, but you know you will allocate some of that to other projects, that gives us WAY more to go on then simply saying “I don’t have a budget.” And you’re greatly increasing the likelihood that the responses you receive will be way more relevant to your needs.
5. Be OK with digital copies.
This isn’t as big of a deal, but since we’re talking dream scenarios, might as well mention it. Yes your committee might prefer hard copies, but your agency partners will greatly appreciate the ease and convenience (and extra time) that delivering a digital copy provides. It’s a very considerate trade-off for agencies that are going to be putting thousands of dollars worth of time into responding to your RFP. Plus it’s better for Mother Earth, c’mon.
How it will benefit you:
Frankly, this one benefits agencies more, we understand that. But 1 out of 7 isn’t overly selfish, is it?
6. Don’t treat this as an exercise for your budgeting purposes.
This may sound a bit defensive, but bear with me. At Struck, we decline to participate in most RFPs if they don’t have a budget. Sadly, we’ve learned that, more often than not, these never materialize into anything. Over and again, we’d send out responses to these types of RFP’s and they would just go into the ether, rarely meriting any answer from the client at all. It made us realize these clients are probably using the RFP process to help determine prices for comparisons to existing budgets, fiscal planning or even internal persuasion. Yet, they really don’t have any intention of awarding the project.
Please don’t misunderstand, we understand why you’d want more information on how much a new website may cost (as an example), but putting an agency through a full RFP process you aren’t intending to award makes us sad, and need puppies and whiskey.
How it will benefit you:
Asking an agency to simply compete on price at that stage doesn’t give an agency a true opportunity to talk about our strengths, and reduces us to a commodity business.
Rather, if you do need help with your budgeting, or making an internal case for a project, just let us know up front and we’re generally happy to help you in that regard, particularly if we know we’re likely to be awarded the business. See the conclusion below, but if you truly need help determining what your budget and marketing needs are, it’s better to evaluate agencies on chemistry before ever getting to any price conversations. But sending out a blanket RFP for the same information makes for sad pandas and Keanus.
7. Ask yourself if you really need an agency.
This is super-subjective and may not always be the case, but as design and web development tools have become more ubiquitous (thank you Squarespace), more clients seem to want to parse out pieces of their business, particularly on the digital side, while doing much of it in-house. On the agency-side, we don’t begrudge you this. We understand working with a fully integrated agency on all your marketing materials can be expensive, particularly for smaller brands.
But if you are planning on parsing out some of the work to an agency, really consider if you’re going to be getting the best value by doing so. For example, asking an agency to simply code what you’re designing in-house fails to utilize the type of creative talent agencies can bring to the table. We have ridiculously talented designers, UX specialists, developers and copywriters that work closely together to design and develop amazing websites, advertising campaigns, brand identities, etc. Breaking those responsibilities up between two different organizations will negatively impact you in two ways:
1. Your project will take longer. There is no substitute for proximity. When agency departments can work next to each other, work progresses more quickly then when collaboration needs to happen between two organizations.
2. Continuing the example of a website build from above, some of the most amazing and influential work on a website happens when developers and designers collaborate, bouncing ideas off of each other, pushing each other further then they anticipated. Simply asking an agency to code using a site map and PSD’s you developed in-house (or vice versa) removes this possibility and means your website likely will feel disjointed.
How it will benefit you:
So what should you do if you have staff on-hand that are capable of taking on some of the work your agency can do? Sit down and talk to them about it. Most agencies are reasonable and prefer to be good stewards of our clients’ budgets. If it doesn’t make sense for the agency to do some of the work, be upfront and have an open conversation about it. At Struck, when we’ve chatted with clients about similar situations, we’ve shocked them by giving them ideas or alternative solutions they hadn’t even considered, while helping them extend their budget.
In conclusion …
It feels appropriate to summarize this rant as positively as possible. Agencies understand RFP’s are a huge part of our business, and we know they aren’t going away, nor should they. However, they do take a lot of time and resources to put together. When an RFP is well-written, has the right intentions and is overseen by a great client, it’s an amazing experience that generally results in a lasting and productive partnership. The goal of this article was to try and nudge a bit few more of these in a more productive direction.
In fact, if we really want to fix this entire process, consider this methodology to finding a new agency:
- Find 10–12 agencies that produce the type of work you like and you feel might be the right size for you. If category experience is important to you and the decision-makers, be upfront about that. It’ll be critical for you to be as objective about these criteria as possible. If the agency has 20+ locations around the world, Fortune 100 brands as clients, and produces huge campaigns, they probably won’t be a good fit for your start-up. Conversely, if you are a Fortune 500 brand that demands deep vertical experience, maybe that quirky boutique agency wouldn’t be a good fit.
- When you do have your initial list, have an introductory call with all of them. Doesn’t have to be anything formal, but speaking with the person who represents the agency at this stage should give you a good sense of their culture. This also serves as a great way for the agency to learn more about you and decide it if it’s a good fit between the companies.
- Cull down if necessary, but the next round should be a face-to-face chemistry check. Ask them to present a capabilities deck, perhaps give them something to evaluate which can serve as an agenda item for the meeting. But there is no substitute for a face-to-face meeting, seeing the agency’s office and meeting more of their team. So much of our business is predicated on chemistry and trust and the best way to learn that is to meet — there are no better options.
- After the chemistry checks, if you are still interested in multiple agencies, THEN release an RFP. And in that RFP, be transparent about your needs, your expectations and your budget. Trust us, you (and your future agency partner) will be much closer and produce better work together. Even though this process might take a bit longer, it’s much more likely to result in a longer relationship, reducing the frequency of this entire process.
There are a ton of memes in this, so my apologies, but trying to find compelling pics about RFP’s stretched my Internetting capabilities.
