[consulting] Responding to RFPs

[Antonio P. P. Almeida]

On 1 Fev 2010 13h23 WET, fredthejonester at gmail.com wrote:

> The last comment here: http://tinyurl.com/ybjvcgn says:
>
>> unless you are in an agency large enough to have a dedicated staff
>> member to write [responses to] RFPs then forget it because it’s too
>> time consuming for small agencies and freelancers to write
>> responses to RFPs.
>
> I added the brackets. A commenter above (the author actually) claims
> that he:
>
>> produced solid responses to more than a dozen RFPs with a win rate
>> of less than 2%,
>
> Don't know how you can have a 2% win rate unless you were to do 50
> responses and win just one, but anyway these guys are designers, not
> math majors. :)
>
> I myself am a programmer, not a designer. Do people think this is
> correct? That a 'mere' freelancer like myself shouldn't bother with
> RFPs? Even for a project I think I could handle?

I think you should reply to a RFP even when it is badly written, with
things like fuzzy specs or such. If you can grasp the main idea behind
the proposal and you can handle it, you should reply IMHO. If poorly
specified, just add a $ cushion to your budget since you're going to
have to help the client figure out what the specs are, thus using your
valuable billable time doing what should have been their work.

António,
--- appa