A Few Helpful Reminders on RFPs

(part of Chapter 6: RFIs and RFPs)

 

Documenting your market research in an RFP saves time, energy and money. Some aspects to consider include legalese and deliverables. When looking at the specifics of your market research needs, it is important to consider your internal audience, too. Read on for some practial RFP tips.

 

A Note on Legalese

All companies have specific purchasing and contract terms, so be sure to check with your accounting, accounts payable, or legal department for guidelines. Common items in MR RFPs include the following:

• Statement that a nondisclosure agreement (NDA) must be executed prior to engagement.
• In some cases, you might want an NDA before you even send out an RFP. For example, if you are issuing an RFP that contains proprietary company information because it is key context, you want to execute an NDA first.
• Statement about need for, or process to get, approved vendor status.


• Payment terms. Does your company have a rule that it pays net 45? Or that it only issues checks on the 10th of each month? Do you have a strict process for how all invoices must be submitted? Do you require anything else from the agency before a purchase order can be issued? Tell the agency in case its terms or expectations are different.

These payment process items might seem trivial. But planning for them early on will prevent avoidable delays. Who wants to see an important project delayed two weeks because someone forgot to get the purchase order processed?

 

Specifying Deliverables

It is always important to precisely state what deliverables you require. Of course, you can always ask the firms responding to your RFP to advise you as to what deliverables they think would be most useful. But if you know what you want, it’s in your best interest to say that in the RFP to make sure these deliverables are covered in the fee and timeline estimates that you get back.

For example, let’s say you know you will want at least these three items at project conclusion:

1. Five banners of cross-tabs


2. An on-site presentation to an executive-level audience


3. An online reporting tool

All of those things should be stated in the RFP. So, how do you decide what types of deliverables you need?

First, take a moment to think about your internal audience members. Recall how you assessed your audience on these items, back in Chapter 3:

• Receptivity


• Data type preferences


• Sophistication


• Attention span

Keeping that assessment of your audience’s unique characteristics in mind, you can also reflect on their reporting preferences. How much interactivity do they like? Are they usually satisfied getting information from a static set of slides (PowerPoint, Keynote, etc.)? Do they like a text document in a more academically written format? Are they an interactive group—will they want a highly interactive presentation or workshop? Will some analytical colleagues want to gets hands-on with the data?

Attention span is also a consideration. Will your audience be willing to spend a few hours delving into the results, or will you be lucky if you get their attention for 30 minutes? Will they only be willing to digest the results during a presentation, or would they also be likely to read and do follow-up?

Figure 6.2 summarizes these considerations. For example, if your audience is primarily people who have a low attention span but do value interactivity, an on-site presentation will be a good match. But if they have a higher attention span, you may find a standard presentation won’t be quite enough; they may prefer a workshop where they have more opportunities to get really immersed in the research.

Of course, in reality, your audience may be mixed—and you may need to choose one deliverable for one sub-group, and an additional set of deliverables for others.

 

Second, be aware of the many diverse deliverable options. Research project deliverables can include one or more of the following:

• Articles for submission to trade or other professional publications


• Interactive workshop


• On-site presentation (If so, will you need more than one?)


• One-on-one briefings for key executives


• Other meetings (Will you want the researcher to present to your board of directors, investors, channel partners, strategic suppliers?)


• Slide deck (either brief or comprehensive)


• Text document (usually formatted in Word): Written management summary or executive summary


• Text document (usually formatted in Word): Written top-line report (usually less than 10 pages) or a comprehensive, written report (often 50 or more pages in length)


• Web-based conferences (perhaps one for each regional division of your company)


• White papers (most common in technology fields)

For quantitative projects, deliverables may also include:

• Raw data


• Tables (the tables showing all data as cross-tabs)


• Models (for projects using advanced analytics, there might be demand elasticity models, brand switching models, or others)


• Online reporting tools (these vary a great deal, but generally allow you to do basic data analysis on the fly)

For qualitative projects, deliverables may also include:

• Video of interviews or focus groups, often synthesized to show only the most important parts


• Audio files


• Transcripts

Third, consider your budget and timeline needs. Some deliverables obviously cost more and take more time to create. If you are torn, you can always state which deliverables are minimally required and ask for pricing options for others as possible add-ons.

 

RFP Tips

Here are some tips of the RFP trade.

Plan ahead for easy comparisons. You want to make sure that the proposals come back in a format that allows you to easily compare and contrast them. Here are two ways to accomplish this:

1. Specify what sections you want, and in what order. For example, write: “In your response, please have separate sections clearly labeled as follows: Pricing, Timeline, Recommended Methods, Recommended Sample plan, Key Assumptions, Criteria for Success.”


2. Ask for a table that summarizes key facts from the proposal, such as price and timeline, by phase. You can even create the table in the RFP, so that you get the same table back from all of the bidders. This will make it easier to quickly compare proposals on the most important parameters.

You might be wondering if it is fair to impose proposal format requirements. It certainly is. You’re the customer, and you don’t have time to compare proposals written and organized in different ways. It’s up to the agencies to make sure that they meet your needs.

 

Who Do I Send This Great RFP To?

If you need suggestions for how to find potential agencies, here’s a list to get you started:

Past suppliers. Has your firm done custom research in the past? Is there a known agency that has credibility within your company? Is there a list of approved agencies?

Research directories. GreenBook is a well-known directory published by the New York American Marketing Association. Quirk's magazine has a directory of research suppliers on its website, as well.

Professional association sites. Check out the listings at CASRO, ESOMAR, and the Blue Book from the Marketing Research Association (MRA).

Colleagues or other business associates. Ask for recommendations from internal clients, colleagues, your ad agency or business-oriented social networks. All of these can be great sources.

Between these sources you should be able to identify at least six or seven candidates. That doesn’t mean you should send your RFP to all of them—if necessary, use the RFI prescreening process described earlier.

Also, you don’t want to get in the habit of sending out RFPs to lots of firms, when you already know you are inclined to one or two. The other agencies will soon learn that you are using them to price check—and they will be less likely to take your next RFP seriously. Proposals take time.

 

What About RFQs?

In the MR business, we don’t use requests for quotes (RFQs) very often. The RFQ really comes from other industries, like construction and manufacturing, where you’re specifying exactly what you want and you’re simply looking for a price.

 

This is an excerpt from the book, "How to Hire & Manage Market Research Agencies," which is available on Amazon. Published by Research Rockstar LLC. Copyright © by Kathryn Korostoff. All rights reserved.