By Geoffrey Day, President, The Consulting Exchange

If companies were precise mechanisms and consultants composed of standardized interchangeable parts, responding to most unsolicited "Request for Proposals" (RFP) might be well worth a consultant’s time. In such a world, specifications on RFPs could be precisely spelled out: "Consultant wanted—one part management skills, two parts marketing expertise, dash of industry knowledge, half measure of sales background, two arms, two legs, one mouth."

Consultants, and their effective application, are more complex than this, even if executives in some companies might think otherwise. When seeking someone to solve a complex internal problem, attempts to standardize complicated, subjective qualities such as intuitiveness, decision-making prowess and other consultative intangibles, can cause project results to turn out less than adequate, even downright unacceptable. In fact, attempting to force narrow specifications on the process of finding or hiring a consultant can doom the chances of project success, souring such companies on consultants in general and further tightening their specifications for future projects.

That’s why in most cases the best response to the unsolicited RFP is to first scan it to see if you (the consultant) remotely qualify. Then (when you don’t) you should "respond" by tossing it away or sending it on to someone who does. In the event that you DO qualify, special steps can be taken to win the RFP, though these actions may well be outside the bounds of the conventional RFP process. Before looking at such steps, however, let’s consider why only minimally responding to an unsolicited RFP may make the most sense.

Please note here a distinction between unsolicited and solicited RFPs. To be involved with a client in such a way as to be actively solicited to respond to an RFP, possibly even before the RFP itself has been finalized, is a rare not-to-be-missed opportunity. Being involved at this level highlights the difference between solicited and unsolicited participation. Present are important elements that support, not hinder, consulting success, including a prior relationship between client and consultant and their mutual understanding of capacities and approaches, goals, processes and parameters. In contrast to unsolicited RFPs, the solicited variety is built upon useful dialogue about project specifications which builds consensus among all parties around desired results.

On the other hand, unsolicited RFPs often leave both consultants and their clients disappointed. The linear buying behavior formalized in the RFP process heightens the likelihood of consultant failure by shifting buying focus away from what a consultant does best. Consultants operating on "been-there, done that" experience, for example, are far more likely to deliver value if they can freely work to analyze, recommend and implement rather than operating within the constraints of a predetermined problems and solutions.

When does an RFP work best? When the end-goal is the purchase of tangible, standardized products like office supplies, machines or furniture, RFPs do make sense. In such cases, simple features, functionality and price are the primary buying considerations. Products from competing companies can be easily compared.

A firm’s management troubles, however, are not usually so easily delineated by a company’s insiders. For that very reason, calling in a fresh set of eyes, ears and analysis can be a very useful thing. In such context, pre-determined problems and solutions, carved in stone as they are in the typical RFP, tend to be untenable.

For a consultant to respond to an RFP on its own terms, however, its assumptions must be fully accepted. Yet most consultants prefer not to hire themselves out in this way, as mere technicians, understanding that any "final solutions" determined in this manner will not likely endure. Yet this is exactly what RFPs encourage.

Another fault of RFPs is that often they are written by individuals distant from the actual details of the project. This abstraction contributes strongly to the likelihood of failure. Most private sector RFP authors, for example, typically write few RFPs and may also command a poor understanding of problem and potential solution. Lacking mastery of both the nuances of RFP writing and of working with consultants, they further complicate matters by presuming intricate non-linear issues can be adequately solved with simplistic linear formulas. Even RFPs written by professional RFP writers, while they may be better written, may also suffer from the same problems. All this, of course, imposes heavy constraints on effective problem solving through the use of consultants.

A better approach for consulting success of course would be to assume that the consultant truly qualified for the job would know more about the right methods to apply and solutions to strive for than a client, no matter how "knowledgeable," ever could. The approach most likely to succeed would thus be to bring in someone capable of solving the problem independent of any pre-conceived and likely ill-conceived notions. However, RFPs tend to do the opposite by focusing efforts on prematurely coming up with a solution as well as attempting to define solution specifications.

And there are other reasons too that consultants should tread carefully when an unsolicited RFP arrives at their door. Three come to mind immediately:

1) Unsolicited RFPs are often a set-up.

Frequently RFPs are "wired," that is, some individual or firm has already been pre-selected for the job. Many times, when a company hires someone to formulate criteria for an RFP, this same person/firm emerges from the process with such an intimate understanding of the project there can be no other more qualified candidate for the job. Note this long-held maxim in consulting: if your first indication of a project is the arrival of its RFP, you’re already too late!

RFPs may also provide cover to convince a Board of Directors or top management that an "objective" search has been made. In such cases, the winning candidate may also have been pre-selected long before.

2) The consultant who gets the job also wins the blame.

By establishing such rigid parameters, RFPs bar selected consultants from employing their most powerful tools, e.g., thinking "out of the box," importing tried and true concepts from other industries, cutting through politics and bureaucracy, and (in general) catalyzing innovation and change. This despite the fact that the client company, as we have noted, has decided that success or failure hinges on force-fitting the consultant into narrowly pre-defined specifications.

But who gets the blame when these pre-determined specifications fail? The consultant, of course! Let the client run through this scenario more than once and it will fast develop a perception that consultants, in truth, offer very little value. Such companies then seek MORE rigidity, not less, in the next round of RFPs, creating a counterproductive closed-loop cycle that’s hard to break.

3) Most often, the consultant will not make any money.

RFPs tied to tangible products typically ask many detailed questions about specifications, functionality, price, and shipping and warranty arrangements. The RFP is then reviewed and a vendor selected. Among relatively equal competitors, most details come out roughly the same. Final decisions are thus frequently decided on price alone.

This is probably the best reason of all for consultants to avoid responding to unsolicited RFPs. Since the likelihood of completing a project that holds little or no strategic value for the consultant is high, including no new or improved skills, no professional satisfaction, the additional insult-to-injury of low (if any) profit should definitively settle the matter.

Considering all these many cautions, is there any way at all to make an RFP process work in the consultant’s favor? The answer, surprisingly, is yes. Remember that consulting value runs highest when consultants are encouraged to develop innovative new directions rather than function narrowly within pre-determined ones. By taking a few risks and applying good, professional consultative skill, a consultant might open the client’s eyes. This approach includes listening well, diplomatically questioning assumptions, offering a thorough analysis, raising new perspectives and suggesting novel outcomes.

Such a maverick response to an RFP could set in motion productive events more appealing to the prospective client than the other dutifully submitted proposal forms that come in from competing candidates. Thus, consultant hopefuls should try to transform an RFP process into an improved consultant-client dialogue, sounding out the prospective client with an intriguing, unexpected approach to the problem. View the RFP document as a catalyst for high level conversation, or a tool that provides facts about desired deliverables, nothing more. Both consultant and prospective client could then begin actually talking, with a useful evaluation of the problem the likely result.

The offer of something original in response to the unsolicited RFP (or contained in a separate document accompanying the RFP), can bring forth ideas that could actually entice the client to call you the consultant to explore this or other matters in more detail. Such direct, high-level interaction with a prospective client is more likely to start the ball rolling toward client-consultant success than simply responding in rote fashion to an RFP.

Of course, should you buck the RFP system by attempting to convert it into a stimulating dialogue, you will probably not, in the end, win all that many unsolicited RFP assignments. But at least when you do your assignment will more likely produce for you a lasting client relationship with mutually beneficial results. As the RFP process usually completely misses the mark, consultants must first ask themselves why any consultant should ever want to play such a game. Only by employing creative options that shift the game into sensible and profitable directions will both parties stand a reasonable chance to succeed.

This article originally appeared in a 1999 issue of Mass High Tech.

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