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Amid all the cool things in marketing today we often forget how influential a good or bad RFP response can be. I recently had to review 30+ RFPs for a client, and I was asked by another client to teach their sales people to write better RFP executive summaries. Here’s what I learned:

10 most common mistakes

1. About us vs. the prospect: Too often executive summaries are summaries of the selling company’s capabilities. Big mistake number one. Effective executive summaries are about the prospect– not you. How you’re going to solve their problem. Advice on how to burn down their obstacles. How much money they are going to save. New ways for them to be innovative in their industries.

2. Proposal summary vs. a business case: Despite is name an executive summary is not a summary of the proposal, but a succinct demonstration of the understanding of the prospect’s needs and the bottom line outcomes you can deliver against those needs.

3. Opening with blah blah platitudes vs. guts and convictions: Executives read just the first two paragraphs, yet the first two paragraphs of most executive summaries are filled with space-wasting platitudes like: “Thank you for the opportunity to provide you with our proposal in response to your RFP to support XYZ Company’s business needs. We are prepared to put this experience to work for XYZ Corporation with a dedicated support team. ” Blah. Blah Blah. While the RFP writers, usually procurement of purchasing managers, may read the entire document, decision makers generally only pay attention to the first two paragraphs. This means that the critical information should be in those paragraphs, and platitudes should be omitted.
4. Verbal runoff and information overload: One of the most common mistakes is including too much information that is irrelevant to the prospect and/or too much pat, bland information that every vendor cites. A good executive summary should focus only on that information that is relevant to this particular prospect.

5. What’s at stake? Many RFPs go nowhere, losing out to inertia or other business priorities. One of the purposes of the executive summary is to convey what’s at stake, and why acting will provide business value beyond simply reduced costs.

6. General to industry vs. personal to prospect: General remarks and capabilities information are boring to reader and make you sound bland. Answer right off, “What’s in it for the prospect company?” and avoid generalities. The prospect only cares about the specific value you’re bringing to his or her organization - not general trends, not about the exhaustive list of your company’s capabilities.

7. Educating vs. selling: The executive summary is not an education document or a relationship development tool; it is a sales closer. “Here’s the problem. Here’s the business value only we can provide.”

8. Bland writing inadvertently conveys lack of real interest: Researchers have proven that decision makers make more judgments about a company based on how it communicates than many of the actual messages. I’ve put several companies’ RFP summaries through the LIWC software analysis and found that the company comes across as detached from the recommendations (not passionate about the ideas) and not as completely honest as the company actually is.

To be viewed as a trusted, innovative, potential partner passionate about helping the prospect succeed, adopt a tone and style that is direct; focused on the most relevant information to the prospect; uses more active verbs, shorter sentences fewer adjectives, more bullets, more descriptive subheads, and a more liberal use of the first person - I, we, us.

9. Too many pages: We all fall into the trap of thinking that a summary needs to be at least two to three pages to really convey our value. Limiting an executive summary to one-page — two at the max — forces you to convey the meat of the matter in a succinct way. When Jack Welch was CEO of GE he required his direct reports to submit one-page management updates every month. That’s right, just one page. Being succinct makes you think and boil it down to what matters.

10. Where can I find more? Use hyperlinks in the executive summary, linking content and recommendations to descriptions in the detailed RFP document. Too often we make it hard for people to jump to what interests them. If people are interested in one of your ideas, make it easy for them to read more about that interest.

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