{"id":672,"date":"2017-09-18T20:45:00","date_gmt":"2017-09-18T20:45:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/redonkmarketing.com\/blog\/?p=672"},"modified":"2017-09-18T20:58:28","modified_gmt":"2017-09-18T20:58:28","slug":"moving-beyond-the-rfp","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/redonkmarketing.com\/blog\/moving-beyond-the-rfp\/","title":{"rendered":"Moving Beyond the RFP"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Here at Redonk, we\u2019re lean, small and agile by choice. We wear many hats, we collaborate to the extreme, and we throw our passion for improving the customer experience into our client\u2019s business. We also value work-life balance with realistic working hours, Summer Fridays, and the occasional Redonk day.\u00a0 This is the type of environment we thrive in, it\u2019s what attracts and retains the talent we have and keeps them fresh and inspired, which in turn produces measurable success for our clients.<\/p>\n<h2><strong>People, the antithesis of the RFP<\/strong><\/h2>\n<p>Meeting with a potential client partner before entering an engagement is important. We love meeting with new teams, learning about their goals and sharing experiences to see if there is good chemistry to make some really amazing things happen. \u00a0But when we\u2019re asked to jump through the many hoops that a typical RFP process entails it often becomes a soul-sucking experience. For us, it\u2019s about people \u2013 we thrive on building trusted relationships with our clients and that has to start with human connections vs. forced documents.<\/p>\n<h2><strong>No B-Team, only the A-Team<\/strong><\/h2>\n<p>You see, we don\u2019t have a <strong>\u2018new business\u2019<\/strong> team. The team you meet is the team you\u2019ll be working with long after contracts are signed and the \u201cfresh off the win\u201d label expires. When you ask an agency like ours to dedicate the resources to respond to an RFP (which are almost never short and almost always request some form of free work) it pulls us away from our current clients or our families and personal lives.<\/p>\n<p>We recognized long ago that we can\u2019t be everything to everyone. We\u2019re lean by choice and that allows us the opportunity to more deeply engage with our small roster of clients. While some agencies are focused on topline growth we\u2019re more focused on building long-lasting partnerships.<\/p>\n<h2><strong>Moving beyond the RFP<\/strong><\/h2>\n<p>We weren\u2019t treating every RFP the same because that\u2019s not how we approach the work we do with our clients. We\u2019d do our due diligence in crafting the responses, conducting preliminary research, brainstorming ideas that would maybe catch the attention of a CEO but might not actually be best for the organization based on the lack of a thorough discovery. \u00a0These activities all take time. And it seemed like RFPs were focusing more on low-cost bidders or style vs. substance. So, we made the decision to no longer participate in them. Instead, we rely on referrals from our past and present clients and a selective process for new business development focused on finding right-fit clients who share our philosophy of putting customer experience at the heart of the brand. We\u2019ve found we\u2019re happier, more productive and engaged when new business opportunities come our way as opposed to the beat-down you feel after just reviewing an RFP. We take more ownership and carry more passion in our new business efforts because the time we dedicate will prove more valuable to ourselves and the potential new client than responding to a 60 page RFP document.<\/p>\n<p>This is what works for Redonk. We realize there are engagements and projects that call for an RFP, we just don\u2019t really operate in that realm anymore. We believe that great business relationships should be people and not process focused and great work is the outcome of collaborative relationships with trusted partners. Do you rely on the RFP process to win or award business? Let us know in the comments below.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Here at Redonk, we\u2019re lean, small and agile by choice. We wear many hats, we collaborate to the extreme, and we throw our passion for improving the customer experience into our client\u2019s business. We also value work-life balance with realistic working hours, Summer Fridays, and the occasional Redonk day.\u00a0 This is the type of environment [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-672","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-agency-life","category-featured"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v26.2 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Moving Beyond the RFP - Redonk Marketing | Blog<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/redonkmarketing.com\/blog\/moving-beyond-the-rfp\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Moving Beyond the RFP - Redonk Marketing | Blog\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Here at Redonk, we\u2019re lean, small and agile by choice. 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