How to Win an RFP: A No-BS Guide for Agencies

Most Agencies Lose RFPs Before They Write a Single Word

Here's a hard truth: if you're getting an RFP cold - no prior relationship, no context, no warm intro - your odds of winning are already slim. Most competitive RFPs are written around a vendor the buyer already has in mind. They're checking a procurement box, not genuinely shopping.

That doesn't mean you can't win. It means you need a completely different strategy than "write a really great proposal." The agencies and consultants who consistently win RFPs don't win because they have better PowerPoints. They win because they do things before, during, and after the proposal that everyone else skips.

I've been on both sides - as a vendor submitting proposals and as someone who's run businesses that issued them. Here's what actually moves the needle.

The Numbers You Need to Know Before You Start

Before we get into tactics, let's level-set on reality. Most agencies have no idea how they benchmark against the rest of the market, and that ignorance costs them.

The average RFP win rate across all industries sits around 45%. Sounds decent until you realize that for new business development - meaning you have no prior relationship with the buyer - win rates for many firms fall into the single digits to 15% range. Incumbent vendors, by contrast, win 60-90% of rebids. That gap is almost entirely explained by relationships, not proposal quality.

What does that tell you? The game is largely won or lost before the RFP ever hits your inbox. Everything else is execution on top of a foundation that's already been set.

The other number that matters: the average RFP response takes roughly 25-32 hours of work. If your close probability on a cold RFP is 8%, you're gambling significant time on terrible odds - repeatedly. That's the math most agencies refuse to run. The ones who do run it get very selective, very fast.

Step 1: Decide If the RFP Is Even Worth Pursuing

The first skill in winning RFPs is knowing which ones to skip. Most agencies have a terrible habit of chasing every opportunity equally. That's how you burn your team out on low-probability work.

Before you write a single word, ask these questions:

• Do you have a prior relationship with anyone at this company? If yes, great. If no, find out how the RFP was originated. Was it sent to a curated vendor list or blasted publicly? Public blasts have dozens of respondents. Curated lists of 4-6 vendors are actually competitive.
• Can you get on a call before submitting? If they refuse pre-submission calls entirely, that's a red flag - it often means the decision is already made.
• Does the scope match your actual strengths? Don't stretch to fit. The best-fit vendor wins, not the most eager one.
• What's the realistic close probability? If you genuinely can't get it above 30%, weigh that against the 20-40 hours a real proposal takes.
• Is there an incumbent? If there's a current vendor doing this work, find out why they're rebidding. Are they unhappy with the incumbent, or is this a compliance exercise? An unhappy buyer is a real opportunity. A compliance exercise is not.

A simple scoring approach: rate each RFP across relationship strength, solution fit, competitive position, and resource availability. If you score low across the board, pass - and use that time building relationships for future bids instead. The agencies with the highest win rates aren't the ones who bid the most; they're the ones who bid on fewer, better-qualified opportunities.

If the RFP passes your filter, now you actually go to work.

Step 2: Get Intel Before You Write Anything

The biggest leverage point in an RFP process is information. The more you know about the buyer's real situation - not just what's written in the document - the better your proposal will be.

Request a pre-submission call or Q&A session. Almost every RFP process allows this, and almost no vendors use it strategically. When you get on that call, don't pitch. Ask questions. Use our Discovery Call Framework to structure what you need to find out: What does success look like 90 days after the project wraps? What's failed before? Who's the internal champion? What's the real deadline pressure?

You're not just gathering intel - you're also building a relationship and demonstrating competency before anyone else has submitted a single page. That call changes how they read your proposal.

If you can't get a call, do your homework externally. Look at their press releases, job postings (what skills are they hiring for?), LinkedIn activity from their leadership team, and any case studies or blog posts they've published. Job postings in particular are gold - they tell you exactly what problems the company is trying to solve right now. A company posting three roles for paid media managers doesn't need a vendor to "improve their digital presence" - they need someone to scale ad spend profitably while they build in-house.

High-performing teams also do this: they track competitive dynamics before the RFP drops. Know which other agencies are likely to bid. Know what their typical pitch looks like. If you understand your competitive position in the buyer's mind going in, you can structure your proposal to win head-to-head on the dimensions that actually matter to them.

Step 3: Lead With the Problem, Not Your Credentials

Here's the single biggest mistake I see in proposals: they open with the agency's history, awards, team bios, and past clients. Nobody cares. The buyer is not reading your proposal to learn about you - they're reading it to find out if you understand their problem well enough to solve it.

Flip the structure. Open your proposal by restating their problem - in their language, with their specific context. If you did your pre-submission call right, you'll know something about their situation that isn't in the RFP document. Lead with that. Show them you actually listened.

Example structure that wins:

• Section 1 - Their Situation: Summarize the problem as you understand it, including nuances from your research. Mirror back the language they used in conversations or their own materials.
• Section 2 - Your Approach: Explain specifically how you'd tackle their problem. Not a generic methodology - a tailored plan for this client.
• Section 3 - Proof: One or two tight case studies directly relevant to their industry or problem type. Not a list of logos. Actual story-arc case studies: situation - challenge - what you did - measurable result.
• Section 4 - Team: Brief bios focused only on relevant experience. Cut everything else.
• Section 5 - Commercial Terms: Pricing, timeline, contract terms. Keep it clean and easy to approve.

Notice credentials come after the problem and the solution. That's intentional. You earn the right to talk about yourself by demonstrating you understand them first.

Step 4: Make Your Proposal Easy to Evaluate

Here's something most agencies never think about: your proposal isn't just being read by one person. In most enterprise RFPs, multiple stakeholders review it - procurement, finance, the department head, and sometimes legal. Your job is to make it easy for the person who likes you to argue for you in a room you're not in.

That means formatting matters more than most people admit. Use clear headers, call-out boxes for key points, bullet lists where appropriate, and white space. A dense wall of text signals that you respect your own writing more than your reader's time. A well-formatted proposal signals you've thought about the experience of reading it, not just the content of writing it.

Include visuals where they sharpen your point. A simple timeline graphic beats a paragraph describing phases. A before/after comparison table beats two sentences about improvement. A visual showing your process flow makes a methodology tangible that would otherwise feel abstract.

Also: answer every question they asked, in the order they asked it. It sounds obvious. You'd be shocked how many agencies reorganize the RFP structure to fit their preferred narrative and then confuse evaluators who are scoring against a rubric. Follow their structure first. Layer your narrative on top of it.

Step 5: Use Pain Points to Sharpen Your Proposal

Generic proposals get generic responses - or no response. The sharper your proposal speaks to actual pain, the harder it is for a buyer to dismiss you. Before you finalize your draft, run the buyer through our Pain Point Identifier framework - it'll help you surface the real business pain beneath the surface-level ask, and write to that instead.

For example: an RFP for a new website might have a stated goal of "modernize our digital presence." But the actual pain - if you dig - might be that their current site is losing leads to a competitor, or their sales team is embarrassed to send prospects there. Those are very different problems, and a proposal that speaks to lead loss versus one that speaks to aesthetic modernization will land completely differently.

The buyer's stated need is the entry point. Their real pain is what you need to solve - and naming it before they do is one of the fastest ways to differentiate from every other vendor in the pile.

Step 6: Be Specific About Deliverables and Timelines

Vague proposals die in committee. When multiple stakeholders review proposals - and in enterprise RFPs, they always do - specificity is what survives the debate. Each deliverable should have a name, a description of what it includes, and when it's delivered. Each milestone should be tied to a date or a trigger event.

If your proposal says "we'll deliver the strategy document in Phase 1," that's weak. If it says "we'll deliver a 20-page go-to-market strategy including channel prioritization, messaging framework, and 90-day activation plan by Day 30," that's something a stakeholder can actually argue for internally.

Specificity signals confidence. Vagueness signals you're winging it.

One more thing on deliverables: name your risks proactively. If the timeline depends on client feedback within 48 hours, say so. If the scope assumes a certain volume of existing content, say so. Buyers who see that you've thought through the hard parts trust you more, not less. Surprises post-signature kill relationships. Transparency pre-signature builds them.

Step 7: Price to Win, Not to Cover Your Costs

There are two ways to lose on price: too high and too low. Too high is obvious. Too low signals either that you don't understand the scope or that you'll make it up in change orders - both kill trust.

The goal is to price at the level where you're clearly not the cheapest option, but where your value justification makes the premium feel obvious. A few tactics:

• Tier your pricing. Offer three options - a lean version, a standard version, and a premium version. This anchors the buyer around your middle option and gives procurement something to negotiate down to without losing the deal entirely.
• Show ROI, not just cost. If you can connect your work to a measurable outcome - revenue, leads, cost savings - frame the investment against that number. "This engagement costs $X and our clients typically see Y return within Z months" is a much easier approval than a line item budget.
• Separate your rates from your retainer structure. If you charge a blended rate, show that clearly. Hidden costs discovered post-proposal kill deals at the contract stage.
• Think about the BAFO. In competitive RFPs, there's often a Best and Final Offer round after initial submissions. Know your floor going in. If you price your initial proposal with no room to move, you'll either have to decline the BAFO or tank your margins. Leave yourself a negotiation buffer, especially in enterprise deals.

Price is still the most commonly cited reason for losing RFPs - but the data is shifting. Brand reputation, relationships, and competitive positioning are increasingly matching price as deciding factors. That means a well-positioned agency can lose on price and still win on trust. Know which lever you're competing on.

Step 8: Build a Proposal Content Library

If you're writing every proposal from scratch, you're losing on speed and consistency. The agencies that win the most RFPs have figured out that about 60-70% of any proposal is reusable - core company positioning, case studies, team bios, methodology descriptions, standard commercial terms. The winning 30-40% is the custom work: the situational analysis, the tailored approach, the specific deliverables and timeline.

Build a content library. Start by pulling your best answers from proposals you've already won. Document your most-used case studies in a standard format that can be updated quickly. Write evergreen descriptions of your core services that can be adapted, not rewritten, for each bid.

This isn't about being lazy - it's about freeing your best thinking for the part that actually differentiates you. Teams with a content library spend more time on tailored, strategic sections and less time reinventing boilerplate. That's how you produce higher-quality proposals faster, which compounds over time into a real competitive advantage.

Step 9: Follow Up Like a Human, Not a Vendor

Most vendors submit and wait. That's a losing strategy. The follow-up phase is where deals get won or lost - and almost nobody does it well.

Immediately after submission, send a short personal note to your main contact. Not a generic "please confirm receipt" email. Something specific: reference a detail from your pre-submission conversation, restate your enthusiasm for their specific problem, and offer to answer any questions that came up during review.

During the review period, stay lightly visible. Share a relevant article or insight that's genuinely useful to them. Not a sales pitch - something that shows you're thinking about their problem even without being paid to. This is relationship-building during a competitive process, and it tilts the field.

If you have a contract template ready to go before they even make a decision, offer to share it. Buyers love vendors who make approvals easy - and having our Agency Contract Template ready signals you're organized, professional, and ready to move fast when they say yes.

One more follow-up move that almost no one does: if you get shortlisted and have to present, treat it like a second proposal, not a recap of the first. Bring new thinking. Address questions that likely came up in their internal review. Show that you've been thinking about their problem since you submitted. That's what separates vendors who make it to final selection from vendors who actually win.

Step 10: Handle the Objection That Killed Your Last Proposal

Every agency has a recurring objection that costs them deals. Sometimes it's price. Sometimes it's "we went with a larger firm." Sometimes it's "we wanted someone with more direct industry experience." If you don't know what your pattern is, you're not doing your loss reviews.

After every RFP you lose, get on a 15-minute call with the buyer. Ask them directly: what did the winner do better? You'll get useful feedback maybe 40% of the time, but that 40% is gold. Over time, you'll see patterns you can directly address inside future proposals - often in a dedicated "why us vs. alternatives" section that preemptively neutralizes the objection before it comes up.

The "why us vs. a larger firm" objection is worth tackling head-on, because it's the one small agencies lose most often. The honest answer is that bigger firms win partly on risk reduction - buyers know that if a Big 4 firm screws up the engagement, nobody blames the buyer for picking them. If a boutique agency screws up, the buyer gets blamed. So your job isn't just to prove competence. It's to de-risk the decision emotionally, not just logically. Client references from similar-sized companies, proof of repeat business, documented processes, and a named point of accountability on your team all help do that job.

One More Edge: Build the Relationship Before the RFP Drops

The best RFP strategy is being the vendor they write the RFP around. That only happens if you're already in the conversation - through content, outbound, or referrals - before procurement gets involved.

A great proposal team makes a plan before the RFP arrives. By the time the document lands in your inbox, high-performing teams have already influenced the buyer's requirements, established relationships with key decision-makers, and built a clear picture of the competitive landscape. Everything else is execution from a position of strength.

If you're doing proactive outbound to target accounts, you want the right contacts in your pipeline well before they issue any RFP. That means identifying procurement leads, department heads, and project owners early. ScraperCity's B2B lead database lets you filter by title, seniority, industry, and company size to build that list - so you're targeting VP-level decision-makers at the right kinds of companies, not spraying and praying. Once you have names, a dedicated email finder can surface verified contact details so you can actually reach them before procurement locks things down.

Once you're in their inbox - or better yet, on their calendar - you're not just another vendor who responded to an RFP. You're a known quantity. That's the highest-leverage position in any competitive proposal process.

I go deeper on the full outbound-to-proposal pipeline inside Galadon Gold if you want to work through this with a community of people actively closing deals.

How to Run a Loss Review That Actually Teaches You Something

Most agencies treat losses as something to move past quickly. The agencies that get consistently better treat every loss as curriculum.

Here's a framework for a 30-minute loss review after every RFP you don't win:

• Qualification check: Should you have bid at all? Run your original go/no-go criteria against what you know now. If the signals were there to skip it and you ignored them, write that down.
• Intel check: Did you know enough about the buyer's real situation before writing? What did you find out in the debrief that you didn't know going in? How would you have gotten that earlier?
• Proposal check: Was the problem statement strong? Was the approach differentiated or generic? Did you address the actual pain or the stated need?
• Objection check: What specific objection did the winner address better than you? Was it price, experience, team size, methodology, or risk perception?
• Relationship check: Did the winner have a relationship advantage you didn't? What would you need to do differently to be in that position next time?

Track these across five or ten losses and patterns emerge fast. Most agencies have one or two consistent failure modes that account for most of their losses. Fix those and your win rate climbs disproportionately - not because every pitch is perfect, but because you've stopped losing to the same thing repeatedly.

The Short Version

Winning RFPs consistently comes down to a few non-negotiable things: qualify ruthlessly, get intel before you write, lead with their problem not your credentials, make your proposal easy to evaluate, be specific, follow up like a human, and - most importantly - start building relationships before the RFP ever hits your inbox. Do those things and you'll win more than you lose.

The agencies that consistently clear 50-60% win rates aren't smarter than you. They're more disciplined about the process. They skip the bids they shouldn't chase. They do the pre-work everyone else skips. They write to the buyer's real pain, not the stated requirement. And they treat every loss as a chance to get better.

Run the same process long enough and the RFP stops being a lottery. It becomes a repeatable system.