The RFP Torture Cycle

I'm a long time enemy of the RFP system. In my view the RFP is a retarded process stupid companies use to hire competitive(ly cheap and mediocre) contractors and consultants who look good on paper, but often don't have significant value to contribute to the company.

One of the reasons for this is that successful, well-marketed professional firms don't even eneter the RFP torture cycle, and refuse to become fungible vendors for these companies.

Larry Bodine, who specialises in marketing for law firms has written a briliant blog entry on this topic. In this entry Larry shows how Pfizer put 103 law firms through its RFP torture cycle, and then selected 24 for the work.

And the good news is that with good marketing professional firms could easily avoid this disastrous process. But this requires systematic marketing which is an insurmountable task for many professional firms.