The Hidden Cost of DIY RFP Responses

When an RFP lands on your desk, the instinct is to divide and conquer: assign sections to team members, set a deadline, and hope it comes together. This approach has a hidden cost that most companies don't measure.

First, there's the direct time cost. A 50-page RFP typically requires 60-100 hours of work across multiple team members. That's time not spent on product development, customer support, or closing other deals.

Second, there's the quality cost. Responses assembled by multiple authors without a unified strategy are inconsistent in tone, depth, and messaging. Evaluators notice. The company with the most cohesive, polished response wins — even if their capabilities are similar to yours.

Third, there's the institutional knowledge cost. When your best salesperson builds an RFP response from scratch, all of that work disappears into a PDF. The next RFP starts from zero. A systematic approach captures and reuses your strongest content across every opportunity.