The RFP Presentations

Before I write about the next phase in the process, I wanted to add a note. I’ve talked to a lot of people this week and it made me think about why I’m really writing this series. My intention was to give people a sense of what the RFP process is like on this side of the table. When I was on the agency side we didn't always know why people made their decisions. I thought this might help someone. It was never meant to be a commentary on individual agencies. For that reason, I removed the chart with my notes on specific agencies.

The presentations were interesting and I really felt for the people on the other side of the table. It wasn't that long ago that I was sitting in their seats. We gave people an hour to present to make sure they could be concise. It’s the time limit I was used to working within. Only one agency got through their whole presentation in the allotted time; one group wasn’t even close.

The agencies ranged from one extreme to the other in almost every aspect of the presentation:

• presentation skills


• types of people in the room


• energy level


• amount they told us about themselves


• understanding of our needs


• creativity of ideas


• scope of program


• integration with social media


• international capabilities (or even discussion of one)

However, there was also something very similar about all the presentations; almost everyone included:

• some kind of media tour with Jeremy Luchini, host of “Let’s Go Design”


• some type of design competition


• infographics


• thought leadership program


• over-arching theme


• SWOT/Situation analysis (it made an appearance in this round)

I made up score sheets so we could take notes during the presentatino to judge agencies on the same criteria. I don’t think anyone used them. I did take notes. We also had few questions for anyone. Maybe I should have had a list, but I did feel like we got a really good sense of everyone during that hour. We also didn’t need to have a big meeting to discuss all the presentations; we had a strong contender.

I saw that Todd Defren blogged about the need for the formal RFP process and whether there was a way to simplify it. I have to say that it was necessary for us to go through the whole process. We learned something different during each phase. The people who had strong written responses were not necessarily those that gave us the best presentation. We’re not choosing who we thought we would. I may respond when the whole process is finished.