Can I Sign South Carolina RFP

Can i document type sign rfp south carolina

okay hi everyone this is my first Facebook live and as with every facebook lives you know you're learning and so hi Lindsey Sierra I finally made it on him a few minutes late but I hope you can still join me today with Lindsey from marketer six late I am going to be talking about the items to look out for and your when reviewing your request for proposals I first wanted to say that I'm down here in Florida and we escaped the hurricane hurricane Dorian so all of my internet and power is on so that's that was hurdle number one this week and so I'm thinking about all of my friends and colleagues in the coastal in Jacksonville and Coastal Georgia and South Carolina and North Carolina as they prepare next so I'm thinking about you and I hope that it stays offshore which is what it's looking like it is so for those of you not in those areas just tell me um those of you who are on the live feed just if you want to you know in the comments below just say hi and tell me where you're watching from and and I will give you a shout outs but now I don't want this to be super long but I do want to talk I I'm going to provide a link in the comments below after the video to get this in the latest blog article and I in the 3b that I'm going to share later on in this broadcast also if you have any questions as I am talking about things um leave those in the comments below and I will I'm going to be monitoring them right here on the side and I will ask them as or answer them as you ask them so let's dive in today so today we're going to talk about all about reading and reviewing RFPs and this topic whether it's your first proposal or your hundredth or your thousandth proposal they all start with an RFP or some other kind of request from the client and I wanted to start you're with this topic because in order to put together a winning proposal you know you have to meet all the requirements of the RFPs you have to meet the deadlines and you have to meet all of the requirements but then there's some other things that you should look out for that may give your team a hidden advantage maybe pause and make you think and make you want to maybe revisit your your goal your initial go decision or may just qualify you and so as the proposal professional or the person responsible for the proposal you want to you know it's your responsibility and your number one job is to get that proposal a within the deadline and be compliant you know with the terms and and so I'm gonna talk a little bit about maybe dissecting RFPs and what that means to me and then I'm going to go into the five things you should watch out for when reviewing your RFPs so let's go ahead and get started so first let's talk a little bit about RFPs and and really my philosophy or my advice is anti-clone dissecting is really reading the rfp's from start to finish every time every you know every RFP every client every time and today when I'm talking about rfp's these um those stand for request for proposal but sometimes clients have request for qualifications letter of interest letter of response request for bid request for proposal for some simplistic sake today I'm going to be referring all of those you know to as rfp's but you they can really these concepts can apply to anything that your clients are providing you to respond back to in some kind of proposal or document to win a job to win a new project and so when I talk about our fees we might we work we tend to work with clients over and over again and that you might be used to their RFPs and and we try and you know and I'm guilty of this I would get one and the first I'm going to as the due date how much time do we have but I really challenge you to read every RFP from front to back every time even if it's from the same client that you work with over and over again because sometimes things get you know copied and pasted from one RFP to another maybe there's a new procurement official that is mixing stuff up and so other things that could be so I really and again your number one job is to make sure your response document is is you know compliant and you do this by knowing what's in the RFP and as the person leading the proposal process your your the rest of your proposal team is really relying on you to be like that the note that the beat the end-all be-all of that particular RFP so you really need to dive in dig in dissect those RFPs every time okay so enough I'm off my soapbox but now let's talk about some of the five items to watch out for and the first item I want to talk about today is contradictory information RFPs or response documents um you know or requests from clients they could be you know 10 pages long they could be 35 pages long they could be I've seen some that are hundreds of pages long and oftentimes they get put together you know the the procurement person or whoever's putting them together and sending them out or putting them you know in the news you know up newspaper but in you know online to to advertise they are using sometimes the same formats over and over again and just repurposing the previous RFP and just changing certain sections based on the new project and sometimes things get missed section you know you could have let's say proposal due date would be listed at something in section a but back in section II it's listed as a different date so it'd be contradictory so this is another reason why you need to read the entire RFP from start to finish and and and if you do find that contradictory information always ask you know you never want to assume that just because it's you know the date and section a is is listed first and that should be the date that it's due you always want to ask for clarification and you can do this you know usually clients give us you know question and answer period and that's the time you want to ask it and you know you can be really nice about it but I would say if you do find this contradictory information to put it exactly the exact location and the exact verbiage in your question to make it easier for them to respond so let's go back to our example of the the proposal deadline and so in the your question to the client it could be well in Section a which is on page 26 you list the proposal due date as September 4th but in Section II on page 76 you listed as October 17 yeah which date should we use as the proposal duty and you can just be as simple as that and that points them to the direction or the exact page and section two to make it easier for them to respond so that's contradictory information the next item to look out for our very specific requirements and what I mean by very specific requirements are you know certain types of project experience may be specific project manager experience specific skillsets or expertise or you know maybe office locations within a certain mileage of a client's office or a project site very detailed may be out of the ordinary so let me give you an example you know oftentimes clients ask for you know give us your projects completed in the last five years or the last ten years and show us your project managers experience with similar projects that's typical however if you if you find or you come across an RFP that says well the project manager must have eight years of experience and it has completed five projects similar in scope in those last eight years it's getting very specific and narrow and what that should raise your you know you should sound the alarms for is is this RFP written for a particular firm and oftentimes where some tensions happen sometimes clients already have a preferred firm in mind and but they still have to put out an RFP or some kind of public advertisement because of you know it's this the statute or the law for that particular agency or the company has a particular procurement process and they have to put it out you know either to a pool of people or to you know public advertisement and so they want their preferred firm to win and because of that they work with that preferred firm and make the requirements such that that that preferred firm or are the only people that meet those requirements imagine that and I know this because I've been on that side where we've been the preferred firm we've worked with a client maybe to help shape the project at the project funding you know maybe even some of the preliminary planning or site development and and so the client really wanted to give us the project but their hands were tied because of certain policies and so they're like we're gonna put out this our he but can you help us maybe she some of the requirements so only you fit or you're only your project manager fit so so I know this because we've done this ideally you would want to get into that preferred provider you know be that preferred provider and shape the RFP and those might be some future Facebook live topics that we talk about but when you're reading the RFP and you just get those very specific requirements that are really nuanced or out of the ordinary for that typical client or that typical project type it should have you you know us you know as you're dissecting this RFP definitely you know highlight it sticky note it and bring it to the attention of your proposal team or your decision-makers and say hey I think this really sounds like competitor ABC over there and that really sounds like that project manager that works at you know Acme engineering down the street and you know we might want to reconsider you know if this is something that we even want to you know submit on so we talked about contradictory information and then very specific requirements experience requirements project requirements etc the next item that you should watch out for our impossible proposal deadlines and what I mean by this it seems like they're all impossible and they seem like they're getting shorter and shorter but when I say impossible proposal deadlines what I mean by this is if it's out of the ordinary if that if the client typically has a 30-day proposal deadline and you get this new RFP and it's only fourteen days it's only a two-week turnaround instead of a four week turnaround why is that it should just you know you should question what is driving this you know typical deadlines change is it because again going back to the preferred firm they have a preferred firm and that firm has known about this RFP for the last two months so they can prepare it and they are just advertising it with a quick turnaround just to say that they advertised it or there's some other you know there could also be legitimate drivers for the change in proposal deadline you know such as it's the end of the fiscal year and they have to you know get this under contract or get this advertised or in process because they're gonna lose funding maybe there's a change the procurement director has changed you know other types of leadership have changed and they're just changing policies you know so you could you could ask or you lean on some of your relationships but it should definitely give you pause to say hmm why the change now how should we address this now should we you know how should we you know this change our mind about pursuing this project and sometimes it might and sometimes it might not but it's definitely an item to watch out for the next item in the fourth item to look out for is is vague requirements so we talked about really specific requirements and then the opposite is true is very vague requirements in you know they might have their standard form and then they just say give us your experience it could even be that you one time I got an email and in the body of the email it just asked for our previous projects experience and a list of the key proposed personnel okay what does that mean and so this could be either good or we're challenging for your firm I won't say bad but challenging for your response document because they don't give you very specific criteria unless you really know the the client and have done your proper pre project proposal positioning you might not know what they're really looking for in the case of my example when we got the RFP in the body of the email we had already been working with that client for that project and so it was more now it was more of a formality of like okay we'll give me a package that I can then you know submit for the purchase order and we can get you under contract so in that case I just gave that client a couple of project sheets our project managers resume and some key discipline lead resumes so it was a very simplistic package I think it was like ten pages I put it in a PDF and email it back to them however it could be if you don't know that or you're unsure of the circumstances in it's just a very vague RFP and even vague a very vague you know even project scope or project understanding and you and you not familiar with that client or you're not familiar with that project it could be common challenge to under to know truly what to put in the proposal and what I find that has happened in my experience is that when people don't know what to put in they tend to put in more stuff they tend to put in everything and then you get the 70 page document that has everything and you're really not sure if that's what they're looking for or not so sometimes if you have this vague requirements and there's not a pre-done meeting or a preset middle meeting maybe ask a couple of questions and those questions could be something like you know what is the power of the proposals going to be evaluated how is the selection going to be made something like that and that could give you an indication of like oh well it's gonna be based off of the project managers experience okay well then let's highlight the project managers experience and make sure that is the you know the key resume and the key point we made so you can ask questions like that and then the last requirement I'm going to talk about today are unrealistic project terms and what I mean by this are more of the unit could be contractual terms it could be project scope or schedule you know anything like that around kind of you could be the proposal terms but most what I'm referring to here are more the project implementation terms and so having a good understanding of that of what your firm typically can agree to or not agree to and when you're reading RFPs and you read the scope schedule the scope section or the schedule section and something is out of line or an atypical for your projects then you can bring that to the attention of your team so let me give you an example a good one is project schedule if it's if you're pursuing a certain type of project and you've done that project over and over again and it's you know it takes your firm a year to do for you know the best case scenario and this particular RFP it's it has a schedule of six months you know drastically different you know you're internally you guys need to talk about it and say well can we do that what are some of the other conditions that they're asking for maybe it's a typical project and so maybe there's other you know scope that's left out or scope that's being done by somebody you know another team member or another you know contract that we wouldn't have to do so looking for those unrealistic project project terms and sometimes you can turn them into a positive or you can explain them from are ways to come up with risk you know things that would be like higher risk to your firm you can turn those into like risk mitigation strategies so if there's an unrealistic or even you know maybe it's not unrealistic but it's not typical a typical project term you can say well this is not to in our experience this is not typical where we see this before the here's the typical situation however we can overcome not by doing a B and C but here's the risk associated with those and here's how we mitigate those risks on a typical basis and so you kind of turn it into a positive I would strongly suggest though still communicating with the client if something is you know especially if it's contractual terms or payment terms or schedule terms because those tend to be you know really higher risk items in discussing those with the client you know in talking about some of the risk mitigation strategies you can still put them into the proposal it's j st quote-unquote a little more riskier if you haven't discussed them with the client first so those are the five things to be on the lookout for so let me recap them the first one is the the contradictory information and then it's the Unruh I'm sorry the very specific project or project manager you know just the unrealistic requirements you know and this could be experienced it could be a project manager or like number of employees so that's number two number three was um let me look here there is the impossible proposal deadlines particularly if they are out of the norm for that client number four is vague requirements and number five was unrealistic project so to help you you know remember these and to ask the right questions I've developed an RFP review cheat sheet it's free to you you can download it it's a PDF you can print it out have it on your desk as you review RFPs and at the end of this broadcast I'll put a link in the comments below of how to get that freebie so that's it for any of the content for the content I had today so I'm really glad everybody joined us I see with lynnie see there we had Michelle with us so thank you all for joining and if you liked these definitely comment and like and I'm going to be starting to do these every every week I'm going to try the four o'clock eastern time frame let me know if there's a better time for you because I want to make sure that you can join me as well so thanks so much and have a great day