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Oh hello and welcome to the corporate facility councils August webinar the stellar RFP process building issuing and responding to RFPs presented by Larry Morgan and Wayne Witzel I do want to let everyone know they have been muted for audio quality if you do have any questions during the webinar please type them into the question box and we'll go over them at the end during the Q&A portion at the end of the webinar I would like to let you know it's being recorded our I mean of this webinar will be posted to the corporate facilities council webpage I would also encourage you to go there and check out other previous webinars you may have missed and so it's a great resource that I think you should utilize at this time I'm going to go ahead and turn it over to Wayne Wayne the floor is yours Thank You Joshua so what I'd like to do is just do a quick little setup here to let everybody know the framework that we're going to approach here and the thing about RFPs is if there's two sides to it there's the side from the FM perspective of creating producing and sending out the RFPs and then there's a side of the vendors responding to that and I think it's a healthy exercise for each side of that to test to see the other side what goes on on the other side of it or what should go on on the other side of that so if you're an FM it I think will be enlightening for you to see what happens once you throw that RFP over the fence to the vendor and how they deal with it or should deal with it and vice-versa so just wanted to give you that framework Larry will be taking the FM perspective and after Larry's done I'll be taking the vendor perspective I just want to give you that framework upfront and feel free to type in questions into the chat box Larry would you please enlighten us on how to create stellar RFP yeah great thanks it's a it's a honor to be with my colleagues again so a little bit of history about me I am my 30 year plus practicing FM start off into business as a janitor cleaning toilets on the loading dock on the graveyard shift so yeah I've heard all the stories about bottoms up and it's a crappy job I got all that so you can chuckle if you want to one thing that I've come across so many times I can't even begin to explain how many I've done these kinds of presentations for one thing is always enlightening to me is being on the FM side of it is how do we get vendors to really perform according to what our specifications are what our criterias are what our success criterias are etc what matrix is our one thing I hear constantly and have seen consistently throughout my career is that when we send out an RFP what are we really asking for what are we really trying to accomplish so today my my presentation is about how to how to really put together a stellar RFP so that people both sides of the parties can create that that partnership and relationship that sets itself up for success so that's my elevator pitch on this so obviously the first thing to do is when we talk about an RFP is really to define the objectives I mean clearly define the objectives second thing is to design the methodology how are we gonna deliver this RFP where did the framework what are the details and probably one of the most important pieces of this is the material really has to have a high degree of clarity and transparency for there was you on the FM side you probably ran into this many many times with your vendor said well we don't clearly understand what the expectations are and on the vendor side is that we really don't understand or there's no clarity on what your expectations are thus change orders etc etc so that's kind of what the learning objectives of today are next slide please so really starting off for you know what's what what is what exactly is the objective what are we trying to accomplish using smart closing objectives we all heard that so that's very easy to figure out what are the current pain points objectively what are we trying to accomplish one exercise that I I'm a firm believer is and it wants and needs exercise so you get the key stakeholders into a room whatever that is however many it is could be two three four or five ten stakeholders depending on the complexity of the RFP get them a posting notes two colors red green pink orange doesn't matter what it is and have them write down what the wants are and what the needs are let's use an example for a catering service or pantry service coffee as an example because everybody's near and dear to that conversation okay what do you really want well we want coffee okay great I get that and then the needs thing is what we want Starbucks we want peds we want to express some cappuccino machines we want all these things that's good okay now you blend those two together and really come up with the true outcome what is it we're trying to accomplish here what can we what can we physically accomplish it it might be really cool that you want Starbucks espresso cappuccino machines but do you understand the complexity of putting those machines into a building the drainage the power the overall operating cost capex and OPEX costs at the end so that really helps people understand and focus on what the objectives are another beautiful thing about doing that is it puts peer pressure on each other to really have that across the table the eye to eye discussion about is it do we really need this or drooly want it and if they really want it what's the Delta in cost so that's I think it's a great exercise the other one I'm firm believers the Pareto principle it's called the 80/20 rule about 80% of your key stakeholders are on board they get it they understand it and then you could have a general consensus about the 80/20 rule the wants needs kind of tie in the other 20% are gonna be folks that may or may not be engaged at that level they may have unreasonable expectations so you can kind of carve those out called Pareto principle 80/20 rules so focus your 80% year energy efforts on this RFP on 80% of the positive outcomes 20% of the things are going to happen I get it there's going to be pieces of the puzzle that won't fit and we don't know where that's gonna fit either today tomorrow or in the long term but again don't focus 80% of your effort on this RFP on 20% of the issue Pareto principle another thing is from the objective is you know keep keep it brief we we don't want to read 50 pages of why we should have this versus that keep it simple absolutely keep it simple and also one of the big things I'm a massive believer in is keep it in the language of the receiver think of yourself reverse roles thinking yourself in the vendor's position when you send out an RFP do they really understand it is it clear what the expectations are on the also firm believer in partnering with your vendors up front if you already have an established let's say a general contractor that's gonna put the coffee machines in how about getting them in the room first and say what's it gonna take to do this give us some rough draft expectations etc etc so keeping the language of the receiver another one is is this what we're trying to do is this an alignment with any corporate objectives let's say for instance on the the coffee situation it may be an HR issue from an attraction retention perspective then if it is then what is that objective we want to retain employees we have employee surveys that say we want this or we need that and we believe we can execute it so again make sure that's in align with whatever corporate objectives you're trying to get annexed next step is turn all those ideas into action so next slide please so how are you gonna what's the methodology how you gonna deliver this thing and I know that there's gonna be some cringe and some giggles in the background but right now procurements your best friend and I say yeah really procurement in the most organizations now have a really driving role in putting together the RFPs delivering the RFP to the vendor is getting the RFPs back executing the contracts and again this I'm using broad brushes on this because not every organization is the same for the most part the reason why procurement needs to be involved now is because once an RFP is sent out it becomes part of a legal document when the contracts are signed contracts are the legal documents they always refer back to the RFP as part of the scope of services so procurement should be your best friend right now I am a massive believer in performance contracting versus prescriptive contracting so traditionally we use prescriptive contracting we tell somebody how to do it well I don't know about you but my experience is that sets itself up for failure or for some disconnects a long line example the landscaping contract again I'm keeping it simple these people should be subject matter experts in landscaping so why would we tell the landscape contractor how to mow the lawn how to trim the trees how to plant the plant are you seriously considering that on a Monday morning if the landscape company mowed your 10 hectares alone on Monday morning you're gonna go out with a ruler and measure the lawn because in the prescriptive contract it says mow the lawn to 1 and 3/4 inches I who's gonna go out there with the ruler and measure the lawn at 101 or 3/4 inches I can tell you candidly that if I came to work early Monday morning and one of my senior facility staff was out there with the glue they're measuring a lawn they probably wouldn't be working for me too long because they are not doing the right thing they're doing things right so how about this simple statement I again keeping it simple dear mr. mrs. landscape bendera if it's green motor trim it if it's brown water or replace it that's keeping it simple their subject matter experts in this so they should be so I don't know an amount of horticulturist so I wouldn't know where an arborist I wouldn't know what kind I know what kind of tree it is it's a it's an elm tree but I don't know what kind of pruning schedule it needs I don't know what kind of fertilizer schedule it needs I don't know what kind of pesticides it can can't take I don't know where we should plant it I do know that a lot of our issues in facilities management you plant trees and exercise locks and then two years later you've got sidewalk lifts and now you're doing construction on the sidewalk so let the vendors do what they need to do that's their job so they're subject matter experts again that's pretty simple another example is if you want bought a car some of the things you look for in cars or safety rating you don't know how the airbags blow up but you don't know how the safety belts catch when it hits something another thing is miles per gallon if you're driving a petrol-powered car you look for miles per gallon that's just that's performance it's not prescriptive so think about these performance versus prescriptive issues in your day-to-day life and then how they would apply to your work life I can guarantee you that going to performance contracting for me and others who are counseled on this and helped do this has proven to be wildly successful not only for the FM provider but also for the FM services team they're not dealing with 80 pages of documentation another example would be cleaning clean it the way it's supposed to clean would you spend a just question would you spend 25 cents per square foot to clean the loading dock and 25 cents per square foot to clean the executive or customer facing space if you are you're probably spending them wrong the right money in the wrong places so another simple example is clean the executive space the way it's supposed to be cleaned as an executive space is no smudged no dirt no scuffs no whatever that is and the loading dock is never gonna be as clean as the active space so why tell the janitorial company to clean the loading dock the same as he would the executive space better value all this frankly is around the highest value how can you get the highest value from the dollars you're spending how can the vendor perform at its highest value level according to how they believe things should can happen and this is a partnership last part of that is develop a scoring metrics Wayne next slide I think has the scoring metrics on it there's metrics on here oh did we take that out we took that out yeah okay great so anyway a scoring metrics really kind of puts the criteria down keeps it neutral all things being equal the weighting and rating schedules so if you have five criteria on the selection side of it and they are they must all equal to 100% so the weight and rate gives you a metrics that helps even the playing field across the board so if you're interested in that I'll make sure that I send a sample of a scoring metrics over to Josh and he can post it okay next slide please so again develop the framework what's the company's overview and capacity to perform I'm very interested in their capacity performance because a lot of things that we do in the FM service business on the vendor side and on the FM side is scalable can you scale up and can you scale down can you handle massive events let's say if you're in a corporate environment and there's a 1,500 person event on Friday you need additional janitorial services to make sure that the garbage cans are empty and recycles taken out can you scale up I'm very interested in how it can scale up and scale down explain your technical capabilities really tell me what it is that you can do any kind of information on unique solutions example if you have a floorcare company and you have marble or terrazzo in your lobbies what's a unique solution they can provide you that that you probably don't know that would keep that for shiny keep it maintenance free but also keep it slip resistant so what are their unique solutions definitely put together some detailed timeline and milestones here's one that's a pet peeve of mine and you probably all ran into this RFPs due back Friday April 1st 5 o'clock in electronic format come Tuesday you get a box delivered by shipper receiving the box for low binders with the vendors proposal in it with 30 pages of their corporate dissertation how cool they are in their history going back to 1822 I am not interested in all of that I want to know what you're gonna do for me today so if they're if they're not even capable of delivering the RFP the way that you have prescribed it to be on time an electronic format it's an automatic dump for me and I will call them and say thank you but you've been disqualified because you can't even follow simplest directions again I'm being a little crass about it and it's much more delicate conversation we have that but that's the bottom line another one is client references this this is something that I preached in my all my FMP classes and other classes and when I do consultation work is I am pardon the French I am NOT interested in some claim to fame client reference yes XYZ company's the greatest thing since sliced white bread same with your resumes when they ask for references what are they asking for what did they expect what do you expect to get on the client references I'm much more interested in error recovery the reason why is we all make mistakes something happens I get it but how did you recover from it for example on the vendor side tell us about a time you lost a client and what happened and what did you learn from it so now you can apply the error recovery to your RFP solutions that is much more interesting to me because when it does happen I want to know how you fix it not a going resume of their the greatest thing that ever happened to landscaping doesn't tell me anything about how they operate next one is how do you treat your people what's your employee engagement schedule what's your training what's your diversity how many women do you haven't met and the senior management what's your employee turnover I'm interested in that I've given some examples before of a location when I had were the janitorial and security service turnover was the churn in our in our world was 90 percent annually that's ridiculous and the reason why is because the company that we had contracted out was not paying fair living wages whatever the g-got geography was in this case happened to be an coober so nytime that somebody found another job for a quarter more an hour they would change there was times when I was up there on a Monday and there would be the security person at the front desk and I would come back in the office on Tuesday it'd be somebody different and I started questioning what what's what is this issue and it was because they weren't paying for a living wages so definitely in your RFP asked asked very specific questions about how they treat their employees what's your training schedule along those lines you don't want turnover turnover is death to a contract any kind of products and services quote makes sense but in the language of the receiver and in the language of you in ask them specifically what their markups are you'd be surprised at how many solutions that are out there where they're it would seem at base cost to be reasonable but then you start peeling back to onions to look at all their markups 35% of this 20% of that 15% of that and at the end of the day that stuff really starts adding up so get clarity on the products and services quote again the selection scoring system that I mentioned earlier helps keep a level playing field delivered to that to deliver to them upfront as well to say this is how you are going to be scored and how you're going to be selected so there's no mystery there the next slide please so how you gonna deliver it again clarity and transparency is is critically important in the language of the receiver so that they can translate that information back to you in the language of you as the receiver what's the submission for the deadlines how do you want your RFPs delivered paper electronics I'm not a big believer in paper because if I have five vendors that are supplying RFPs and I get five binders that means I've got to deal with five binders full of paperwork that I'm just not interested in dealing with when is the RFI do how are you gonna respond to it are you gonna respond in light kind if there's some confidential information that only you want to only ask one specific vendor make sure that information is actually really confidential that keeps a level playing field as well - going back to earlier if you have a clear and transparent RFP you probably should have a very limited amount of RFI's there may be some simple things that come back but in my example if you start getting two or three pages or twenty or thirty questions coming back to you from an RFI perspective you probably have them clearly and transparently outlined what it is you're trying to accomplish I'm definitely interested in the vendors delivering to me and it codes the conduct and the policies including environmental policies I want to know how they're people how can I expect their people to behave one on site and I know it sounds well they ought to make sense but to be in uniform do they need to speak English do they you know what is their code of conduct what is their escalations things along those lines and whether they're environmental policies how are they dealing with hazardous material again vendor-specific well let's use a landscape company they have a lot of hazardous materials that they use the gas for the lawn mowers fertilizers oil etc how they deal in hazardous material we are not a hazardous material storage facility so it's very specific in RFPs that no hazardous material will be stored on-site you bring it you take it it's that simple next slide please Larry okay so that's kind of my elevator pitch on performance contracting again I've seen this in place I've done a lot of work around performance contracting and written white papers on it I published it in trade magazines by and large if people understand it and adapt it at a simple scale I mean obviously you want if you're not doing it already probably want to pick something a little bit easier to understand for everybody my experience another's experience has told me that this is the highest value way that you could deliver and deal with an RFP it creates a partnership which is really where we should be it's not the FM vendor boss/employee relationship anymore it's about partnerships I'm interested in having a partner that helps me be successful so that they can be successful so if the organization get to be successful actually both organization could be successful and long-term relationships so I appreciate the time there's any questions around that I guess you can throw them from the chat room or otherwise we'll just turn it over to Wayne thanks Larry yeah if anybody has any questions type them in and at the end Joshua will sort through them and we can go through those those questions I'm also just jump in real quick I forgot to mention if you want a PDF copy of this PowerPoint you can download it now on the control panel under handouts sorry to interrupt I just forgot to do that in the opening go ahead I'm sorry I don't thanks thanks Joshua great that's great and that is important too because I'm going to be going through a checklist here so don't feel like you have to write everything down I've included the checklist in that PDF so basically let's look at it this way you know Larry and his team just created this great RFP and sent it out and now I'm dealing with that RFP from a vendor perspective so keep that in mind but also keep in mind that many times as an associate I receive RFPs that vary in degree of how much it adheres to what Larry just just talked about in some cases in many cases even I receive what I would call an abomination of an RFT okay I look at it I say geez if they would have just asked me how to construct this RFP I could have helped them procure a better service so I'd like to show you what happens when we receive it there's really a lot of this is targeted toward the associates in our midst to give them some tools how to respond to these but take a look as an FM and see the process we go through so first is there's a pre RFP phase there is the reception when we receive the RFP then preparing the RFP response then submitting the RFP and then dealing with the decision those are the five phases that we deal with as an associate member so let's talk about the each of these phases in the goal of each one well in the pre RFP phase the goal is to prevent the RFP and sell direct that's my goal as an associate member and frankly I'm dealing off you know a lot more with FM's that tell me hey if this thing isn't over 500 grand I'm not I'm not putting it out for an RFP it's not worth our time especially you know some of the areas in Silicon Valley where we do business it's just not worth their time and and they would rather vet the vendors themselves through the FM team and just select through that process rather than a formal RFP if you can prevent the RFP that's what you want to do there's really a couple things as part of this pre RFP phase that you should be doing as an associate member and ways it as an effing member you can help us deliver a better service first is you got to understand the clients industry you can't sell this to an industry you don't understand the university is different than dealing with a corporate facility in some cases in some cases it's similar like Facebook who is the incumbent get to understand you know who's there already doing the work when does their contract expire so you can start planning you know to to reach out and say hey I understand your contract is expiring is there an RFP etc and then contact the procurement department I have an asterisk here that say only after contacting the SM where if the f-m is unresponsive now you FM's here on the call if we've been trying to get a hold of you with something you know we're subject matter experts we believe we can help you with X service and you're not responding to our calls or emails or entreaties for a long period of time our next best bet is to reach out to your procurement department and say hey next time you guys go out to bid for whatever it is landscaping we'd like to be on that RFP we much rather go through you to get there but unfortunately if we're not getting any feedback from you that's really our only other Avenue into your organization to get in front of you and sometimes FM's don't like that so that's why I have little asterisk there the other thing is develop personal relationships find out and this is why a is so great you know what are the facility managers or property managers hot-button issues are they having problems with their income income and try to uncover what those issues are offer to assist with the scope maybe we can help you tighten that up or write a scope for your RFP gets it get to know those people when I say personal relationships I'm not talking about those phony you know personal relationships that that can sometimes happen in business I'm talking about you really get to know someone and and as a subject matter expert find a way to help them with problems and do you have any networking partners that are already doing work with this company so if you can do some of those things to avoid the RFP great if you can't then you've got to deal with the RFP and as soon as you receive that RFP your number-one goal here is advanced planning so I'm an associate I received this email or package or whatever it is I not have to start planning so you have to designate your single point of contact and your proper menu sorry not property risers your project manager role who is going to clean this who's going to take point in your organization the very first thing you need to do is to read and highlight the RFP with a highlighter print it out or if you have an electronic way to do this highlight those key items that might be next actions and and and important information in that RFP go through it with a fine-tooth comb really understand the scope of this RFP what are the due dates and timeline and also what time zone there are a lot of times I've seen in the past I've done a lot of GSA contracting where you're submitting proposals all over the country and if it's due at 9:00 a.m. is at 9:00 a.m. East Coast or Pacific or and understand that and then what's the submission type hardcopy email etc is it a reverse auction understand all of that stuff in that first reprove and then I highly recommend you keep an organized filing system when you receive these documents on your hard drive you have the original Docs you received then have another folder for the response so you're drafting and producing your responses and then for any attendance and addendums are things that come out on the RFP changes to its scope etc keep all of those very organized because with paper flying back and forth or files back and forth on the computer this stuff can get jumbled and mixed up and you forget what iteration you're at in which which file to edit keep them organized now here's the most important thing you have a go or no-go decision about that RFP so that project manager that read through everything summarizes the the opportunity and presented to a decision team don't make that decision team huge you don't want a large group of people you want to have the smallest group possible to say okay here's the opportunity here's what it entails here's the level of commitment we're going to have to have in terms of visiting sites cost to do that etc and then make that decision now some people wait until after the site walk if there is a site walk to go look at this to make that decision but it's interesting you know I've had conversations with people like Larry and and others who consistently may have heard of companies using vendors as a third did they're never going to give them business they bring them in and they go through this big exercise and eventually the company says I'm not participating in your stuff I never get anything you asked me to throw through a bit at it I know I'm just your third bid for procurement so you can burn some vendors by consistently asking them for to participate but never really having the intent to give them anything or to award them anything so be aware that we have to make a decision on cost is it worth it if we know we have a competitor who consistently low balls and and delivers you know subpar work but knows the price only decision why are we going to spend all of that money participating in your RFP if we know there's not a chance we're going to get it what's the point so that's a decision you have to make and turn down those are fees because there's an opportunity cost to not pursuing other business if you're mired down in our team you really don't think you have a chance of winning and then planning so here's the thing is on both sides of us FM and and on the associate side this is if anybody's taken my certain chaos class you understand that you don't want to do all this at the 11th hour when you read through that RFP know what the milestones are when things are due and not only that in your own team went what tasks do they need to do you can't do this alone in most cases you need you know you need Jenni and HR you need Juan and operations you need fred in this department and Susie in that department to give you information so you can respond to this RFP assign those tasks but don't tell them what the due dates are in reality bump them up a week or two they say if it's due on Thursday it do tell them to do the previous Monday at 1:00 build buffers in because I will tell you I've been at 1159 they let you know that the eleventh hour waiting for someone on my team to send me a piece of information needs to go into an RFP I'm hyperventilating in front of the computer waiting to send so assign those tests early with a time buffer to your team and send them reminders hey bread this is due in three days just want to check in how are you doing on this and then site walks first thing is you got to watch for signs of a farce and I so my FM friends out there I'll tell you a story I once showed up at an RFP we were invited to company said hey we have an opportunity would you like to get in on this and we thought it was a real opportunity and we're standing waiting in the lobby for this sidewalk to begin and I see the f-m walk out and the f-m walks over to our competitor and gives them a big old bear hug and practically gives him a pat on the rear end it was very intimate and and I just looked at my team I said oh no and and you just feel that pit in your stomach that you're the third bid so you really got a watch for that stuff and that might inform your your go no-go decision as well what are the number of competitors is this a you know a gaggle are you walking through with 20 people 20 different companies understand what that is and who are the competitors because you want to feed that back to your decision team also and say hey here's who I saw was there and I go that's Tony from Smith company there they're low ballers were you know and it's a price only thing forget about it and then questions so here's the thing when you're walking through FM you know people you're taking the site walks there are there any questions we might have questions but unfortunately we might be giving up an advantage competitively if we ask that question and you are usually under obligation to share all those questions with everybody especially if we ask them through email but if we ask them in front of the team we see something with our eye we say hey we should bring this up in the RFP we might not share that as a strategic advantage in front of those people so I'm just kind of pulling back the veil and letting you know that that happens we might see something there we'd love to ask that question and get an answer but now everybody's going to be thinking of that and saying hey that's a great idea and we lose an advantage so just getting an idea of how we think so don't share that advantage and then you have to be respectful of the cone of silence there comes a point in every RFP process where whether its formal or informal where you don't want to put your FM partner in a bad spot by asking them questions that theoretically you shouldn't be talking to them at that point in time so a lot of our RFPs are very formal about that that it has to be submitted this way etc some are still not formal I'd even my best friends who were I mean most of my best friends are in bhisma an way I still wouldn't call them up and say hey what's the deal here with this or hey what do you think about this because I never want to put them in that position so be respectful of the cone of silence and I quit worried about bias ma this is an initiative that I started with the Sacramento chapter many years ago and I just would like to make a quick pitch here and say that FM Partners is the first place you're going to isn't within your own chapter or if mo through a CSP or through a sponsor or looking to see who's who's in your own chapter you're missing out not only that is we support the chapter as associate members and you know I think you're going to get a higher level of quality of service from a long-term member because they're gonna have to look you in the eye at the next chapter meeting and and they know they don't want to get a bad rep around the chapter I would just encourage you when you are going out you let's see whether it's elevator service look in your chapter you know if there's three elevator vendors in your chapter make sure they're on the list for the RFP or call them up and say hey we're going up the RFP in six months just wanted to let you know contact you know Fred in procurement so I just encourage you to buy FM so third step so you you haven't averted the RFP it's come it's come to you you reviewed it and you decided you're going to pursue it you're it's a go okay so what's the our goal here to get shortlisted or selected for that one so you either get shortlisted as a potential winner or the winner so in your and your preparation for response you have to understand what is the format and Larry kind of gave us a couple different is the two dominant prescriptive and and performance-based what is the response is it precise does it have to be in this order answering it this way and this font you have to understand all that or is it more of a free-form essay and we get some of those still sometimes or pieces of them that are like that my big tip here is don't bury the lead less is more I worked for a company and this is no exaggeration okay I work for a company once that their short form proposal just a proposal not even an RFP response were 60 pages 6-0 pages and we tried to trim that down to eight and and a few of us the company and eventually were quashed and it went back up to 60 RFP responses routinely were around 330 pages and this was for a basic cleaning the floor cleaning contract and the company was including their entire employee handbook in the response and things like that and why we talking about them they would say why did you send me all of this stuff it was hard to get to what I wanted why did he didn't give me what I wanted so less is more answer the questions they have specifically and understand what that judging criteria will be so Larry does doesn't great just this by it's telling the vendors and everybody involved here's the rubric here's how we're going to judge this if you didn't get that rubric or judging criteria in the RFP make that one of your questions what more your process be for choosing a vendor and they might not share that with you they might may might not they might not even know it may might be winging it themselves internally as an SM but if they say yeah we really want somebody that can scale you really want somebody that has X or somebody that's that expertise in green or whatever it is so who is judging so make it easy make it easy for them answer the question they have don't bury it six lines down in the paragraph you know what is you know what is your environmental policy right right at the top of the front we are committed to ex put a number there or whatever it is that you can put hooks in right at the beginning don't bury it and make the person who's judging this or team big for the answer and don't talk an abstract business speak can really keep it very like Larry said put the RFP out in the language of the receiver well the same thing is true for us a subject matter experts we can talk in crazy language sometimes about our industries forget all that and make it simple and concrete and not abstract call-outs are a great way to do that so if you've got value adds and that's what you SMS want to sit you're like okay here's the answers yeah they can do this but what's what the special stuff this company has or what can I get best value call it out say here's the best value item number one there is sure what that is and demonstrate your subject matter expertise we're not talking about you saying yes we have this yes we answered section 8.1 yes we have this and demonstrate how you in this particular field are a subject matter expert and therefore potential partner like Larry is saying to enter into a relationship and what are your differentiators in comparisons how are you similar how are you different from people in your industry what makes you different are you a national company or a local company are you you have the ability to scale up and up and down etc and here's the key so this is really an you know this is an important point here this next one in your RFP response you want to create a way to give flexibility and options and alternatives to the people making decisions you know in other words you want to give judges a way out if you come in and your price might be a little higher but yet you've got all these value ads and all these other things that's something that the f-m says gosh this company you know Wayne's company really gets it they understand I want them in here they get it I know that but the price is a little higher you want to give them some meat on the bone so that when they argue for you that they can say yes their price is higher but look at all these value ads you want to put those things in there and give the f-m the ability to go to bat for you if they really want you in that based on your RFP response so gifts and define ways to offer that pricing so here's the thing guys you know if you you send us these RFPs and we have to decide how we're going to respond back with pricing and here's a few of the ways that or options that that we have to respond sometimes and you see this like this this first one you see a lot in the janitorial industry the lowball and then up sell after because everybody's gonna lowball it you know you're going to get in there and if if only sometimes some of our FM partners would just do the math and calculate what's being what's in the scope versus what's being charged and then saying wait a minute how could they do this unless they're paying their people four dollars an hour you know sometimes you see that but the lowball is I'm gonna nickel and dine you after we sign this contract to start making profit on this thing or I'm going to cut corners so that's the lowball and then upsell after and then there's the price exactly what was set okay hey this is what you want okay this is exactly what I'm pricing back now you know what we might have it we win it and then you want some changes well then it's change order time but then there's also the price what they really need now some of you put in your RFP which is great if you see anything that you would do differently let us know what that is and and offer us an alternative here that's a great thing to put in your RFPs because if you haven't done due diligence on the front end with vendors and gotten their input you might produce an RFP that's lackluster and I look at and say gosh if only they would have added this this this and this they probably would have gotten a better response so price what they need if your subject matter expert give them that alternative even if they don't ask for it I think you should put that in there and then here's the other one do you price for negotiation rounds I deal with a lot of companies that I know from past experience I'm going to give them a price and they're going to come back to me once or twice again and asked me to drop my price so what do you do as a vendor you guys have entered knowing that do you price it a little higher knowing you're probably going to get shortlisted and and then drop it down to your real price see this list there's an gamesmanship and playing around can sometimes and procurement does Drive a lot of this is that your best price come back to us with your best price yeah we got something you know we really like you come back with your best price so in this is this gets a little weird here you know do you read you stand around and say no we gave you our best price for the scope that you had in here and this is what it is or do you play the game and this is a tough call sometimes because if the company you're dealing with plays the game and they're expecting a game to be played sometimes you have no alternative but to play that game and it feels kind of yucky to have to do that sometimes but as you know company X they always go through two rounds of beating people up is that are you are you gonna really give them your lowest price up front so that that's something to think about guys and then references like Larry was saying well what I like is minimizing the risk of change you know if you've got an incumbent that's the kind of like but but don't like here's some things you don't you want to know that if I'm gonna change this vendor that you know the bottom is not going to fall out on everything so your references should minimize the risk of change I do like Larry's error recovery and I get that question a lot where give us a contact to of a client you lost in the past you know X period of time and and and why I do like that idea but we still get asked that question a client similar clients type size and area the other thing is if you have big client names sometimes that can bite you you know if you're if you're little coke industries or Google or some major companies your client and you're bidding for a smaller company that maybe is you know kind of is the the anti Google company saying hey we do this that companies would say well we're nothing like that or we don't we do things differently here that might be a bad thing you want to be able to pick your references in a way that are going to inspire the person reading it but the error recovery one I do think I would love to see that included more because we've learned a lot and subject matter experts don't get to be subject matter experts without learning along the way making mistakes and adapting so review share the draft with your team you wrote it up run it by your team keep the review team small you don't want to have a lot of people too many hands in the in the pot and then plan buffer before du day so that review should occur with plenty of days out before it's actually do enough time for rewrites and changes don't do it the day before or day off please and then number four RFP submission so what's your goal here get a completed package and on-time delivery and on-time submission means it should already be on your calendar when the thing is due and when you're going to send it out to account for travel time time zones etc is there ship time if your ship they request a document you've got to account for that ship time now here's the thing you submit it early if done now you FM partner should understand that we have internal debates about that as associate members we might be done a week before do we want to send that thing out well there might be a tendons that come out toward the end so we might want to wait or do we say do we worry if we submit it early that somebody's going to get a last look at the bids I know none of the great people and this call would do that but there are people out there who might do that so we worry about that we worry about somebody you know on your team or procurement and maybe leaking the information sometimes so that's an internal debate that we have if you wait until the eleventh hour right until the due time and then submit so there's no chance for that so that's a that's a question you need to answer if you have safe you feel with the confidentiality of your response and you know in most cases I do feel confident but there's some times where you just get the heebie-jeebies on your site walks where you realize you might be in a in a farce don't wait until the last minute to submit and you know put everything together everything should be done in advance and here's the thing it's an email request read and delivery receipts and then save those in your response folder you asked for it because you needed to do on Wednesday at noon you want to send a delivery receipt and reader sheet so there's any question that you didn't submit it on time you could pull up that receipt to say yes it was sent and I saw that it went through to your server so shenanigans the things to watch out for I mentioned were last looks that's where the RFPs are kind of the person the contact procurement whoever really wants is told what the price to me is you got a with you sense that you've got to be careful and unfortunate is not much you can do but just be aware that that does happen in some cases are you just the third bid where you just if you got the call hey would you like to participate in this sourcing event and you knew nothing about it haven't you talked to the client about it in advance chances are you're a third in and the chances of you winning that are usually very slim usually it's the incumbent they want to get out of the contract and the defender they really want number two and then you to satisfy the third bid so be aware that that might be the case and ask questions about that their friend is a competitor I mean that's something to be aware of you do run into that sometimes where you know this person is very tight with company X they grew up together etc you might that might be a disadvantage to you technicalities are they writing their RFP in such a way that they're there it is it raises the hair on the back of your neck that there are so many ways out for them not to choose you that it seems like it's already pre-written to choose another vendor be aware of that and here's my favorite one the apples two helicopters pricing we always hear the term hey we really structured this RFP to get apples to apples pricing could you've gotten apples to oranges in the past well many times I get rfp's back and I say then they're going to get apples to helicopters pricing that's only going to be the same thing what don't the structure the way they're asking for this and it could also be that you're incumbent has information and data about the contract that no one else has now that's a strategic advantage but if you go to your incumbent and say hey can you send me let's say they're uh they do their service based on square footage okay of what they're servicing and say hey what is the square footage of this thing you're doing here and the vendor gives the square footage are you sure the square footage you're giving you is accurate or are they overstating the square footage so that when the other respondents respond to that square footage you posted their price is going to be higher aha gee so this is one of those things where if you if you really got to think about it you really want apples to apples that bid has to be structured and pure to deliver that and then lastly the RFP decision the goal here is to learn and improve there's a huge decision types that happen out there and you know the shortlist usually will lead to either more presentations where you go in and please at these presentations it's usually best to listen more and talk less as associate I want to hear from the SM what what their concerns are how you know what did they not get from the RFP what additional info they need it's not a wave you should go up and regurgitate your company policies to them it's an opportunity to listen and then sometimes they might ask for performance testing hey can you do this here we were comparing you against the other two shortlisted people so be prepared to to handle that kind of decision the other might be a negotiation I mentioned early earlier where you're going to happen go back and forth with that but as a subject matter expert I highly recommend you stand your ground and say yes we can lower the price if we change this frequency here to quarterly instead of by up you know bimonthly etc find ways to justify how you can do a price decrease to negotiate but not just say hey you know well we gave you a you know twenty two cents of foot but you asked us to lower it so how does 20 cents a foot sound that's kind of Cheney why didn't you just give me the 20 cents a foot at the beginning how are you justifying that difference so justify your differences in the negotiation phase and stand your ground and say this is what how we can adjust that price now many of you might be familiar with towel count this technically acceptable lowest price and the way this works is that you get stack of proposals that are technical no price and a stack that have a price all the prices you go through the technical and all the ones that pass muster are the ones that are left and then whoever has the lowest price proposal gets the business period there there's no other decision if it's it's helped and many of the government stuff you deal with especially or towel be aware that that it is extremely price driven process it is price driven is a procurement driven most the abominations I deal with in RFPs are usually when procurement takes over and the f-m has lost control of that process or had given some input but it did never translated through to the final documents if its procurement driven realize you're going to have to speak the language of procurement which is did you check the boxes that you were supposed to check and I know simplifying that but but really if you know this is procurement driven give procurement exactly what they want when they want it how they want it make it simple don't don't no fluff but try to give that FN flexibility to override that decision by giving them lots of value adds if you lose it ask the client for a debrief say hey what were the deciding factors and they might not give you the debriefs and the government they tend to give you that but you know ask you never know asked how could we improve the take take it say yeah your proposal is awful or you know it's too long or didn't answer the questions we wanted who is the awardee they might not tell you but they might it's important to know and and then do an internal review review and debrief with your team how could we have improved and then starts the process over again make a plan for the next round you know it's a three year contract start working it to get to be on the on the you know the slate the next time around and then lastly forward there's a few different kinds there's a sign go hey you one let's do it I like I like the response those are great right but then there's usually the negotiation hey we like you we're choosing you but we're wondering if you can change a B and C and how much would that be okay they get those so which we result in a change order you see those a lot so knowing that might happen sometimes too in an RFP as you say well I'm going to price exactly what they want and then when they come back and say yeah we want you but we want to change these things and and it's going to be an increase in cost you know realize that that might be your opportunity to change that that price and then what's your startup mobilization plan to begin that so sup there there might be a some of these might not be a win today start tomorrow it might be a win today start in 90 days because there's a mobilization period so that should kind of fly over so you kind of see what we deal with is vendors that should help you as you design your RFP to make them more user friendly to get back apples to apples instead of apples to helicopter pricing so so with that just like to open it up to any questions for Larry or me in any ways we can offer advice your help you know we had a couple questions come in and someone was asking if the recording of this webinar will be posted in yet so will be posted at the CFC website which is f my CFC org so I encourage everyone to go there and look at other archived webinars they have another question we have is what resources would you recommend to FM to reference per sample of well-written RFPs wow that's a that's that's kind of a catch question because there's hundreds of really great RFPs whoever is asking that question if you want to send me an email at Larry Morgan at s AP comm let me try and tackle that on a one-off situation because there's there's multiple different RFPs that I use that a performance-based one for cleaning one for landscaping one for HVAC maintenance etcetera so maybe I can help independently here okay great thank you and just a reminder to everyone if you do have a questions please type it into the question box and I'll be happy to present it to Larry and Wayne will give you just an extra moment and we're waiting to see if anyone else has any remaining webinars excuse me any questions Joshua I would I would like to add to what Larry said that your your subject matter expert vendor partners are also a great resource to help you with writing scope as well so if you do a pre RFI and bring in a few vendors subject matter expert can just ask how would you procure the service that you were me what would you do what questions would you ask and and you know see what they say and gather that information how much framework would you use would use of the per square but here would you this or whatever asked us we can help and and help you get a better turnout yeah let me add on to that to another resource that we often kind of glanced over is the if my knowledge library so whoever that's in that question or if there's any other questions from the audience you may want to go in the upland knowledge library and search for RFPs or prescriptive performance whatever that is I'm sure that there's something that can help guide you excellent and I do want to remind everyone that next month's webinar will be managing risk and delivering facility services on September fifth on that announcement should be coming out shortly um I'm not seeing any other questions coming through so if you do come up with any questions later on Oh someone just came in I'm sorry about generic RFP like I same question so if you do have any questions please feel free to reach out to Larry or Wayne I'd be happy to help you and answer any questions you may have and as I said it was Larry Morgan at sa P and Wayne what's your email address it's Wayne W at DFS green.com excellent okay I'm gonna go ahead and close it yeah I want to thank everyone for attending and Wayne and Larry thank you for a very informative webinar a very basic take care thank you