On paper, an agency RFP makes perfect sense.
You figure out what you need. You document the requirements. You invite several qualified agencies to respond. Everybody gets the same information and answers the same questions. You compare capabilities, approaches and pricing, score the responses, and select the winner.
It’s organized. It’s objective. It’s fair. And if you’re part of a larger organization, there’s a pretty good chance Procurement requires you to do it that way.
But after 30 years of participating in, winning, losing and occasionally choosing not to participate in agency RFPs, I’ve come to believe there’s another question worth asking.
Is your RFP really designed to produce the best outcome…or is it designed to prove you followed the right process if the outcome sucks?
In other words, is it built for ROI…or CYA?
Because those aren’t necessarily the same thing.
When the Process Becomes the Protection
Nobody sits down at the beginning of an agency search and says, “Let’s make sure we have enough documentation to protect ourselves when this thing fails.”
But think about what happens when it does.
The new agency doesn’t deliver. The project runs over budget. Leads don’t materialize. The new website doesn’t perform. A year goes by, a lot of money disappears, and somebody upstairs eventually asks the uncomfortable question: How did we choose these people?
That’s when the RFP becomes awfully handy.
We invited six agencies. We gave everyone the same requirements. We used an evaluation matrix. We checked references. We compared pricing. This agency had the highest score. We followed the process.
In other words: Don’t blame us. Look at the RFP.
That’s the danger. A process that’s supposed to help you make the best decision can quietly become a process designed to make the decision defensible.
And there’s something a little backwards about beginning an important strategic relationship by building the paper trail you’ll need to explain yourself if it fails.
Take a Look at the Typical Agency RFP Process
Obviously, every organization handles this differently. But a pretty familiar version goes something like this:
- Decide internally what you think you need. Maybe it’s a new website, SEO, paid media, content, social media or a new agency to handle all of it.
- Turn those assumptions into requirements. Define the scope, deliverables, technology, timelines, reporting expectations and everything else you expect the agency to provide.
- Send those requirements to several agencies. Everyone gets essentially the same document and the same opportunity to respond.
- Ask everyone to price the prescribed solution. Now you’ve got numbers you can put next to one another.
- Score the responses against predetermined criteria. Capabilities, experience, approach, price, references, team, whatever your organization considers important.
- Pick the winner.
Looks pretty disciplined.
But notice what happened.
You diagnosed the problem and prescribed the solution before you hired the experts you’re supposedly looking to for strategic advice.
If your internal team already knows exactly what the problem is, exactly how it should be solved, exactly which tactics should be used and exactly how the money should be allocated, maybe that’s fine.
But if you knew all of that with certainty, how much strategic expertise are you actually hiring the agency to provide?
When CYA Starts Beating ROI
The problem isn’t that an RFP can’t help identify a good agency. Of course it can. The problem is that the structure of the typical RFP can unintentionally reward things that aren’t necessarily good predictors of a successful agency relationship.
The best proposal writers. Some agencies are exceptionally good at responding to RFPs. That’s a skill. It just isn’t necessarily the same skill as developing and executing a successful marketing strategy.
The agencies most willing to agree with you. If you’ve already prescribed the solution, the easiest way to advance through the process is to say, “Yes, we can do that.” The agency willing to say, “We’re not sure you should do that at all” may actually be providing the most valuable strategic thinking in the room.
The easiest price to compare. Once everyone is bidding against the same shopping list, price becomes wonderfully easy to put into a spreadsheet. Strategy isn’t nearly as cooperative.
The agency that checks the most boxes. The scoring matrix can tell you who satisfied the most requirements. It can’t tell you whether all those requirements should have been there in the first place.
The agency with context nobody else has. Sending every agency the same RFP doesn’t necessarily mean they’re all starting with the same information, understanding or history.
You’ve created a very disciplined way to compare proposals.
But comparing proposals isn’t necessarily the same thing as comparing agencies.
So Should You Stop Using RFPs?
No.
That’s especially unrealistic for the larger companies we’re talking about. Procurement policies exist for legitimate reasons. Competitive bidding can provide accountability, transparency and financial discipline. Some organizations simply require an RFP before a significant outside engagement can be approved.
Follow the rules.
The problem isn’t necessarily the RFP. The problem is when the RFP becomes the discovery process.
If an RFP is required, the strategic work should happen before you write it.
A Better Way to Get to the RFP
- Diagnose before you prescribe. Start with the business problem, not the thing you think you need to buy. “We need a new website” is a prescribed solution. Poor conversion, weak positioning, an outdated customer experience or an inability to support the sales process are problems. Those aren’t the same thing.
- Define outcomes before deliverables. What actually needs to change? More qualified opportunities? Better conversion? Increased visibility? Greater market penetration? Stronger customer retention? Improved brand preference? Define the destination before dictating the route.
- Identify the real constraints. Budget matters. So do technology, internal resources, timing, compliance requirements, existing systems and organizational realities. A good partner needs to understand the box they’re working inside before recommending what belongs in it.
- Determine what expertise you actually need. Some things should stay with your internal team. Some can be handled by technology. Some require specialized outside expertise. Figure out which is which before deciding what kind of partner you’re looking for.
- Then write the RFP, if you need one. At that point, Procurement can run a competitive process based on a much better understanding of the actual problem, desired outcomes and capabilities required to solve it.
And here’s the important difference: leave enough room in the RFP for qualified agencies to show you how they think.
What an RFP Built for ROI Actually Looks Like
Once you’ve done that strategic homework, the RFP itself should look quite different. Instead of being a shopping list of predetermined deliverables, it should give qualified agencies the information and freedom they need to demonstrate how they would solve your problems.
- Business outcomes instead of prescribed tactics. Explain what you’re trying to accomplish. More qualified opportunities? Better conversion? Stronger positioning in a new market? Let the agencies recommend the combination of strategies, tactics and resources most likely to get you there.
- Honest background and context. Tell them what’s working, what isn’t, what you’ve already tried and where you’ve struggled. Don’t make agencies guess about problems you already know exist. The more accurately they understand your situation, the more useful their recommendations will be.
- Evaluation criteria that reward strategic thinking. Experience, capabilities and pricing certainly matter. But so does the agency’s ability to understand your business, identify underlying problems, explain its recommendations and demonstrate how success will be measured. Make those things part of the evaluation, not just the presentation.
- Meaningful opportunities for dialogue. Give qualified agencies an opportunity to ask questions and interact with the people they’ll actually be working with. A written proposal can tell you a lot, but a thoughtful conversation can reveal how an agency approaches problems, challenges assumptions and collaborates. Keep the process transparent and provide participants with equal access to material information.
- Realistic budget parameters. If you have a budget range, share it. Otherwise, agencies may spend considerable time proposing solutions you can’t afford, or underestimating what’s necessary because they’re trying to guess what number will keep them in the running.
- Room to challenge your assumptions. Specifically invite agencies to question your requirements, identify potential problems and recommend alternative approaches. If they think you’re solving the wrong problem, give them permission to say so. Better yet, encourage it.
And don’t underestimate that last point.
If you’re hiring an agency because it has knowledge, experience and expertise you don’t have internally, one of the things you’re paying for is the possibility that you’re wrong.
A qualified strategic partner should be comfortable telling you, “We don’t think that’s the real problem,” or “We wouldn’t spend the money there,” or “This needs to happen before that.”
Those may not be the answers you expected. They may not even be the answers you wanted.
But they might be exactly the answers you needed.
If your RFP discourages that kind of thinking, you’re not really evaluating potential strategic partners. You’re evaluating how well vendors can follow instructions.
There’s a Step Between “We Need Help” and “Let’s Write an RFP”
Of course, all of this raises another question.
If your company doesn’t have the expertise internally to solve the problem, what makes you confident you have the expertise to write the specifications for the solution?
That’s a question more companies should be asking before they issue an RFP.
Sometimes the smartest thing you can do is bring in an experienced, trusted strategic adviser before the formal agency-selection process begins. Someone who can take an objective look at your current marketing efforts, help identify the actual problems, establish priorities and determine what kind of expertise you’ll need to accomplish your goals.
That doesn’t mean handing the RFP to an agency and saying, “Write this so you’ll win.” It means getting qualified help to make sure you’re asking the right questions and evaluating the right capabilities.
And if that adviser might also be a candidate for the eventual work, the relationship needs to be transparent and consistent with your organization’s procurement policies. Any conflicts of interest or informational advantages should be addressed so the competitive process remains fair.
The objective isn’t to write an RFP that predetermines who wins. It’s to write an RFP that gives you a better chance of recognizing the right partner when you see them.
There’s a significant difference.
What This Means for You
If you’re preparing to issue an RFP for a new marketing partner, make sure you’re asking the right questions before you start evaluating the answers. Sometimes that means bringing in an experienced outside perspective to help identify the real problems, challenge your assumptions, define what success should look like, and determine what kind of expertise you actually need. The goal isn’t to create an RFP that protects you if things go wrong. It’s to create one that gives you the best possible chance of getting things right.
Last week, we offered a complimentary 2027 Marketing Budget Analysis to help companies take a hard look at where their marketing dollars are going, what’s working, what’s wasting money, and where outside expertise might be needed. That conversation is also the perfect opportunity to bring Trivera in before the RFP is written. We’ve helped companies make these decisions for 30 years, and we can help you identify what you really need, what you should be asking prospective agencies, and how to build an RFP that attracts the right strategic partner. Before you send that RFP out to bid, let’s make sure it’s built for ROI, not CYA.
