EP118: 3 Ways to Leverage Evaluation Criteria in an RFP Response
Evaluation criteria seems to be a bit of an afterthought for most companies bidding on RFPs.
Sure, it’s one of the first things you look at. But are you making the evaluation criteria an explicit part of your bid strategy? And are you using it to your advantage in the content of your RFP response?
On this episode of the podcast, I share 3 ways to leverage evaluation criteria in a proposal, challenging you to put yourself in the shoes of an evaluator and imagine the scoring tool they might be using to judge your RFP response.
I explain why it’s crucial to use keywords that appear in the evaluation criteria throughout your proposal and describe how to map the evaluation criteria to your response.
Listen in for insight on identifying what is most important to the client and learn how to use evaluation criteria to build out your bid strategy and write effective content for a proposal response.
Key Takeaways
3 ways to leverage the RFP evaluation criteria in your response
What it looks like to put yourself in the shoes of the evaluator
How to demonstrate an ability to communicate complex information to diverse audiences
How to leverage the language they use in evaluation criteria statements
What it means to map the evaluation criteria to your response
How to use callout boxes and specialty icons to map evaluation criteria to your response
Why evaluators may have very little knowledge of the RFP itself
How evaluation criteria reflects what is important to the client
RFP Success Show EP118 Transcription
You're listening to the RFP Success Show with eight time author, speaker, and CEO of the RFP Success Company, Lisa Rehurek. Tune in each episode to learn what today's capture and RFP teams are doing to increase their win percentages by up to 20, 30 and even 50%, and meet the industry trailblazers that are getting it right. Let's get started.
Lisa Rehurek (00:24):
Hey everybody. Welcome to the RFP Success Show. I am your host, Lisa Rehurek, founder and CEO of the RFP Success Company. I thought it would be really great to have a conversation today about evaluation criteria. And so here we are. Evaluation criteria, it just seems to be a bit of a second thought for a lot of companies when it comes to the writing.
(00:48):
Sure, everybody looks at it, it's one of the first things we look at. But how many people really take the time to map the content and the strategy back to the evaluation criteria? I'd say that professional proposal pros, that's a tongue twister, for sure know how to do this. But those of you who maybe do this as part of your job, or if you're a salesperson who isn't necessarily well versed in RFP responses, or even if you're kind of new, there's a lot of people out there that respond to RFPs that don't do it. You might be a business owner that don't do it for a living. You're not a professional proposal pro. This one is for you because there's a lot of power in that evaluation criteria.
(01:32):
Not every RFP is going to have good scoring criteria or evaluation criteria. Same thing. Or sometimes none at all. Sometimes you get none. And we had one not too long ago that broke down, this was awesome, they broke down not only at the point allotment for each individual section, but actually the subsections within that and gave scores for each total points for each subsection. That is a beautiful thing, but we just don't see it very often. If you're doing government contracting, they really are generally pretty good about it. Federal tends to be a higher level. Depending on what state you're working with, some states are really big and some states are really, really detailed.
(02:15):
But we almost, in the state, we work mostly with state government contracting and we generally always see some version. If you're doing corporate proposals, it's all over the place and often it's nothing. And corporate tends to not ever really be overly elaborate, but you can take something out of it. If there's something there, you can take something out of it. And if you're lucky enough to have evaluation criteria, I want to give you three key things that you need to pay attention to that can really make a difference in your proposal.
(02:48):
So the first one is that I really want you to put yourself in the shoes of the evaluator, right? It is a human being sitting there reading your proposal and not just yours, but two or three or six or 10, or sometimes 20. They're reading a lot of proposals and at the very least, they're reading more than yours, one more than yours.
(03:13):
So I think sometimes we forget that, that there's this human being. And if you've followed me for very long, you've heard me say that a lot cause I say it all the time. But there's this human being there reading your proposal, and they've likely been given some sort of scoring tool that has been built off of that evaluation criteria that you see. So you want to imagine that if their scoring tool says something like presenting complex information in a manner that is understandable to diverse audiences, and let's say that's going to be worth 200 points, you want to make sure that you are very easily sharing that information. When I say very easily, I mean that it's something that's easily identifiable to the reader, aka evaluator. You need to kind of say, we have been told by clients over and over that one of our strengths is being able to communicate complex information to diverse audiences.
(04:14):
I wouldn't use their exact sentence, but I'd use some of their language. We're going to get to that here on tip number two. But make it really easy for the evaluator to be able to pull that out of your proposal and not have to search for it. Now, you need a checks and balances on this, someone who's really objective, because likely you're too close to it, and a lot of times you think that you're writing to that, but you're really not. Keep it simple.
(04:42):
Keep it pretty succinct. Don't try to get all flowery, but you want to be able to tell them, yes, we not only do this, but we do it really well. We've been told we do it well. We're going to show you in the rest of our qualifications. But right up front, I want you to be pretty bold in stating it. And again, I don't want you to copy the evaluation criteria statement, but I want you to have enough of their keywords in there so that they can easily say, okay, I see where they're going with this. This is mapping to my scoring tool over here. I can see where this is going to go. Okay?
(05:19):
And it's even more important when I get to tip number three, because oftentimes for us, if the RFP is confusing, it is for them too. Most evaluators have not looked at the RFP. They're not necessarily intimately knowledgeable of how the RFP is laid out. So they're going off of our proposal, which is going off of the RFP layout, which generally has nothing to do with the evaluation criteria. So we'll come back to that here in a minute.
(05:45):
The second tip that I have for you, and I started to allude to it, is that I want you to use the language that they use in their evaluation criteria statements. For example, if the criteria says knowledge of yada, yada, yada, repeat that term knowledge throughout your knowledge section instead of say expertise or experience. Use the term knowledge. Again, it helps that evaluator more easily navigate the scoring tool. It sounds ridiculous because you're thinking, well, it's all the same thing, but still you want to do anything you can to make it super easy. The evaluator is looking at that scoring tool and looking for knowledge. Where is your knowledge? That's probably a key that they've pulled out in their mind as they're reading your proposal. So the more you put that in there, the better it is for them to map back. Easy enough, right?
(06:45):
All right, so tip number three, you need to map the evaluation criteria to your response. Now, I'm going to tell you right now, most of the time it's confusing. It is. I'm just going to tell you that right out of the gate because it hardly ever maps easily, but you need to make it work.
(07:02):
So you need to make sure you coordinate the statement of work with the response format that they have given you. And a lot of times the response format and the statement of work are completely contradictory or a hot mess next to each other. Then you somehow have to interject the evaluation criteria along the way. So some of the ways that we recommend doing that are maybe with call out boxes, specialty icons, introductory sentences, things like that. And again, what this does, is that it helps the reader evaluator understand how to score you in that particular area. Again, they probably have zero, or I shouldn't say zero, but very little knowledge of the actual RFP format itself. Somebody else probably wrote the RFP, they're being pulled into evaluate it. Maybe there's one person on the evaluator team that knows the RFP, so they're going off of your response.
(08:01):
They might be looking at it and they're just confused with like, well, how do I take what they wrote in this section and map it to my evaluation criteria? So whatever you can do to help with that is going to be a win for you. The other thing is that just keep in mind that evaluation criteria is what they're saying is most important to them. So those call out boxes or the specialty icons or the intro sentence should be value add, value proposition. It shouldn't just be we're really good at this, or we know our stuff. You want to really show why you have the secret sauce, why you are the ones above everybody else that's going to have probably the same qualifications, probably the same capabilities, otherwise they wouldn't be bidding on it. How are you going to stand out above and beyond?
(08:56):
Those are the places to do that and map back to the evaluation criteria. So those are the three tips. Imagining how the evaluator's doing the scoring and making sure that you imagine their scoring tool. Number two, using the language from that scoring tool and then mapping the evaluation criteria to your response.
(09:18):
Look, the evaluation criteria should be a part of that beginning bidding strategy. At the very beginning you get that RFP, you all sit down and have a bidding strategy conversation. Yes, you should be doing that. If you don't know what I'm talking about, you got to figure it out. We've got a podcast on that I'm sure. But super important to have that bidding strategy. Talk about the evaluation criteria in that it is often an afterthought, or it's something that people read right out of the gate but they don't take into account in the actual presentation of the content in the proposal.
(09:53):
So you can take some pretty significant leaps just doing this one piece of bettering your proposals. So pay attention. This will make it so much easier for the evaluators to give you the maximum points that you deserve. Thanks so much for listening. Again, I'm Lisa Rehurek. You're a host of the RFP Success Company.
Speaker 1 (10:14):
This has been another episode of the RFP Success Show with Lisa Rehurek, eight time author, speaker, and CEO of the RFP Success Company. Thank you for joining us. If you have feedback on today's episode, email us at podcastrfpsuccess.com. No matter your business size industry, if you have an in-house RFP team or need outside support, the RFP Success Company helps increase RFP win ratios by 10, 20 and even 50%. Learn more at the rfpsuccesscompany.com.