This episode of the Grow Fast Podcast featuring Caryn Dean, Chief Executive Officer & Founder of Once Upon an RFP, primarily focused on navigating the RFP process and strategies for success in government, commercial, and grant proposals. Caryn discussed the stability that RFP-based contracts bring to businesses, especially those in industries with long sales cycles. She emphasized that, beyond simply answering questions, a winning proposal requires a strong strategy that showcases a company's unique value proposition. Caryn also highlighted how a well-crafted capability statement serves as a resume for the business, differentiating it from generic marketing brochures and helping potential clients quickly assess fit.
Another central topic was Caryn’s approach to engaging with clients across industries and company sizes, from small businesses to Fortune 500 companies. She shared her philosophy of adapting the proposal process based on client needs, offering both project-based and long-term consulting support. Caryn also discussed best practices in vendor registration and the importance of aligning proposal content with audience expertise, focusing on clear and accessible language. To close, Caryn provided practical advice for small and medium businesses on vendor registration strategy, resources for RFP sourcing, and techniques to maintain communication with procurement teams throughout the RFP lifecycle.
You can find the whole episode of the Grow Fast Podcast with Caryn Dean here:
Once Upon an RFP
The Grow Fast Podcast is brought to you by Breeze, the fastest, easiest, and lowest-cost way to process RFPs, RFIs, security questionnaires, and other important documents.
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This is the transcript for this episode:
Mark Shriner [00:00]
Welcome to The Grow Fast Podcast where we talk with leading sales, marketing and personal growth experts about how companies can accelerate sales, optimize marketing, and grow their businesses fast. Let's go.
Mark Shriner [00:15]
Hi Caryn, how are you?
Caryn Dean [00:15]
Doing great Mark, how are you?
Mark Shriner [00:19]
Pretty good, the winter is starting to arrive here in the Seattle area, the trees are all changing colors, and we're getting rain, and cold and just the typical Seattle weather for this time of the year. How are things, you're in Chicago, right?
Caryn Dean [00:34]
I'm in the Chicago area. We've had an unseasonably warm autumn, and dry. So, it's been a little different than usual. Temperatures in the 70s and sometimes 80s.
Mark Shriner [00:48]
Wow! Well, I'm going to come out and visit you, because it's definitely not like that here. Hey, I want to talk to you about some RFP best practices and just get it really, you know, kind of deep understanding of how you help your customers. But before we get into that, like a lot of companies, they have this love hate relationship with RFP, and some companies don't even want to try to participate with RFP, because it's just like, oh, this perception of all this work, and it is a lot of work, right? Let me ask you. First off, why are RFP is important, and why should companies consider responding to them?
Caryn Dean [01:29]
I think they're important because they can provide a different longevity to the deals that you operate with. They can provide a level of stability for your company that smaller, more frequent deals don't offer, and so the combination of those smaller commercial deals and those larger RFP based deals really creates a level of stability in organizations that are hard to come by if you're just working on the shorter-term opportunities.
Mark Shriner [02:00]
Okay, so what I'm hearing you say is, like, with RFP, the deal size could be larger, but also it could be multiyear deals, or they could renew, very few years. Okay, that's, that's interesting
Caryn Dean [02:10]
Even the deals as long as 20 years.
Mark Shriner [02:16]
Oh, my God. I like to win those. That's great. Most of the RFPs that you see, are they coming from private sector or from the public sector?
Caryn Dean [02:26]
It's a mix of the two. We do work on a lot of public sectors, but we probably see about 35% corporate sector RFP s as well.
Mark Shriner [02:34
Okay. Well, I was, I was stalking the once upon an RFP LinkedIn page and I saw some interesting posts, and I'm just going to kind of go down some of the things that I saw there, and then let you talk about it, because you don't just, I mean, you're an RFP consultant, but really, what does that mean? And because there's multiple things that you can do, so let's, let's start with proposal writing and management.
Caryn Dean [03:02]
So that's the foundation on which the business was started. That's my background. Since the late 90s, which it ages me, I've been working in this industry. I fell into it because of my background in libraries, and that was the first industry that I worked with RFP. From there, what we've discovered is that our small business clients don't quite understand how to navigate that corporate or public sector RFP game, and so our services have expanded beyond just the RFP response support or even unsolicited proposal support, because they need that additional guidance on how to navigate that much longer sales cycle that's involved with success with government and corporate RFP.
Mark Shriner [03:58]
So, let's break it down a little bit like because it's you said proposal writing and management. Like, why can't I just answer the questions? Like, what do you mean by proposal writing?
Caryn Dean [04:10]
So, proposal writing is, in part as answering the questions, but also, it's about strategy. What is particular about your company that makes you different from other organizations, you can go through and respond yes, no, and have really quick little responses. Or what you might find is that you're trying to avoid answering a question, and we'll dig in and try to figure out why you're trying to avoid
Mark Shriner [04:37]
I think I saw a response. I think I saw one of your, your other posts that the solution, I mean, obviously it's going to vary by RFP and by sector, but the solution is 15% of the of the decision. Your solution that you that you're offering the RFP issuer, your pricing is maybe. You know, 5% of importance, but strategy is 80% of the game, and you just mentioned strategy. So, talk a little bit more about that.
Caryn Dean [05:13]
So, strategy is about how you're presenting your company. We work with a somewhat journalistic approach to RFP responses. We go through the questions, who, what, when, where, why, how, so what, whenever we're talking about a solution and about a company, and it's really that, so what question that allows you to differentiate your response. Everybody's passionate about what they do. And I've read a lot of capability statements, a lot of websites and a lot of proposals that talk about someone's passion for the industry, how driven they are to help their clients succeed. And those are really great things, but everybody's going to be able to say that right when it comes to having a business in this industry. So, let's talk about what makes your organization different. What's different about the results that you deliver for your clients. And you know, maybe it's speed to solution. Maybe you have a special formula that you apply, that just helps to gain much more success for your clients, and you have statistics that back that up. So, it's really, it's really about more than just how you feel about what you do. It's they can certainly get the facts on the page that support why you're so great at what you do.
Mark Shriner [06:41]
Can you give a specific example of a customer that you one of your customers are clients that you've worked with where you've been helped them kind of tease that out, the whole you know that? So what phrase, right? And, and when you did it, you're like, wow, this, this actually looks pretty darn good, and it makes sense.
Caryn Dean [07:00]
So, I think one of the best examples is with a commodity-based company. They are a hardware store and Maintenance and Operations parts supplier. But the piece that was missing from the solution was really that how they deliver and why their customer service is better and how they could demonstrate that through data. And I think that's the piece, that's frequently missing from product-based companies, is they forget about that customer service piece, because you don't just win the contract. There's then the onboarding of the client. You might have to create a custom catalog. What does that process look like. And then there are the reporting aspects. So yes, you're selling products, but there's a solution related to how you're selling those products.
Mark Shriner [07:49]
And you need to tell a story about all of that, right? I mean, because it, what are your thoughts in terms of just like a Yeah, you'd mentioned something about capabilities before and on your LinkedIn page, one of your posts was about capability statements versus brochures. Can you explain what the differences are?
Caryn Dean [08:12]
Well, the two big differences are how they're used. Capability statements are used by potential buyers as a way of understanding exactly where you fit into their buying needs. A brochure might have more of the, let's say, feelings about how you do your work and how you're passionate about your work, whereas the capability statement is really the facts. It's like, the facts. It's like a resume for your business, and it really digs into the details of you know, the who, what, when, where, why, and the so what piece has to be addressed with each of the items on the page. Because frequently It's only that first page they're looking at. Sometimes you can have a flip side to that page and more real estate, but you really need to include company information, contact information, what you do, NAICS codes, what diverse certifications your company has, where you're located and incorporated, and even what your business structure is, you might also include your DUNS number. So, it's really a brief, succinct summary of what you do that can be just glanced at very quickly. Scalability is important with these statements.
Mark Shriner [09:36]
And it should. It probably has a little bit more credibility than, say, a brochure, which is obviously, if somebody picks up a brochure, they know that is, this is marketing piece, right?
Caryn Dean [09:45]
And I think brochures are much more likely to land in a recycling pile versus a capability statement that gets filed away for future reference.
Mark Shriner [09:54]
Yeah, makes a lot of sense. I'm curious. How you engage with your customers? Do you do one off, like you go in and train their team on how to respond to RFP? Or do you do where you help them with one RFP and then you leave? Or do you do, where do you just kind of like an ongoing retainer, where every time a project comes in, then you're engaged with that.
Caryn Dean [10:23]
So, we're flexible in terms of how we engage with our clients. We have everyone from clients, from solopreneurs, all the way through fortune 500 companies that we work with. The model that we deliver our services through is substantially different for Small Business Owners. It might be a one-off project, it might be a capability statement or an RFP response, and they might come back to us again in two years. They might win that project, and then it's a while before they come back to us. But we have the flexibility to work with them on a project-by-project basis, and we have a team that specializes in that work, moving up through the larger organizations. We also have large corporate clients where we have team on site, you know, in quotes, designated remote team for basically an extension of that specific client's team. That organization makes their assignments. They do performance reviews, and we work very closely with them to make certain that they're happy with the services that are being delivered in that corporate space as well. We will do larger projects, like content projects. One of the biggest challenges within the corporate environment is having time to do that regular maintenance, and so content libraries can get out of date, or they just need a refresh. And that's a particular space of success for us, because proposal writers and managers are frequently so close to that content that they glaze over it, and they don't realize where there might be an inaccuracy, or just sentences or phrases that don't make sense, and so we can really help condense that content and make it really effective for our clients.
Mark Shriner [12:09]
I’m curious, you know, because you must work with organizations across a wide variety of industries and various sizes, and you know, you're helping them to write these proposals, which means that you need to kind of be a little bit of a subject matter expert, you know, in terms of the your customers domain as well. I mean, obviously your subject matter expert in terms of managing a proposal, putting together a proposal, putting together a strategy, a winning strategy, etc. But you also have to understand your customers, you know, the ecosystem that they compete in how do you do that?
Caryn Dean [12:43]
So, this is where I really lean on my librarian roots. When I was working on my master's in library and information science, I chose reference services. And when you're a reference librarian, you might have some subject matter expertise, but you are not the direct researcher, and so being able to ask the right questions, and sometimes not being the subject Ed matter expert, and I think it it's most of the time, really helps you to be an asset, because when your client is so close to the information that they don't even realize how much information that they have available about the work that they do. Just like with the example of product-based companies, there's that whole customer service solution that they glaze over, and they don't realize how critical that is, and that's part of what makes them special and really good. You know, solution providers for their clients, I actually think it's better to not be to not have a subject matter expert supporting your proposals, because they will ask the questions that your clients might ask when they're reading the RFP response.
Mark Shriner [13:49]
Yeah. Because what I what I was thinking, is a lot of RFP s are issued by a procurement team, and they're not subject matter experts in all the different things that they procure. They're good at issuing these RFP s and then collecting information and analyzing and trying to make a recommendation. But they might, you know, they might handle a wide variety of different procurement projects and so, so maybe you need to do, you need to write to maybe not the layman, but somebody who's not a deep subject matter expert in terms of some of the content you need to make it accessible to people who are not those deep subject matter experts.
Caryn Dean [14:32]
Very much so. And when we talk about accessibility, it's not just to different levels of expertise when it comes to what the proposal subject matter is, but it's actually neuro divergent accessibility, so making certain that the sentences aren't too long, that they're easy to read, that you're using Active Voice versus passive voice, so that you know who is responsible for what and your client. It knows what is in their realm of responsibility, because that's critical for them to know as well. So, it is very much about accessibility. With that first pass that the procurement team does, we want to make certain that everything's compliant and that we can tick all the boxes that they're going to be looking for so that that evaluation can then go to the next phase. We have a track record of getting our clients the next phase of the deal, because we focus on that compliance piece, and then that next phase of the deal is having your direct client do an analysis of the RFP response so they have an understanding of what your solution is, and does it really meet their needs, and how will that fit into their organization? And then also, there's the aspect of, how do you manage the executive review? What are they going to look at? If we have the opportunity or we're not prohibited from including it, we like to include both an executive summary and an executive solution overview.
Mark Shriner [16:02]
What's the difference?
Caryn Dean [16:08]
The executive summary, talks more, talks not just about the organization and the solution, but how you've achieved results for your clients. So, it can be a little bit more comprehensive, whereas that solution summary is really digging in on the technical solution for the opportunity. So, your readers might be different. You might have a CTO looking at that executive solution summary, whereas a CEO or a CFO might be looking at the executive summary.
Mark Shriner [16:44]
Makes sense. I also noticed that, you know, you help out with vendor registration certifications. Maybe you can talk a little bit about that. What does that mean in the context of RFP?
Caryn Dean [16:57]
Absolutely! So, you have corporate space funder registrations and public sector space vendor registrations. In both cases, you'll want to leverage those so that it's kind of an entry level access to their procurement teams. They generally include your company information, what your structure is, where you're located, and what your next codes are, or they might use the NIGP codes. But from there, it's kind of an entry level on the government side. It might give you access to their procurement portal too. Sometimes that procurement portal where they're actually publishing RFPs for response. It's separate. Sometimes it's together, but in both cases, with the corporate and the public sector, they might leverage that to specifically invite you to respond to an RFP. There's no mandate in corporate space, like there is in the public sector space, to have those open acquisition options. However, it can potentially have that opportunity as well. And in either case, keeping your vendor registration up to date and current with your certifications is critical, because if you haven't kept your vendor certification up to date, whether its minority woman owned small business, vendor, veteran owned small business, etc., you might actually be passed over for an opportunity that they've slated as a set aside.
Mark Shriner [18:34]
What's the best practice like if I, if I'm running a small business, and should I go out and register for as many different portals as possible. Or, I mean, you know, should I just go nuts and register for 100 different portals? Or should I focus on a more targeted number?
Caryn Dean [18:55]
We like to take a strategic approach. So, we do offer the service where we help create a BD strategy and a vendor registration strategy. Are you geographically restricted in the services you offer, or can you offer them everywhere? How big is your team? So, we first take a geographic approach, but then also, what kinds of services are you delivering? And I guess, how quickly is your team looking to expand? Because the vendor registration piece is only one piece of the puzzle. It's still a relationship-based business, and unless it's the lowest price, technically acceptable, RFP response, relationships are important as well how vendor rest registrations are just one component of a strategy.
Mark Shriner [19:45]
Okay, but you know, it seems to me, one of the kinds of turn offs of RFP is, it seems to be like this is distant process, and I just fill out the forms and I send them in, and I don't have an interaction with the customer. Yeah, and I, you know, most salespeople or sales organizations, they thrive on that, that kind of interaction, right? That problem solving, you know, discussion and conversation. How can you have interaction in throughout the RFP process?
Caryn Dean [20:18]
So, before the RFP process even begins. If you've done your vendor registration, I would recommend reaching out to the procurement team, learn what you can about that organization, do your research. But budgets are online. Proposed budgets are online. You can get access to meeting minutes for boards, so doing your research and learning about what are their initiatives for the year can be really critical. You can also find out what is the threshold at which they have to go out to RFP. So how much money can they spend before RFP and how much after? Because you might fit into that space where they can make a payment card purchase, and there are a lot of coaches and consultants who can fit into that space and develop a rapport that way before something even needs to be big enough to go out to RFP so you can solve small problems today that grow into big contract opportunities later.
Mark Shriner [21:14]
Makes a lot of sense. What are some like? I guess best practices related to deciding on this specific RFP we're going to pursue it or not. You know, the whole go, no go decision.
Caryn Dean [21:30]
Well, we talk about mitigating risk. Does your team actually have time to respond to that RFP, is it really well aligned with the work that you do, can your team? Does your team have the capacity to deliver according to the timeline of your clients, and how well does your solution align with the needs of your clients? Can you meet the end results? And I have in the past helped clients submit non-compliant proposals in response to RFP, because perhaps they can't meet the timeline, but they can hit everything else, but sometimes you do have to write a no bid letter and explain why, and it keeps the line of communication open, and keeps that line of sight to your business open. You're not just ignoring their RFP, especially if you've been invited. And I've talked with a lot of corporate, diverse DEI program representatives who are trying to get more vendors into their organizations, and they actually will facilitate getting an invitation to a small business to an RFP response, and then they hear crickets from the client or from the prospective vendor, and when they've especially advocated to the procurement Team, hey, this is a company that has the capabilities that you're looking for. We really think you should invite them and then they don't hear anything back that you don't want to burn those bridges. So even just responding back saying, hey, we can't support the timeline. We've got too much on our plate right now, at least keeps the line of communication open. Yeah. I mean, communication is critical.
Mark Shriner [23:24]
I would agree, and it's nice also when the RFP issuer, when they respond afterwards, and maybe you didn't win the RFP, but then they let you know that, hey, we're going with a different vendor, and if they can give you any information about what you know, how you could improve the competitiveness of your bid doesn't always happen. But do you? Do you try to try to get information from the issuer? In cases where you don't your bid is not accepted?
Caryn Dean [23:54]
So, we recommend and can facilitate requesting a vendor debrief with an organization where you haven't won that RFP response. We also recommend, on the public sector side, you can FOIA information so Freedom of Information Act if you're not able to get the information through just a regular conversation with your prospective client to find out, you know, what the issues were. You can go that route as well. That can also be an effective route of finding out who the competition is.
Mark Shriner [24:28]
How long does that take to file a FOIA and then, you know, get it approved and get the access to the winning bid.
Caryn Dean [24:41]
It depends on the organization that you're requesting it from and how open they are to those responses. Because even though it's, you know, a lead, it's legislated. It's a compliance aspect of RFP. You need to have an active player in an. Organization that really wants to be compliant with that. So, it can take anywhere from, you know, a few days to weeks or months.
Mark Shriner [25:13]
Let me ask you about opportunity sourcing. If I'm a small, medium sized business, you talked a little bit about registration, but where, where would I look?
Caryn Dean [25:24]
So, we have, of course, registering for the systems is a great way to learn about opportunities, but we have a collection of paid and free resources that we use to find opportunities, both for our business, because they're actually RFP for grant writing, and we support grant writing as well as commercial RFP writing, but then for our client’s organizations as well. Yeah, I'd love to share one of my favorite resources, because it is free and it's very easy to search. It's called instantmarkets.com.
Mark Shriner [25:57]
Well yeah, that makes a lot of sense, just being able to kind of keep that content accessible and be able to use it or reuse it. Now in the case of tools, have you ever had customers that use some kind of like RFP response platform?
Caryn Dean [26:14]
We do have customers who use RFP response platforms. Some of them are larger corporations. It tends to be a little bit harder for smaller businesses to manage the tools, so they tend to be a little bit more low-tech. But we work with both.
Mark Shriner [26:30]
And do you use tools yourself, or do you just use whatever your customer wants and needs?
Caryn Dean [26:36]
Well, we have multiple client’s intellectual property within our environment. So, they're very careful about making certain we only leverage each client's own intellectual property, right? So, while we do leverage some tools, they are very clear in terms of what content they can leverage or what they do. For example, in addition to use a lot of editing tools, a word editing capabilities, we leverage Grammarly and also a tool called perfect it, and we find the combination of those three editing tools gives us a really clean document.
Mark Shriner [27:13]
That's awesome. Which leads into my next question about AI. How is AI or large language models? How has it helped your or affected you know, the work that you do.
Caryn Dean [27:25]
So, we primarily use AI for research when it comes to best practice, how can we leverage the body of content that's out there to figure out how to respond to something that perhaps the client doesn't have content for. When it comes to leveraging AI within our environment works because we have multiple clients, intellectual property, it becomes a little bit more challenging,
Mark Shriner [27:53]
right, right? I totally understand. Okay, last question, because you've shared a lot of really like concise, you know, best practices. And I think you know, if you haven't written a book, you probably should, because you got so much knowledge and information there. Can you walk me through a story? You can change the name of the customer, but like, a big success story that you've had, or that you know that you are a little proud of in terms of how you've helped a customer go out and start winning RFP.
Caryn Dean [28:23]
So, we had a client who was selling products, who would like, who wanted to sell products through a contract mechanism to the United States Marine Corps. They were supposed to be a subcontractor. And about two days before that RFP response was due, the prime went quiet, and our client really wanted to respond to that RFP and so decided that they would go in as prime. We literally had 36 hours to develop their RFP response, start to finish and get it submitted, and they won one of three prime contractor spots on that delivery, indefinite quality, quantity, RFP, that is awesome. It was amazing. It was a $40 million IDIQ.
Mark Shriner [29:15]
IDIQ, what is it?
Caryn Dean [29:18]
Indefinite Delivery Indefinite Quantity, which means that only those three vendors would be allowed to respond to task orders.
Mark Shriner [29:25]
Oh, so anytime there was an order that would just, I mean, they needed whatever that service or product was, they would just ship it into one of those three vendors. And it was up to $40 million, that's huge. Oh my gosh!
Caryn Dean [29:39]
We could make that big of an impact and that short of a time frame, you know, not a lot of sleep happen, and our team was really committed to getting it done.
Mark Shriner [29:51]
That is so awesome. Last, last question, if people want to learn more about how to when. More RFP is to be more competitive to understand the process. Do you have any favorite sites or publications?
Caryn Dean [30:07]
To be honest, our site is one of our favorites because we have a lot of information on our blog. We have a series called RFP 101, that we're in the process of refreshing. But even in its current state, it's got a lot of great information for learning about what RFP is are why you want to respond to them, and being part of it is learning the terminology. So definitely recommend our website.
Mark Shriner [30:34]
What's your URL? I'll put it in the show notes, but it'd be good for people who are listening.
Caryn Dean [30:38]
Absolutely onceuponanrfp.com.
Mark Shriner [30:42]
onceuponanrfp.com, awesome!
Caryn Dean [30:44]
Yes. And one of our most liked and most read blogs is, is it “An RFP or A RFP”? So then, onceuponanrfp.com.
Mark Shriner [30:55]
Okay, nice, nice. And then did you have any other favorites or other resources you'd like to share.
Caryn Dean [31:01]
APMP is the association of proposal management professionals. If you're somebody who is interested in pursuing a career or learning more about what a career in this industry would look like, I would recommend APMP. There's also an organization called proposal industry experts, or pi, which is a great sort of starting point for learning about the industry.
Mark Shriner [31:26]
Excellent. Well, that's some, some great, I guess, the information you shared, and you know, the advice in terms of, you know, how to make it a go, no decision. And then best practice in terms of, you know, you really, your pricing is important, your solution is important, but really the strategy that you're putting together to go after and win this RFP, the importance of differentiating yourself and showing what is your real secret sauce, all that's super important. So, I you know, and I'm sure we could go on and on, because I've been to your website. There are tons of resources there. It's awesome. But Caryn, thank you so much for being on The Grow Fast Podcast. I've enjoyed the conversation. I've learned a lot. And, yeah, thank you.
Caryn Dean [32:13]
Thank you so much for the opportunity. It was lovely to talk with you today.
Mark Shriner [32:17]
Likewise!
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