Mark Shriner, CEO of Breeze and host of the Grow Fast Podcast recently interviewed Victor Alonso Lion, PMP on the topic of how to win more RFPs.

The complete recording of this conversation can be found here:

Apple Podcasts

https://shorturl.at/fgQ26‍
Youtube

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7fvctC3NLNY&t=2380s

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This is the transcript of this episode:

Mark Shriner [00:00]
Welcome to the Grow Fast podcast, where we talk to leading sales, marketing, and biz dev professionals about how to accelerate sales, optimize marketing, and grow your business fast. Let's go. Victor, how are you today

‍Victor Alonso Lion [00:12]
Hello, Mark, how are you?

Mark Shriner [00:14]
Doing pretty good. I'm in the beautiful northwest of the United States. Where are you located?

Victor Alonso Lion [00:20]
I'm in Madrid, Spain.

Mark Shriner [00:23]
How are things in Madrid?

Victor Alonso Lion [00:24]
Well, rainy. So it doesn't look like Madrid. Rainy and cold. But yeah.

Mark Shriner [00:29]
That's Seattle this time of the year. I gotta say that I'm jealous of you. I mean, you have the history, the architecture, and some amazing football. All three of my boys are football players, or soccer players, as we say here. And yeah, if they could get on a plane and be in Madrid tomorrow, they would do that.

Victor Alonso Lion [00:45]
Yeah, definitely. Madrid is all about football. Absolutely. About soccer. Yeah, as you call it.

Mark Shriner [00:53]
I'm really looking forward to this conversation because we're going to talk about some of the best practices related to responding to RFPs. But before we get into that, maybe you could give me the abbreviated version of your bio.Like, what were you doing before? And then why did you decide to move into a consulting role to help companies respond to RFPs?

Victor Alonso Lion [01:14]
Of course, of course. So, well, yeah. As we know each other from the localization industry, I've been in the localization industry for ages. I started last century, as I say sometimes.

Mark Shriner [01:27]
I saw a comedian on Saturday Night Live recently, and he goes, "I gotta tell you guys, I'm from the 1900s."

Victor Alonso Lion [01:35]
More or less, I started in the 1900s working in localization. I mean, I startedin a very small company in Spain, where with the luck of a company that wasworking with direct clients. And that's a little bit where I discoveredlocalization. Then I moved to a big MLV. I moved to the Netherlands. And thereI discovered, apart from localization, project management. I became PMPcertified there. Then I discovered account management. And then I started to beinvolved in RFPs in the localization industry in all kinds of roles. From theNetherlands, I came back to Spain. I worked in a very specialized SLV in thegame industry. I remained in the game industry, also in an MLV lately for a fewyears. And then I decided to go back to being a consultant in RFPs. It was sortof a realization of, oh, there's a big need here. I mean, I've been strugglingwith RFPs since my first job. So it's something that is there that allcompanies need. No matter if it's small companies, big companies, no matter thesector, no matter the industry, they need RFPs to respond to RFPs. If it's notRFP proposals, it's tenders, whatever you call them. But they need to sell inwriting apart from selling, of course, in face-to-face scenarios. I really sawan opportunity there. I consider RFPs to be part of the sales process, ofcourse, but also something that needs to be managed, that needs to be projectmanaged to be able to respond well to those questions and requirements.

Mark Shriner [03:41]
There's a lot of business potential out there. And if you don't have an effective response process, you can leave some of that business on the table.Actually, what we found was, you coming at it from probably the project management and the process side, and, you know, memoQ RFPs coming in from the technology side. But that evolved from actually working at memoQ, the transaction management system company, in terms of revising both the processes and then leveraging some of our existing technology. I'm really curious because we talked ahead of time in terms of what your processes are, and how you coach organizations to optimize their processes. But why don't we dig in and say, okay, before we get into the nitty gritty, what do you see as the biggest challenges for small and medium-sized companies out there when they get an RFP?What is the challenge with responding to it?

Victor Alonso Lion [04:41]
The first challenge is who's going to take care of this? I think that's where I come in. Who is going to take care of this? And while it's the first thing that you see in small and medium companies, the CEO's getting into this. In bigger companies, the salespeople that brought the opportunity try to manage the RFP.And that's the first challenge. I think it's one of the first things that can be improved to really have people. And there are people, professionals that can do this, that can manage this, which is a big part. And then of course, it' s all the data. And that's a little bit also where the technology is coming in.So all the data, there's a lot of data in companies. Lots of information, previous RFPs, information from different departments, information from different countries, maybe in different languages also, that need to be combined to analyze and sometimes process and prepare in order to be able to respond to those RFPs. And I think that's one of the big challenges that the proposal RFP process has.

Mark Shriner [05:57]
I think you uncovered several challenges there. And let's just go through the min order. The first question that comes in either, as you said, is like, who's going to respond, who's responsible for this, who's going to drive it? And I would even go back and before that and say, companies should decide this ahead of time. If you wait for the RFP to come in and then try to figure it out, it's almost too late. It's just going to stress your regular operations. I did quite a bit of consulting in the cybersecurity space. And by the time you get hacked, if you don't have a playbook in place, it's too late. You need to have something that you can pull off the shelf and say, okay, here's what we do in terms of our communications, here's what we do in terms of notifying the regulators, and so on and so forth. With RFPs, you need to have that process defined. That's what I'm hearing from you. You should have a process defined.When we talk about who, what have you seen? I mean, obviously, companies could outsource to somebody like yourself. But if you're just in there in terms of coaching them, what are your thoughts in terms of who actually should manage it? Should it be the salesperson? Should it be somebody from operations? Should it be a project manager? What are your thoughts?

Victor Alonso Lion [07:09]
To me, I mean, and I mentioned it before, no, I fell in love with project management way, way back. And I think it's one of the key things, defining whois who in that process. So who are the sponsors? Who are the stakeholders that need to participate in that? I think that most of the time, the sales people need to be involved, but as a sponsor and as a stakeholder, and not really the person who's pushing the project manager, pushing for that. So who needs to be there? I think it depends on the company. There's no one-size-fits-all answer to that because it really depends on what we have. It depends on the size of the company, what type of departments they are, what type of RFP we are responding to, why is there a difference. Because if it's a big company that has different departments, different verticals, different things that need to be combined, IT needs to be involved, operations need to be involved, and then you can also have different types of operations that need to be part of thatRFP. Finance and HR, for example. Someone needs to coordinate that. And that's a little bit why the RFP process is so cumbersome in many companies because there's no need to organize that. And the poor sales team is normally the only ones that are really pushing for that and are really eager to get the responses and struggling to get everybody on board to get the operation going.

Mark Shriner [08:52]
Yeah. And as I say, salespeople, you really want them out selling. You don't want them doing project management, project managing something like this, right? And going around the organization and collecting information from all these people who, by the way, a lot of times look at your request as annoyance because it probably hasn't been properly communicated to them about how important this is, and so on and so forth. But yeah, I'm in total agreement with you. If you can have a dedicated team or person, and that's what they do.The other thing that I think you're probably going to get to is that, you know, a salesperson, they might get two or three RFPs a year. They're not going to build up that expertise of putting together the response. But if you have a dedicated person, they're doing that all the time. So maybe you can talk a little bit about that.

Victor Alonso Lion [09:39]
Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. And people used to set what the importance is and the key factors that make an RFP successful. And I think firstly, it's analysis and getting the analysis of what is being asked exactly. I mean, of course, the salesperson is going to be there because they are normally the one that has been discussing with the client, looking at the options, asking the right questions. Sometimes it's also the company itself. So it could be the CEO of the company, it could be the owner, it could be the operations manager, where you have to get all these essences of, okay, what is the added value? What is exactly the difference of working with this company versus working with another company? Trying to get that information is super, super key in order to be able to pass on those essentials to the client and making sure that the RFP response is going to really stand out. So that's one of the key things. And that's also one of the beauties of these things. I mean, it was funny when I was mentioning to my mother, what are you going to do now? I mean, RFPs are what is that? I mean, it was, you know, this question that you have to answer, oh, that is boring. And I said, well, it wouldn't be boring. But there's also a certain beauty to it, especially when you are consulting with different companies because you have the opportunity to see different approaches, different people doing different types of things. And that's a little bit one of the beauties of it, trying to understand, okay, this is what you do, how you're doing it, understanding how you're going to do it. And to going back to the first question that you handled on the preparation side, it's guiding them a little bit on finding what is their essence, what is their really their added value and trying to help the companies get that, find that differentiator that is going to make them stand out together with them, and be able to transpose that into the RFP response and in the documentation that they have to provide in order to get the projects or the problems.

Mark Shriner [12:03]
In your experience, who's the best person or what is the best way to decide should we go ahead and respond to this RFP? Because sometimes an RFP comes in and you're like, you know what, we probably are not going to win this. They're looking for something different. Or maybe they already have a vendor in mind.And they're just doing this as a formality. Somebody has to decide. And if you have a project manager, they might not be the person who understands the sales opportunity as much as, I mean, they're very good at the response part. But in terms of the business opportunity side, what's your advice on that?

Victor Alonso Lion [12:36]
These are the famous go/no-go decisions on the RFP processes. I mean, that's a very, very important one. I mean, there has to be your portfolio of project sand a strategic decision on responding or not responding to an RFP that normally comes from the executives, the decision-makers in the company that need to have this overview of different projects and opportunities. Because indeed, there are RFPs that maybe it's not the best idea to spend all the time that you have to spend in responding to RFP. And sometimes even strategically, responding to all RFPs that come into your company could be problematic, in the sense of, okay, I committed to this, but then I'm losing the other opportunities that I could have pursued instead. And that decision needs to come normally from the C-suite or the executive team that needs to decide that part. In certain companies, it could be operations, the operator or operations that have an overview of the capacities and overview of the strategic goals that they have.

Mark Shriner [13:45]
You get an RFP, and sometimes the documents can be rather lengthy and some what complicated. And somebody has to distill down, what are they actually going to buy? And what's our position here? And if you send that document up to theC-suite, in some organizations, they'll be like, hey, man, we've got a lot of stuff on our plate already. And so, you know, sometimes I would advise the business development manager who brings it in, okay, is this something that you want to pursue? If so, you make the case to me, pretending that I'm theC-suite, as to why we should invest our resources in this. Okay. Give me, send me the summary. What, you know, what's the opportunity size? What's our potential win there? I mean, is that something that you see at all?

Victor Alonso Lion [14:45]
Yeah, I think it's good advice. I mean, I'm not going to say that I see it all the time. Normally, the idea is let's respond to everything. Which is a little bit, etc. And sometimes it's let's respond, let's get this done as soon as possible, which is normally not the right approach. So but yeah, it's definitely very good advice. I think just to make the case, to be able to have that portfolio of projects or portfolio of opportunities, and ensure that portfolio is well managed, and the opportunities are classified and strategically aligned with what the company wants to do.

Mark Shriner [15:28]
Okay, so what I'm hearing is an RFP comes in, you have to have a go no go decision. Then once you go, you want to move that the response responsibility to a dedicated person who has some experience responding to RFPs. So we'll call them an RFP project manager, or just a project owner. From that point, what are some other best practices if you are coaching that project manager? Because they've got to go out, as you mentioned,  to many different subject matter experts in the company and collect information. And sometimes those subject matter experts are busy. Well, oftentimes, they're busy. But sometimes they'll say, I just responded to this similar question two months ago, why do I have to redo this? And they might get some pushback. So what advice would you give a person in that role?

Victor Alonso Lion [16:19]
In that sense, I mean, it will be purely project management, which is follow-up, which is planning, which is transmitting, as we were discussing, just meeting the importance of responding to an RFP. And then of course, there's the technology. I think that's a little bit where the technology can help. And that's a little bit where a portfolio of RFPs can help. If you have this information centralized, if you have this information available in a certain place, the reuse of that information can definitely alleviate the efforts in a company. That's a little bit where memoQ RFPs can also help in centralizing this information. And to advise the person managing that process, it's purely project management. At the end of the day, it's managing expectations, managing stakeholders, being able to plan correctly the execution of that project, which is the RFP response, and then being able to manage that and explaining the dependencies to that person. In that case, you were putting as an example, explaining, okay, I need this because then we have to do this, and then we have to do that. And then we have to go ahead with the other review processes that we have to do. So that's communication at the end of the day. Communicate, communicate, communicate and explain why.

Mark Shriner [17:57]
Exactly. I think that's all super good advice. What have you seen in terms offering language RFPs, and the best ways to manage that?

Victor Alonso Lion [18:11]
What I normally see is information that exists in different languages, which isa little bit also where the synergy between the localization industry, the translation industry, and the RFP proposal industry comes in. I mean, it's super interesting to see that in certain regions, for example, this is not that common in certain size of companies. I mean, of course, you have regions where it's local RFPs, they respond in one language, all the information is in one language. But the moment that you just go up in size a little bit, normally, when you have a multilingual content all over the place. Also, opportunities coming from different countries, to be able to respond to different stakeholders or different clients in different languages. The need exists, of course, in many companies to have that centralized translated knowledge to be able to have the French SME, that is the IT guy that has control of everything, communicating or coordinating with the production guy who is in Germany, and who has the processes all very well documented. And then we have the marketing guys in Spain that have some information, but not all of it. And being able to centralize that information in one language and be able to respond in the target language of the RFP is really an important step. But one of the big challenges of especially big companies that are in that situation.

Mark Shriner [19:59]
Yeah, I mean, we see this a lot in Europe, also in Canada as well, with FrenchCanadian and English. But in the last year and a half, memoQ has responded toRFPs in at least five different languages that I know of. The challenge is you may get the inbound RFP in English, you might not. We've received them inFinnish, for example. And then we've had to decide, well, is it a go? How do we decide if it's a go or no-go because we've got a Finnish document that's 500pages long in front of us, right? And so we have to do that evaluation. We have a process in terms of doing that. And then, as you said, you've got to collect all that information. For us, the information that we collect typically is always in English, but then we have to submit it in that target language ofFinnish. I think we've done Italian, Spanish, and French. Probably missing one more. So how would you, what advice would you give to companies in terms of different options? A document comes in 300-400 pages, or even 50 pages, whatever it is, in Finnish, let's use that example. What would you do?

Victor Alonso Lion [21:17]
Well, the first thing is to understand a little bit, what is the summary from the person bringing the opportunity? What is the strategic goal here? What are we going to achieve with this? Give us a summary of this. And then, of course, the RFP experts or the person appointed to manage it, if you need to understand what are the requirements, what is in that RFP document, and we need to translate that. We need to translate that. There's no other option if the rest of the team doesn't speak that language. It's something that definitely needs to be translated, needs to be translated and maybe curated first. So maybe there's no need to translate everything but to decide which parts can be translated or need to be translated first in order to be able to make that go or no-go decision. So the curation of that document, but of course, you need some help from someone speaking the language in order to curate that document and be able to make a decision.

Mark Shriner [22:24]
Yeah, we've been fortunate that we've been able to leverage machine translation to translate the summary and then evaluate, does this look interesting for us or not? And then follow up with the company or the organization that's issuing the RFP and ask them questions in English to get clarification and drill down.Typically, even though the document they may be requesting could be from a government agency, a lot of government agencies require local language responses, but they're perfectly capable of responding to questions in English, and get those clarifying answers in place, and then make that go no go decision. We've typically seen that machine translation for the questionnaire typically works. But the response document has to be perfect. So you may start with MT and do post-editing, or maybe you just go right to humans. Have you seen a variety of different processes there?

Victor Alonso Lion [23:26]
Yeah, I think MT is a key essential part there to be able to do this. Then, in terms of responding, I think there are two approaches. There's the approach of getting an SME in the type of RFP that can speak the target language that can help you get that. I think that's one of the ways to do this. And then the other way to do this is to have someone that is a copywriter that is able to transmit that information that is gathered in the company or in the process of the RFP, and a person that you trust that is going to be able to transmit that in that language. So there's two approaches and I think it really depends on the type of RFP, the severity of the RFP, the speed at which you need to respond. Of course, sometimes you have suppliers that have very tight schedules. So if you get that expert in the process, of course, that could bean ideal situation, even if they have to transmit what exactly your company is doing. And have that help. If not, as I'm saying also, as in localization, for example, you look for the best translators, sometimes when doing the RFP responses, you have to try to find the best copywriters and proposal writers in that language in order to help you. Of course, you need to be able to transmit the information, transmit what you want to have in that RFP to that person. One ofthe key things, especially in very complex RFPs, is to review those stages. You can back-translate, which is another technique. Back-translate with MT,back-translate with a professional translator if needed. That's also another approach, back-translate and make sure that what is being transmitted at theend of the target language is as you want it to be.

Mark Shriner [25:37]
I think those are some great suggestions. For people who are not from the localization industry, MT stands for machine translation. I should have said that from the beginning. Machine translation is becoming incredibly more powerful and more frequently used. But you do have to keep an eye on things because it's not perfect. You mentioned the importance of copywriting or having those types of skills in the response process. What are your thoughts in terms of, do the RFP issuers want just a pure factual response? Or is it important to put kind of a copywriting spin on it? What are your thoughts on that?

Victor Alonso Lion [26:25]
Of course, it depends on the RFP. But there's always a part of the RFP where there is some essence and some important transmission of that added value that needs to be there. Normally, the executive summary, you have that possibility to use some copywriting skills to send some copywriting advice there. Of course, in the more technical part, normally there's no need for that.Actually, it could be counterproductive when you're trying to do that. So you have to analyze all the RFP parts and be sure where you need to explain those things. The executive summary is the first one that comes to mind. The conclusion, of course, RFPs can be very different. You can have a one-page proposal that needs to be submitted for something to a very complex RFP involving many different aspects. Again, it's a little bit of analysis, making sure to understand which parts can have a more creative process, or more creative output, and which parts are really factual, really technical, where you really need to go to the point and be able to make sure that you are addressing each one of those responses the correct way.

Mark Shriner [27:59]
Yeah, again, great observations and advice there. Let me ask you, because earlier, you talked about leveraging the portfolio of RFPs or responses that you've put together in the past. We know that there are some tools out there that help to kind of automate that. And obviously, memoQ RFP is developing a platform like that. But aside from that, I've seen companies that will just collect their files, for example, store their files, and then go back and do copy and paste, things like that. Do you have any suggestions in terms of how to organize your previous responses if you're not using one of these tools or platforms? And how to streamline that process? Because a lot of times the questions aren't an exact match. So how do you manage that?

Victor Alonso Lion [28:50]
I think it's where technology is really going to make a big change in responding to RFPs. AI is probably going to help a lot on that. Even today, if you don't have a specific person working on RFPs, it's very difficult, no matter how organized your content management is, to just understand which question was similar to this one, and then I could reuse this information. So at the end, of course, having a centralized content management system is the ideal solution. But even though it's very complicated to be able to leverage correctly all the questions, I think the technology is definitely going to help with that. AI is definitely going to help with that curation of processes, being able to get those very similar questions that need to be reviewed. That's one of the shifts that is going to happen in the RFP proposal process that is already here.

Mark Shriner [30:07]
But a lot of companies maybe aren't aware of these platforms, or maybe they don't have the budget. And so they're just using, you know, hey, we've doneRFPs before, where are those files? Some of them are better at organizing them.For those companies, what advice would you give in terms of how to organize their previously submitted RFPs and then how to validate because if you're theRFP Manager, you're not going to be able to tell whether these responses regarding your IT security are up to date. I mean, because you're not an IT security specialist. Likewise, with some of the company's financials, you're going to have to kind of validate them, you can't just copy and paste everything. Any recommendations or suggestions there?

Victor Alonso Lion [30:52]
I think, again, communication and knowing your company, knowing what is the status of things, and involving them. With better organization, when you have this situation, it's just a matter of validating those questions, making sure that those SMEs in your company are validating those questions. To organize the content, the ideal solution is to have a content management system as clear as possible, having similar RFPs in one place, having also the analysis and the post-mortem of those RFPs. If you won the RFP, if you lost the RFP, what information is there, trying to tag as well as possible the responses and be able to respond to it. Again, I think the technology is really going to help with that difficult process.

Mark Shriner [31:54]
Awesome. Yeah, you bring up a good point of tracking. Let me ask you this, because we track all of our RFPs win or lose. We also try to know if we did lose it, why. We want to know what the potential dollar amount is. Sometimes it's not clear what the potential dollar amount is. Some organizations, they won't tell you why you lost. In those scenarios, though, there are ways that you can kind of probe and try to collect information. What advice would you give?

Victor Alonso Lion [32:27]
It's true. Sometimes you don't know why you lost it. Sometimes, you know that there's a percentage of chance of getting it. You cannot win all RFPs. That'sdefinitely something that you have to know when you're responding to RFPs.There could be factors that you don't control, factors that you can control.The really important thing in RFPs is to learn from them. That's, of course,when you have won it, you're very happy. But there's also an exercise in tryingto see, okay, what made us win this RFP? Can we identify exactly which part ofthe RFP was really key in the decision process? It all starts with questioningin the beginning. At the end, questioning the client with the importance,depending on how the RFP is structured, how they are asking the questions,normally also gives hints of what is going to be really important here. There'sa danger sometimes that you don't learn from those responses from the process.I think that's really one of the essential lessons learned from the RFP, tolearn from them, to be able to see what worked, what didn't work, repeat whatworks. What is not working?

Mark Shriner [33:57]
You can get some good market intelligence too. Because, for example, if you are consistently losing because of price, maybe you got to look at your pricing strategy. If you're consistently losing because you don't have SOC 2 security credentials, then you may have to look at that as an investment. Hey, if we invest in the X number of dollars it takes to get SOC 2 compliance, how much business can we win? Maybe it's a connector for a specific platform. Oh, you don't have a connector for Adobe Experience Manager? Well, then we're not going to do business with you. And you see that on four different RFPs, you know what, maybe you should invest in that connector.

Victor Alonso Lion [34:40]
Exactly. Exactly. That's really the lessons learned. There's nothing better than getting the RFP from your ideal client to understand, okay, what are they looking at? What do they want to see and be able to match that if it makes sense strategically for your company? But yeah, it could be IT, it could be insurance, it could be people side. Sometimes you see very small companies trying to get to projects that are too big for them.

Mark Shriner [35:40]
They want the answers in multiple countries around the world, and Europe has an office in two countries. They're like, that's just what they're looking at.Sometimes you can just get a lesson from it. I'm like, okay, so maybe if I have an office sales office somewhere and a small production office somewhere, thenI would be able to apply to these RFPs and have a chance to win them.

Victor Alonso Lion [36:20]
Absolutely. One of the things that I like to follow up with RFP issuers is, well, one, I like to reach out to them a lot in advance because there's typically a window where you can ask clarifying questions. I put my sales hat on, and I say, the more often or the more frequently I can communicate with somebody and have a face-to-face contact, even if it's just on a video call, they get to know me, I get to know them, and you'll get information. You also start to develop that relationship. Typically, these people are in procurement, and they're immune to relationships, and I'm just joking about that. But you can get information. You can position yourself by asking smart, intelligent questions. Sometimes they may have issued an RFP and not realized, wow, we didn't ask the appropriate question there. Maybe for this industry, we need to kind of tweak it. Then on the follow-up, I like to ask, because if you just say, why did we lose? That's kind of hard. But you can ask, for example, and this is almost the same thing, but you can say, you know, I'm trying to learn here, what could we have done better? Is there anything that we could have done better? Sometimes, if you take that kind of approach, you might get a little bit more information. At the end of the day, most people, even in procurement, are human beings. If they feel like you've made an effort to kind of reach out to them, a lot of times you'll get some valuable insights in return.

Victor Alonso Lion [37:10]
Very valuable insights that you can get in your documentation that you can learn from. Absolutely.

Mark Shriner [37:17]
What are you seeing in terms of some of these hard requirements? For example, you must have this in order to qualify. Security quality requirements like NISTor SOC 2? Are you seeing things around ESG or diversity, equity, and inclusion?Are these becoming increasingly important, or is it just something that they put there as a formality, or are they really becoming important?

Victor Alonso Lion [37:47]
I think it really depends on the industry. It really depends on what industries you are targeting. Of course, anything related to diversity and inclusion is starting to be important. It is there in many RFPs, but then, of course, it really depends on the industry, on what exactly, because RFPs can be anything. You can work from architectural RFPs that want to get into another country and want you to place themselves, to a locksmith that wants to put locks in a mall. To give some examples, extreme examples, not maybe the ones that are first coming to mind, more IT-related. I really think it depends on the industry. It depends on the size of the project or the opportunity. It can be very diverse. I wouldn't say there's anything really standing out. It really depends.

Mark Shriner [39:01]
I would think, for example, in Europe, GDPR is probably a common question. Are you GDPR compliant? If you're doing any kind of B2C, well, even B2B these days ,in terms of protecting the information of your employees, your vendors, customers, and so on. I'm sure you probably see GDPR-related questions. There's always that.

Victor Alonso Lion [40:15]
True. Thank you for the reminder. Absolutely. When it comes to the essentials, those are always there. GDPR, how are you protecting your files. The level of maturity of the company will completely change the way of approaching that, but definitely, there are some essentials that need to be there, especially if yougo to public companies. Those are really going to be there. So you better be compliant with those things because if not, it's going to be a no for sure.

Mark Shriner [40:15]
If I was a small, medium-sized company, or even enterprise-level organization, and I want to optimize my RFP response process, I want to build my virtual team and probably appoint a person as an RFP project manager. I can see a couple of different skills there. You need the project management skills, but there are also specialty RFP writing skills. And those are kind of different things. You don't really want your project manager to be also your writer, typically. What advice would you give for project managers who want to get better at responding to RFPs? And also writers who want to get better? Because there are courses ,associations, newsletters, etc. What advice would you give?

Victor Alonso Lion [41:30]
For the project manager, the first is to just imagine what your ideal process is going to be. Prepare a project plan for it and stick to that. At least have a basis and the important thing, there are some essentials. At the end, you have to analyze, make sure what you're going to respond, how you're going to execute it, how you're going to format it, how you're going to review it, and how you're going to submit it. Those very essential things sometimes are not even there. I think that's where you have to start. In terms of writing and copy writing, it depends a little bit on the industry. Normally the skill is accessible or easier maybe to get outside of the company, being able to transmit that to people that you trust, that can help you with that writing process.That can help you translate an external consultant, basically.

Mark Shriner [42:38]
Sometimes it's a good option to get an external consultant that isn't going to manage the project but is just going to help you get that in the proper language for the sections of the RFP response that you need them for. Awesome.If people wanted to learn more about responding to RFPs, are there any associations, workshops, or schools that you would recommend?

Victor Alonso Lion [42:51]
There are very good books on RFP responses. At the end of the day, it's more about knowing your industry, knowing what is required in your organization.Project management, of course, there are very good books on RFP and even RFP writing. There isn't really a variety of them. In the States, for example, there are quite a few associations on RFP responses, very good consulting firms that can help you there. But I would just start with a basis, I think. Start with the basic things. Just pure project management, pure transmitting and reusing the content. Those would be my first thoughts. If you try to become the guru of the RFP process, it's probably going to take you to a path that it's not exactly what you're looking for. You're looking for agility, you're looking for speed in responses, you're looking for knowing where to gather the information. That's normally what companies need more than really becoming the marketing copywriting expert that will get you the ideal RFP proposal.

Mark Shriner [44:21]
Makes a lot of sense. All right. Last question. I want to wrap this up on a positive note here. Tell me the story about the biggest or most interesting or surprising RFP win that you've been involved with. Of course, you could change the names and industries if you want but explain how it came in, how your team came together, handled it, and what were the steps.

Victor Alonso Lion [44:44]
One of the key things is the beauty that was mentioned at the beginning of the conversation, the beauty of seeing different companies. When I started looking at RFPs, my idea was to get into all the markets that I know. It could be localization, it could be video games, it could be software. Sometimes you just have opportunities that you don't even think about. This locksmith example I was mentioning in the conversation is a real example. A locksmith in Spain trying to get into a big RFP for them, trying to put master locks in a mall.You see those things and suddenly, you just realize, okay, I'm learning so many things about keys. Things that I was not really expecting even to exist.There's an ISO for locks. Oh my God, we have to be compliant with those things.Those things are really the fun when you get into that. I think that's one of the interesting things I've seen. Just scratching the differences from the different companies and industries and being able to provide value to that process, understanding how they do it, and being able to transmit that in theRFP process.

Mark Shriner [46:17]
That's awesome. And I love that too because you're right. It's funny becauseI've been in the lock industry off and on for quite a long time. I've consulted a couple of different industries, but it's really a pretty narrow slice of what's going on in the whole world. My concept or perspective of RFPs is like, this is it. We were doing research for memoQ RFP in terms of markets and industries that we wanted to reach out to. I went to some different state portals and then different private industry portals. I was looking for, can I find a pattern of what industries are offering the most types of or the mostRFPs? The reality is, it's just like every industry out there. It was amazing.I came across one in the state of California for rat mitigation. There was anRFP for pest exterminators, but they called it rat mitigation. I just thought that was... I would have never guessed that they would actually have an RFPprocess for that. But I think that's a couple of good points. One is your opportunity to learn. Two, RFPs are everywhere. From a response consultantperspective and from a technology provider, that's a pretty good thing to have in front of us. There's a pretty wide market.

Victor Alonso Lion [47:39]
Yeah, absolutely. That was one of the key things. The moment that you did, you understand that all these opportunities are different from what I've been doing in the last 20 years. All those people that I was not even considering, now I can consider them as potential clients. Absolutely.

Mark Shriner [47:58]
That's awesome. Well, Victor, if any of our listeners or viewers wanted to reach out and get in touch with you, what would be the best way to do that?

Victor Alonso Lion [48:07]
We have a website. It's eprojecto.com. Of course, my LinkedIn is also available.That's a way to reach me.

Mark Shriner [48:17]
Awesome. I'll put links to both those in the show notes. Hey, I really want to thank you for coming on the podcast today.

Victor Alonso Lion [48:25]
Thank you. Thank you, Mark. Very interesting conversation. Thank you for your time.

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