How to Write an RFP Response That Wins Agency Work

An RFP response should include an executive summary, your understanding of the client’s problem, the proposed approach, the team and its relevant experience, a delivery timeline, pricing, assumptions, and answers to every mandatory question in the buyer’s own format and numbering. Anything the RFP asks for and you omit is scored as a zero, not overlooked.

This is written for agency new business and delivery leads answering a formal request for proposal (RFP): a buyer has published requirements, set a deadline and will mark submissions against stated criteria. A proposal you write after a good conversation is a different job, and the types, structures and templates for those are covered separately.

Should you respond to this RFP at all?

Only if you can name a person on the buying side who wants you to win. Cold RFPs that arrive with no prior conversation are usually won by an agency that has been talking to the client for months, and your response exists to make their shortlist look competitive.

Work through six questions before anyone opens a document:

1. Have you spoken to them? Not a contact form reply. A real conversation with someone who will be in the room when the scores are agreed.
2. Is there an incumbent, and is this a genuine re-tender? Many RFPs are issued to price-check a supplier the client intends to keep. Ask directly whether an incumbent is bidding. A buyer who will not answer has told you something.
3. Have you delivered this before, or would you like to have? Panels score evidence. Ambition reads as inexperience when the comparison bid has three near-identical projects.
4. Can you meet every mandatory requirement without a caveat? Turnover thresholds, insurance levels, accreditations and reference counts are pass or fail. One miss and the rest of your submission is never read.
5. Is there a budget, and will they indicate it? A buyer who refuses any range is either shopping for a number or has not been given one.
6. Can you afford the bid and the delivery? A serious response costs several days of senior, unbillable time. Two bids in the same fortnight means both are worse.

Most agencies lose RFPs they should never have entered and win RFPs they cannot deliver profitably. Both are qualification failures rather than writing failures. When the answer is no, decline in writing and say why. A warm, specific decline keeps you on the invitation list; silence removes you from it.

How long do you have to respond to an RFP?

Two to four weeks is the usual window for a private sector RFP, and public sector tenders normally run longer because minimum tendering periods are set by procurement rules rather than by the buyer’s preference. Large or regulated procurements can allow six weeks or more. What matters is not the total, it is that the clarification deadline usually falls in the first third of it.

Plan backwards from submission rather than forwards from the invitation:

1. Day one. Take the go/no-go decision and appoint one owner. Not a committee, one named person who can reject contributions.
2. Days one to three. Read the whole pack, including the appendices and the contract terms, and list every mandatory requirement and every scored question with its weighting.
3. Before the clarification deadline. Submit questions. This deadline is often only five working days in and it is the single most missed date in the process.
4. First half. Agree the approach and the price internally. The commercial argument is the part that overruns, so have it while there is still time to change the answer.
5. Second half. Draft against the scored questions in the buyer’s order. Write the executive summary last, once you know what you have actually promised.
6. Three working days out. Internal red team review by someone who has not written any of it, marking each answer against the published criteria.
7. One day out. Upload the full submission. Portals time out, files exceed limits, and named uploaders go on annual leave.

Treat the submission date as the day before the deadline and the schedule stops depending on a good evening at the end.

What should be included in an RFP response?

Everything the RFP asks for, in the order and format it asks for it, plus the material that makes your answers credible. The buyer’s structure is not a suggestion. It is the sequence a panel will mark in, and a beautifully designed response that reorders it gets low marks for the sections nobody could find.

A complete agency response usually contains:

• Executive summary. One page, written last. What you understand the problem to be, what you propose, what it costs, why you.
• Understanding of the requirement. Restated in your words, with the thing they did not say out loud made explicit.
• Approach and methodology. Phases, activities, and what the client has to do at each one.
• Scope and deliverables. Countable outputs, plus an explicit list of what your price excludes.
• Timeline and milestones. Dates tied to client dependencies, not a bar chart of your own effort.
• Team. Named people, real availability, and who is on it for the pitch versus the delivery. Panels have been burned by this and increasingly ask.
• Relevant experience. Two or three closely comparable projects with outcomes, not a logo wall.
• Pricing. The commercial model, a breakdown by phase or workstream, day rates if requested, and what triggers a change.
• Assumptions, dependencies and risks. The conditions your price depends on, stated as conditions.
• Compliance material. Insurance certificates, policies, accreditations, references, financial statements.
• Question responses. Answered individually, in the buyer’s numbering, each starting with the answer.

Your assumptions section is doing commercial work, not administrative work. Every requirement you have priced generously and every one you have deliberately not priced belongs in it, phrased plainly enough that a procurement lead can query it before award rather than a delivery lead discovering it in week three. The discipline is the same one that keeps a live project honest, and the scoping guide covers how to write scope statements that survive contact with a client.

If the RFP specifies a template, a word limit, a font size or a file naming convention, follow it exactly. Compliance costs nothing and non-compliance is the cheapest reason a panel has to reduce its shortlist.

How are RFP responses scored?

Against published criteria with published weightings, usually by a panel who mark independently and then meet to agree a consensus score. The RFP normally tells you the weightings. Read them before you decide how to spend your writing time, because most agencies over-invest in the sections they enjoy.

An illustrative weighting for a mid-size agency tender:

Criterion	Illustrative weight	What the panel is marking
Understanding of the requirement	15%	Whether you grasped the actual problem or restated the brief
Approach and methodology	25%	Whether the plan is specific and could be followed by someone else
Team and capability	15%	Named people, relevant roles, honest availability
Relevant experience	15%	Comparable work, with outcomes and a reference
Price	30%	Total cost, and whether the breakdown is credible against the approach

The actual split varies, and public sector buyers often publish a quality and price ratio such as 60/40 or 70/30 with sub-criteria beneath each. Some tenders add social value or accessibility as separately weighted sections. All of them are marked the same way: a scorer reads your answer, looks for the things the marking scheme lists, and assigns a number.

That has a blunt implication. Evaluators do not read your response, they mark it. An answer that spends three sentences on context before reaching the point is scored by someone who has already started skimming. Put the answer in the first sentence, use the buyer’s vocabulary rather than your agency’s, and attach one piece of evidence to each claim.

What does a good RFP response look like?

Specific, structured the buyer’s way, and evidenced at every claim. A good response reads as though it was written for one client with one problem, and a weak one reads as though the agency’s credentials deck was cut into the shape of the questions.

The differences that show up in scoring:

• It names the problem behind the brief. The strongest submissions say something the buyer had not written down but recognises immediately. That is what “understanding” scores.
• It commits to numbers. Six templates, four rounds, a fortnightly cadence, a named lead at 3 days a week. Ranges and “typically” invite the reader to assume the cheaper interpretation.
• Its evidence matches the sector and the size. One closely comparable project beats five prestigious ones from a different market.
• It is honest about dependencies. Saying that the timeline assumes content is signed off within five working days is not a weakness. It is the reason your timeline is believable.
• Its price has a shape. Phase-by-phase breakdowns get challenged less than a single total, because a panel can see what they are buying and what they could drop.

What loses is duller than most agencies expect. Boilerplate about your founding story. A case study with no outcome. A creative concept nobody requested in place of an answer about governance. Pricing that arrives as one number with no assumptions attached, which reads either as guesswork or as a figure you intend to revise upwards later.

Who is involved in the RFP process?

On the client side, procurement runs the process while the budget holder and the people who will use the work do the scoring. On the agency side, one owner runs the response and everyone else contributes to a deadline they did not set.

Side	Role	What they actually control
Client	Procurement or commercial lead	Process, compliance, deadlines, the clarification window
Client	Budget holder or sponsor	Whether the project happens and at what value
Client	Functional evaluators	Marks for approach, team and experience
Client	Technical, legal or security reviewers	Pass or fail on mandatory requirements
Client	External advisor (sometimes)	The marking scheme itself
Agency	Bid owner	Structure, the schedule, and what gets cut
Agency	New business lead	Positioning, relationship, the win themes
Agency	Delivery lead	Whether the approach and the hours are real
Agency	Finance or director	Price, margin, risk appetite, final sign-off

The failure mode is predictable. The new business lead writes the approach and prices it optimistically, the delivery lead sees it two days before submission, and either the price gets defended into a project nobody can deliver or the response is rewritten in a panic on the final evening. Get the delivery lead into the pricing conversation in the first half of the window, when changing the answer is still cheap.

That conversation needs a fixed set of questions, not a general catch-up: which requirements are we pricing as included, which are we answering with an explicit exclusion, what are we assuming about client turnaround, and who is genuinely available in the delivery months. Projan can run it as a structured session in Slack or Microsoft Teams, pushing on each of those points and writing the agreed answers up as the outline your contributors then draft against. However you do it, hold the argument before the response is written rather than after it is submitted.

When you win, the response you wrote becomes the reference document for what you promised, and it gets translated into a scope you are contractually held to. Statements of work for agencies covers that translation, and the gap between what the bid implied and what the SOW says is where first-quarter margin usually disappears.

Frequently asked questions

What is the difference between an RFP, an RFI and an RFQ? An RFI gathers market information before a buyer knows what to buy, so answers are short and capability-led. An RFQ asks for a price against a specification that is already fixed, so the cheapest compliant bid usually wins. An RFP asks how you would solve a defined problem and at what cost, and it is scored on approach as well as price.

Should you ask questions during the RFP clarification window? Yes, and early. Most RFPs set a clarification deadline well before the submission date, and the answers are usually circulated to every bidder, so ask what you genuinely need rather than what reveals your thinking. Budget range, incumbent status and evaluation weightings are all fair questions. If a mandatory requirement is impossible for you, find out before you spend three days writing.

How long should an RFP response be? As long as the buyer allows and no longer. Where the RFP sets a word limit per answer, treat it as the target for the questions carrying the most marks and undershoot on the rest. Where no limit is given, assume a panel is reading several submissions in one afternoon and write the shortest version that still evidences every claim.

What happens if you submit an RFP response late? It gets rejected, usually automatically. Procurement portals close on the stated minute, and the people running them rarely have authority to reopen them, particularly in the public sector where doing so would be challengeable by rival bidders. Upload a complete draft a day early and replace it if you improve something. Nobody has ever been marked down for submitting early.

Should you ask for feedback after losing an RFP? Always, and ask for the scores rather than a general impression. Public sector buyers normally have to provide a written debrief covering your marks against each criterion and the characteristics of the winning bid. Private buyers often will if you ask politely and quickly. Scores tell you whether you lost on price, on evidence, or on a section you rushed.

The response that wins is rarely the most impressive one. It is the one that answered every question in the buyer’s order, evidenced each claim with comparable work, and priced the job the delivery team agreed to. Qualify harder, write to the marking scheme, and submit a day early.