Should you complete Request for Proposal to get mobile app deals? I’m going to tell you the one time that worked for me and my answer to this in this blog post.
All about Request For Proposal in one video:
What is a ‘request for proposal’?
You might have heard people talk about RFP, it means Request For Proposal.
To illustrate the concept, here’s a good example from the Government for Jordan. 41 pages of people asking for an app:
When a company wants a mobile application they will release an request for proposal, some companies do where it’s like pages and pages of information, asking for people to submit proposals for an application.
You might think this is awesome!
The Government of Jordan has this whole thing mapped out and are just looking for people to reply and it seems like a pretty easy way to get contracts for a mobile app development company.
Well, it kind of is.
A story about us and RFPs
One of the biggest deals I’ve ever closed in mobile app development -the second biggest deal, I think?- was with a University and this University came to us through a RFP.
This wasn’t an open request for proposal meaning it wasn’t one that was open to everybody, it was passed to us through a partner that we have worked with in the past at Dom&Tom.
That partner got the request for proposal, they didn’t want to take the business and they passed it to us. Then, we spent a lot of time to actually fill out this proposal and won the project, it was a pretty large project.
So, that was the only instance it worked for me.
After that, our whole company kind of shifted and I ended up doing at least 200 RFPs, the whole company was doing RFPs, just filling out form after form.
In order to do a good request for proposal response, you have to fill out A LOT of requirements and they take forever to complete.
Let’s say I did 201 proposals for one response and that one response was from a partner. For me and for us as a company, RFPs didn’t work. I don’t recommend doing them.
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However, if you want to try RFPs, do it and I’ll show you how you can get all the RFPs that you want:
Where do you get a request for proposal?
A partner suited us our first one, that’s why I always encourage people to do a bunch of partnership email outreach because you don’t know which partners are going to turn into a giant project for you.
For example, you could cold email enterprise companies and try to get on their approved vendor list so when they announce a close request for proposal, they normally send it out to everybody on their approved vendor list.
Finally, if you can’t do that, check out this website RFPDB.com. For instance, let’s say we’re only looking for Ecommerce, you go and look for it on the site and there are you unlimited request for proposal if you want to do that.
I suggest you to watch the interview with the CEO of TenderScout, we talk about closing more RFPs.
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