There’s a wonderful line at the end of “Casablanca,” when Humphrey Bogart says to Claude Rains, “Louis, this looks like the beginning of a beautiful friendship.”
Although public relations is a relationship business, it’s funny how often companies forget that fact when they issue a request for proposal to an unqualified list of agencies, a process not unlike trying to buy a new car by traveling from dealer to dealer without a clue of what you want.
Who doesn’t relish the thought of spending an afternoon haggling with a sleazy car salesman for a vehicle that’s not the color you want or the price you can afford? And who doesn’t want to spend weeks trying to make sense out of a stack of boring RFPs?
The Internet revolutionized the car-buying process for me. Once I learned how to shop for cars using web sites like
Cars.com and
Edmunds.com, I actually began enjoying the experience. After all, a well-informed consumer really doesn’t need to haggle when they know what a car is worth – it’s simply a matter of finding the right dealer.
If your company is thinking of using an RFP to conduct an agency search, by spending a little time up front you can save months of wasted effort and find a much more compatible partner in the process.
For many years, we avoided the RFP dance like the plague. The last thing I wanted to do was spend time and resources bidding on business that my agency had no chance of winning. Nothing is more frustrating that pouring your guts out into an RFP only to learn your agency was included because the prospect needed a boutique agency to round out the bid process. We occasionally receive RFPs that are Trojan horses in disguise – a company issues an RFP to gather competitive information on agencies or as a cheap way to generate new campaign ideas.
It doesn’t take a genius to sniff out these bogus “opportunities,” and I won’t hesitate to decline an opportunity if it doesn’t feel right to me.
But, even if your intentions are in the right place, it’s a bad idea to send out a lengthy RFP to several dozen unqualified agencies in the hopes that a viable candidate will emerge like a phoenix rising from the ashes. It’s no different than wasting a Saturday going from dealer to dealer test-driving everything from a BMW 528i to a Chevy Aveo (unless your hobby is driving cars of all shapes and sizes).
This issue of
PR Intelligence Report will streamline the RFP process for you. Consider it our holiday gift to you. We start by offering you sample RFI (request for information) and RFP documents, based on best practices we’ve learned during the last 15 years. Next,
Mary Conley Eggert, our director of business development, checks in with an article called, “
Using RFPs to Separate the Princes from the Frogs.” This article is written from a salesperson’s perspective and will help you fine-tune your RFP process by treating prospective agencies like partners, rather than vendors.
To help you narrow down your list of suitors, we provide a balanced scorecard that you can easily customize to fit your needs. Since providing a budget always seems to be a sticking point, email me (
mike.nikolich@techimage.com) and I will provide you with a copy of our “Budgeting Guidelines” white paper and an Excel spreadsheet that helps you prepare a simple PR budget, based on typical tactics (such as press release writing and distribution, media relations, analyst relations and special events). Once you have an idea of what you want to spend, share this information with your candidates. There’s no point trying to buy a high-end BMW on an Aveo budget.
Here are a couple of other best practices to consider for streamlining your RFP process:
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Start with a short list of no more than a dozen agencies. Contact friends and business associates for recommendations. If you come up empty, contact
The Holmes Report,
O’Dwyers PR,
PRSourcecode or vendors who work with PR firms such as
BusinessWire for advice.
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Spend an afternoon researching the websites of the agencies. Since there isn’t a Cars.com website for PR firms, you’ll need to do the research yourself. Spend an afternoon checking out various agency websites. Do the firms publish bios of their executives, client lists and case studies of successful campaigns? Does the website give you a good feel for the agency’s chemistry, resources and experience? Cross off shops that don’t pass this initial test.
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Pare down your list and email a Request for Information (RFI) document to these agencies. Your RFI should provide basic information such as what qualities you seek in an agency, the budget range, relevant experience and other factors. Set a tight deadline for firms to respond to the RFI. If you are not satisfied by the quality of the responses, resubmit the RFI to a new candidate pool.
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Create a “short list” of no more than five agencies. Invite them to participate in the RFP process. Keep your RFP document simple and schedule short telephone conferences to see which agencies pass the preliminary chemistry test.
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Rank the agencies by using a balanced scorecard based on your parameters. Schedule face-to-face meetings with the finalists and ask to have the actual account teams present their ideas and capabilities – may the best agency win!
The research and screening you do prior to submitting the RFP will streamline the agency search process and help you find the right partner at the right budget. I don’t know about you, but I would rather spend my time getting to know my future account team than reading through stacks of boring RFPs (yawn!).
If you think like Bogie, the RFP may be the beginning of a beautiful relationship with a great PR firm. Try to take shortcuts and six months from now you may be saying, “Play it again, Sam.”
Anyway, that’s my two-cents’ worth.
