The Secrets of Successful RFPs

Secret #21 - Restrict negotiations only to proposals that have a reasonable chance of winning.
            

Hear what the President of NIGP says about this book . . .

“I have found the Request for Proposal Handbook by Michael Asner to be a great training tool for my buyer staff. Although I have an experienced staff, they have had limited exposure in their careers to RFPs. The best practices information, examples and checklists all have proven to be wonderful tools. Thank you Michael.”
 

Ron Watkins CPPO, Purchasing Manager
City of Grand Junction, Colorado
President, National Institute of Governmental Purchasing
 

www.rfpmentor.com
 

This snapshot is taken from our new 400-page reference text, The Request For Proposal Handbook (Third Edition).  This book focuses on best RFP practices that will help you be successful. Chapter 5 of The Request For Proposal Handbook (Third Edition) identifies five excellent RFP manuals. 
 

Secret #21 - Restrict negotiations only to proposals that have a reasonable chance of winning.
 

The Federal Transit Adminstration’s (FTA) Best Practices Procurement Manual is great! They have an easy-to-understand, insightful write-up dealing with selecting proposals for negotiations.
 

4.5.3 Competitive Range
 

DISCUSSION
 

At this stage in the competitive proposal procurement, you have received the proposals from interested offerors and have begun the process of evaluation and selection.  Negotiation and the repeated analyses and evaluations required can be very time consuming and there is often a wide range of competence or cost‑effectiveness in the initial proposals.  You may not wish to expend this effort on all the proposals for two reasons:
 

·         certain proposals, upon evaluation, may be so much worse than others for price or other reasons, that the possibility of accepting a subsequent offer is so remote as to make negotiations unnecessary; and
 

·         you may have enough proposals so that you can be assured of negotiating the best buy in dealing only with several of the best; negotiating with more would be wasteful of both your resources and the marginal proposers'.
 

For these reasons, a commonly used technique is to conduct negotiations only with offerors determined to be within the competitive range.  In assessing the competitive range, competition remains an important objective, and the effort in determining the competitive range is to preserve those proposals which stand a reasonable chance of being found acceptable, not to unduly limit competition by eliminating viable proposers.
 

Learn how you can reduce the risks by developing a more effective RFP and a better process. Learn about this RFP Guide and four others. Learn about the best practices from more than sixty jurisdictions based on Michael Asner’s 20-years of experience. 
 

www.rfpmentor.com
 

Chapter 5 of The Request For Proposal Handbook (Third Edition) focuses on excellent RFP manuals. Those few publications which are easy to read and convey solid advice in terms of ‘best practices’. Chapter 5 features publications from New Mexico, New York, the Federal Transit Administration, Massachusetts and Montana.
 

The entire 400-page book focuses on how to create effective, low-risk RFPs. You will learn about best practices that will help you be successful.
 

www.rfpmentor.com

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