Quote: “The more you know about that prospect going into that RFP, the better you’ll be able to position yourself to capture their attention.” Lisa Rehurek
If you’ve been in business for any length of time, chances are you have filled out an RFP (Request For Proposal) at one time or another. If you did, how did you find the process? Did you win the proposal or were you unsuccessful and wondering what went wrong? On this episode of The Wealthy Speaker Show, we’re excited to welcome RFP expert Lisa Rehurek to share her wealth of knowledge on what it takes to win the bid.
Lisa is the Founder & CEO of The RFP Success Company, bestselling author, speaker/trainer and a leading RFP strategist. Kind, spunky, rule-breaking, and now an Inc. 5000 entrepreneur, Lisa takes risks, goes after big dreams and inspires others to take action toward their goals. Along with her team, Lisa has created an impactful seven-figure business that helps small certified diverse and mid-market businesses secure millions of dollars in state government contracts.
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Jane Atkinson: Well welcome everyone to the wealthy speaker. Podcast now, if you've been in the speaking a while, you likely have filled out an RFP. That's a request for proposal, or to MI. And Rfps are a bit of a mystery to some people, so we wanted to bring in the expert. Welcome to the show, Lisa.
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Jane Atkinson: Thank you, Jane. I'm excited to be here to share Rfp. Wisdom with everybody. You were just reminding me that we talked in a 2,018 or somewhere around that region. So it was a while ago, and you were kind of thinking about what to do with your business. Catch us up on what I mean. It looks to me like you've gone all in on our fees, which was why we bring brought you in here, but catch us up. Give us a snapshot of what your business looks like today.
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Lisa Rehurek | The RFP Success Company: Yeah, absolutely. So we I started my business a long time ago, like back in 2011, and I struggled for many years trying to figure out what the niche was. I was trying to be this
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Lisa Rehurek | The RFP Success Company: just general business coach, and our piece was somewhat part of that. Just because that was my corporate career. I did a lot of Rfp's, and so prior colleagues would call me and say, Hey, can you help with this and this and this? And so I just remember being at lunch one day with a friend of mine who said, You've been looking for a niche, and I think the niche just found you because the Rfp. Stuff was really starting to be more.
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Lisa Rehurek | The RFP Success Company: I got more calls on that. And so yeah, in 2,018, we rebranded and went all in 2019, I hired my first employee, and now we have. I don't even I lose track all the time. But I think we have 15 or 16 employees.
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Lisa Rehurek | The RFP Success Company: Yeah. And then we also have a bunch of bench contractors, too, but it's a ton of fun. And it's yeah. So we're all in on our piece. So what I wanna point out to our listeners is that when you go all in on something
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Jane Atkinson: it can reach such massive rewards. And honestly, Lisa, I think I've evolved in my thought process on that. If you would have told me back in 2,018 when we met
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I'm gonna go all in on Rfp. I don't know if I would have, said Yay, that's a great idea, because I've evolved a lot now, and I know now what the benefit is of going all in, even when people think it's not a good idea where there's some naysayers along the way for you.
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Lisa Rehurek | The RFP Success Company: I was one of them, right, because it's scary. It's
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Lisa Rehurek | The RFP Success Company: it's scary to go all in. It feels like.
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Lisa Rehurek | The RFP Success Company: well, I'll I can focus on that while still keeping things open for all the other people that are gonna need me. And it's just messy to do that.
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Lisa Rehurek | The RFP Success Company: I have heard that a million times, Jane, from coaches, from industry experts. You gotta find the niche. You've got to find the niche, and I always wanted it. But there was this part of me that didn't believe. Whatever right, it's so true, especially as you're building a business. You know. You can broaden out once you get
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Lisa Rehurek | The RFP Success Company: your sea legs and you get your systems in place and all that then you can go broader. But it just made such a big difference to focus on this and and plant my flag in it. I'm so excited for you and congratulations on the success. So
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let's talk about Rfps. There are people who might be keynoters list tuning in. And let's just establish who is in the speaking industry is really gonna be most interested in Rfps. Who do you think
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Lisa Rehurek | The RFP Success Company: I would say anybody that wants to do training or coaching in the government space, and even in the corporate space. Quite frankly, corporations all the time release Rfps. The bigger corporations. You're generally gonna see some Rfps come out for a lot of that stuff. So if you have that, add on of executive coaching, coaching, training any kind of programs like that, you're probably gonna come across rfps at some point.
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Jane Atkinson: Okay? So I really wanna establish that there is a training section to this. And I wanna go deep into the government stuff with you in a little bit, cause I think there's some profitability there for people.
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Jane Atkinson: But also don't forget that there's Rfps for concurrent sessions at association events. And so a lot of this information can be successful on that. I want to share a story. That
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Jane Atkinson: Oh, gosh!
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Jane Atkinson: That one of my best buddies in the industry shared with us, and I am having a hard time. Remembering his last name David he talked about they would go in, so their goal was to get the keynote. But association that had concurrence, and they asked for Rfps. He would put in a proposal.
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Jane Atkinson: and then he would once, they said, yes, you've been accepted. They would upsell them into a keynote. I wouldn't. So he would reject it, and then he would say, but I would do it if
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Jane Atkinson: you could also get me a keynote as well. And so that's worked quite nicely for him. Oh, gosh! I'll remember his name before the end of thing. This is my almost 60 year old mind at play here. So, apologies David, I love you dude so
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Jane Atkinson: if you are mainly focusing on keynote speaking Rfps may not be as much of a part of your world. Am I right?
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Lisa Rehurek | The RFP Success Company: Agreed. Now there might be some corporations that are still like we're gonna go to Rfp for this. But mostly I don't see that mostly they wanna be talking to you. They want your speaker reel, and you know the the normal ways. You all get business. But I would guess you're probably not gonna see a lot of our piece if keynote is your solo decision making process is perhaps a little bit different, and I also encourage my clients to go in and have the key.
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Lisa Rehurek | The RFP Success Company: Be kind of the start of it, and then to build a whole package around it so that they're solving a big problem for big dollars. And that may require some sort of process to get approved by the purchasing department and things like that. So okay, alright. So we kind of know who is going to go after. And let's say you do want to do some training
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Jane Atkinson: for some of the groups that we have mentioned. If you wanna fill out a lot of our Rfps. Is there like a templated process? What's the best best practice in terms of like
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Jane Atkinson: cut and pasting? Cause you don't wanna start from scratch every time. Do you know it's brutal to start from scratch? However, the challenges is that every Rfp is different, every format of the Rfp.
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Lisa Rehurek | The RFP Success Company: What is different? And so what we suggest you have is what we call like a library or repository of some standard language, so things that the Rfp. Ask a lot of like. Tell us a little bit more about you know how you communicate. Tell us you know the history of your company. Things like that. You can have those kind of
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Lisa Rehurek | The RFP Success Company: ready to go you you for the Rp. That you're responding to. But it's so much easier to edit right. I'd much rather edit and start from scratch, especially when you're on a deadline. So that okay, I like that. Now, you're gonna have speech descriptions already available and having them in a format that you can just cut and paste and go is so helpful. You're gonna have your bio on your about page. You know you're you're gonna be ready to
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Jane Atkinson: to drop those pieces in, I think, having a library. I love your term library of information, you know. Just drop an on Rfp. And existing one that you really spent a lot of time and effort and crafting. And let's talk about that a little bit. Craftsmanship.
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Jane Atkinson: I mean, don't you need to capture their attention right out of the shoot. Maybe there are talk titles or something like that that is going to get their attention. What are some things that can help set people apart.
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Lisa Rehurek | The RFP Success Company: Yeah, great question. Because one of the things that we talk about a lot is distinction. If you don't have the distinction. You're just gonna blend in with everybody else. And so
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Lisa Rehurek | The RFP Success Company: that you have 2 to. There's a statistic out there that says you have 2 to 3 s to capture somebody's attention. And even today there's a lot of talk about how that has decreased. So it's probably more like one to 2 s now, right? Because the world crazy.
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Lisa Rehurek | The RFP Success Company: Oh, my gosh! I know. So you know. And and here's the other thing I always say, Jane, is that you've got to think about the fact that there's a human on the other side of that Rp. A lot of times we think of it transactionally and like the city or the state or the company. But there's a human being, and they're reading 3, 5, 1020. We just were talking to somebody recently who went through the dB. Process, and there was 23 other bidders
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Lisa Rehurek | The RFP Success Company: in there. And so this poor person or people are having to read all of those Rfp responses do to stand out first thing. And you were talking about kind of like copying and pasting. Yes, but then, please, edit to
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Lisa Rehurek | The RFP Success Company: focus on their solution like, what's in it for them?
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Lisa Rehurek | The RFP Success Company: Why are they gonna care about your topic? What is it gonna do for the challenges that they're having? So you know you've gotta do some upfront that here. Here's the interesting thing about Rfp's people think, well, I'll just get the Rp. I'll respond to it and be done there is work to be done. The more you know about that prospect going into that Rfp. Cause you can't ask them questions. Once the Rfp. Drops.
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Lisa Rehurek | The RFP Success Company: the better you'll be able to position yourself to capture their attention. Deal with the what's in it for them
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Lisa Rehurek | The RFP Success Company: piece of it, the better. They're gonna lean in and pay attention. I think that's so important that if you do your homework, a lot of people wanna kinda copy and paste and just get her done right. But think about taking that extra. I don't know 20 min of research
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Jane Atkinson: and using their language back to them. Some of the challenges of our industry are this and this and this. If you can show those in your bullet points, you're going to be that much further along, and maybe you need to talk to some people. Maybe it's gonna take you a week to fill out an Rfp. Because you've got questions into some people out on Linkedin, or something like that.
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Jane Atkinson: There's the research. Can you give me an example? I'm totally putting you on the spot here. Can you give me an example of a client of yours who took the time and it paid off.
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Lisa Rehurek | The RFP Success Company: Yeah, we actually have a a client. Her name is Missy Enlar, and she has a training company like a an educational slash training company, and she was bidding against a bunch of big big time companies, and she was like, I just don't know I'm not. I can't be competitive. I'm just a little guy
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Lisa Rehurek | The RFP Success Company: and I think there was 20 different bidders. And and she won because we helped her position her content so that it was very specific to what that client needed. The other thing you wanna do is you wanna put in some mic drop moments. You know those golden nuggets where they're gonna be, we call them. II hope that this is okay, that I'm gonna say this, we call them the oh, ship moments right?
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Lisa Rehurek | The RFP Success Company: I got that that term from a coach of mine which calls in the Oh, ship moments where you kind of drop that there, and they're like, Oh, I hadn't thought about that, you wanna you're the industry expert, and that's what Melissa did in her in her Rfp. Like we proved that she was the one that was gonna solve their solution.
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Lisa Rehurek | The RFP Success Company: that she had credibility in the industry, and she blew out the big guys and she was beside herself, obviously excited to win the contract for the fact that she beat them out just took it to a whole other level. Oh, that's so good. Okay, so give me like an industry. So I can wrap my mind around this. Co, this what Missy was going for? Was it like a government contract. Was it a particular industry? Where was she playing?
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Lisa Rehurek | The RFP Success Company: She was playing in state government, space.
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Jane Atkinson: state government? Okay? And so what types of dollars are these contracts? Are they? 10,000, a hundred 1,000 a million?
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Jane Atkinson: I believe that it was 750,000 over a few years. Okay, you're giving me some ideas for some of my clients, actually, because
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Jane Atkinson: I don't think you're just exposing me to things that I wasn't really thinking about. So thank you. Thank you. And for those of you who are tuning in, thanks to Lisa Ryerk for kind of maybe inspiring you to go after some of these larger.
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Jane Atkinson: larger contracts. Are there any strategies any other strategy? So we talked about research. Anything else we can do to really differentiate ourselves. I know, when we were doing selection for the Canadian National Speakers Association caps. It's called I was looking through a lot of proposals.
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Jane Atkinson: and for me the title of the speech they were proposing cause. We were talking concurrent sessions. The title either jumped out or didn't, so I would put my yet that would help me reduce the pile, you know. Oh, that sounds really good. Okay, you know. And now I have 6, and then I'm gonna go down to 3, and so on. And so.
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Jane Atkinson: what are some of the things that people can do to really differentiate? Aside from that crucial research piece?
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Lisa Rehurek | The RFP Success Company: Yeah. So a a couple of things. First is in your content again, the more that you can tie your solution to the what's in it for them.
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Lisa Rehurek | The RFP Success Company: stop using. We help
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Lisa Rehurek | The RFP Success Company: stop using that phraseology, make it more about them and use statistics when you can to prove things. So you can't. You shouldn't just claim like we're very successful at blah. Blah blah! We've seen a lot of success with blah blah blah proof in the pudding. Right?
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Lisa Rehurek | The RFP Success Company: For sure. The other kind of strategy that I wanna this feels like a little bit of a digression. But it's really powerful. If you have
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Lisa Rehurek | The RFP Success Company: clients, that are
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Lisa Rehurek | The RFP Success Company: can be a diverse business, and if you don't know anything about diverse businesses, there are so many ways to be a diverse business. But all of your women clients.
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Lisa Rehurek | The RFP Success Company: If they own 51%, not just own, but own control and manage 51% of the business, they can go get certified as a women business enterprise. So women, minority veterans, all of that. And what's so beautiful about that when you get certified is that there are supplier diversity
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Lisa Rehurek | The RFP Success Company: departments within States, some States are really great, like Missouri, Pennsylvania, Illinois. They're all in on the supplier diversity. So you can actually call the supplier diversity agency and say, Hey, I wanna do work in your state. Can you help me do this? This and this? That's their whole job procurement introduce you to people and on the corporate space as well.
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Lisa Rehurek | The RFP Success Company: So many corporations have supplier diversity initiatives, and they've got those people as well. And you call them you build the relationship with the supplier diversity people, and they become your advocate in the organization. So
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Lisa Rehurek | The RFP Success Company: those are huge things to do for that pre work. When I'm talking about research. I mean you're a heterosexual white male. You're kind of out of the game here, but almost anybody else can get certified, and there's just so much gold there. You still have to work. And it's not just gonna show up, but it's out of the game, but only on that front. Only on getting certified. Diverse. Okay.
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Jane Atkinson: That leads me to another opportunity that may be awaiting so I'm going back to say you're applying to the National Association of Widget Makers
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Jane Atkinson: and the Widget makers have education credits if you can. If you know that you really want to play in this space, and you know real estate and insurance and a lot of places, I think. Hr. Have
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Jane Atkinson: cease or ceus talk a little like getting yourself certified for that. It may take some time on the front end, but that might pay off in putting you above other people in the proposals. Am I right?
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Lisa Rehurek | The RFP Success Company: Absolutely, you know. Again this kind of comes down to research. Are they requiring that as a requirement? Or is it just a nice to have? It's gonna differentiate, right? And you one of the things that I always suggest people doing is like focus. So I'm gonna talk about state government, because that's just the easiest.
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Lisa Rehurek | The RFP Success Company: there are aggregators out there. So there one is called findr.com. It's like 2999 a month. What I would say is, go out there, put in your keyword. Sign up for it, even if there might even be a trial. Put your keywords in.
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Lisa Rehurek | The RFP Success Company: see what you get. So just see what kind of Rfp start coming out, and you can start seeing. Here's what some of the requirements are. They are gonna require ce credits they are gonna require that kind of certification they require. A lot of states do require. Maybe we be that minority women, business enterprise certification you can see what some of those insurance requirements are gonna be because that trips up a lot of like solopreneurs
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Lisa Rehurek | The RFP Success Company: right? So proprietors but just kind of see what kind of Rfs are out there and start to get a feel for their terms and conditions. Oh, that's so interesting to me. So find Rfpcom, did you say.
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Jane Atkinson: okay? And I'm thinking about one of my clients who's in the education space. She speaks to teachers and educators. She could go in and maybe search. Could you search under your topic of education.
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Lisa Rehurek | The RFP Success Company: Yeah, it's all driven off a keyword so she could, and then also again sign up and put your keywords in. And if you're not getting what you think. You know it just sometimes it takes a couple of months to play around with that. Adjust your keywords. But there's a lot of gold in that that some of your research homework is that's so good. Okay, so some of these things that you can do to kind of
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Jane Atkinson: just distinguish yourself slightly more to get a little bit of a leg up. Are there any common pitfalls or mistakes that speakers and trainers should avoid when doing process? Do tell we have, we do a lot of what we call an Rfp audit. So we look at past Rfs, and we see the same themes
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Lisa Rehurek | The RFP Success Company: that people do wrong. And also we ask a lot of evaluators. Tell us your top 3 pet peeves like, what's the number one mistake people make. And here are the 3 mistakes that people make the most. The number one. Is that what I'm telling you is that they talk too much about themselves where I was talking about. We help you right like
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Lisa Rehurek | The RFP Success Company: you've got to relate it to their challenge. And there, even if you see a different challenge, and you know that's not really their challenge. You still have to speak their language into your point, Jane. Use their vernacular like it's really good for you to use their language and understanding theirs. Another piece of the puzzle is making sure that you answer all of the question
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Lisa Rehurek | The RFP Success Company: it's asked, and this sounds so ridiculous, and I've had people say to me, well, we would never miss anything. And inevitably, when we review our fees, we've Rp responses, we find that people have missed
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Lisa Rehurek | The RFP Success Company: a part of the question, and I think we get too much in our heads like I remember one in particular. It was a Yes, no
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Lisa Rehurek | The RFP Success Company: question, and they just
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Lisa Rehurek | The RFP Success Company: rambled on about all sorts of stuff, and you never really understood like, is it a yes or no? So yes or no question. Answer it. Yes, and then you can extrapolate off of that. But and yes, yes, talk about you. You kind of touched on it a second ago once versus needs.
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Jane Atkinson: They're asking for this. I know that they need this. Which do you focus on in your proposal what they are asking for? I'm assuming
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Lisa Rehurek | The RFP Success Company: always, always focus on what they're asking for, because you've got these evaluators that have score sheets, and if you don't give them what they ask for, they're gonna give you doesn't meet expectations or whatever they're scoring, because so you wanna give them what they ask for and then give them more. But here's a deal. You've gotta be really careful there, because you don't wanna just start rattling off all the stuff. And you know, sounding like a know-it-all.
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Lisa Rehurek | The RFP Success Company: you know, there's something else you may want to consider as having been in this industry for Xyz years. We've seen a lot of businesses that have the same challenge that you have. And in addition to Xyz, which is what they're asking for, we might also suggest that you do. Xyz. So you want to be a little bit more consultative about it and not feel small for not knowing it. Don't shame them. Okay?
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Jane Atkinson: So government contracts, we're talking state level, are we talking national as well.
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Lisa Rehurek | The RFP Success Company: So we can. So there's a whole. So there's Federal, which is a whole beast. My company doesn't focus on Federal because it is very unique, right. But there are certifications for Federal. There's a lot of small business set aside for Federal, but Federal is a beast. It is a beast.
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Lisa Rehurek | The RFP Success Company: We focus on what's called the sled, which is state, local and education. The smaller the entity, the generally, the easier they are to work with, the smaller their Rfs are, the smaller their contracts are. But it's still like, if this is something new to you, maybe start looking in the education, the universities, the
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Lisa Rehurek | The RFP Success Company: the whole education realm right? local municipalities, counties, things like that. They put out tons of rfps for stuff all the time the state ones are, gonna be a little more lucrative. They tend to be more of the 2 to 3 year contracts.
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Jane Atkinson: but it will take maybe a little bit longer to get into those. Yeah, let's talk about the process. So people kind of understand what to expect. You're going to put in this much time on the front end. But the payoff is going to be this at the back end. And how long do you think it might take? I think Missy was a great example talk through maybe another example of a state contract that
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Jane Atkinson: maybe took some time, but paid off.
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Lisa Rehurek | The RFP Success Company: Yeah, absolutely. So. I'll give you a really extreme example. And this is not in the speaker.
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Lisa Rehurek | The RFP Success Company: Coach world. It's our trainer world. This is a consulting firm. But on the Rp. For 3 years 3 years.
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Lisa Rehurek | The RFP Success Company: 650 pages, the response, 650 pages. Okay, so you lost me there. I'm like, I'm out for for the type of work that we're talking about here. I mean, you're likely gonna get an Rfp. It's gonna be a 2 to 3 week turnaround. So please don't think you have plenty of time because Rfp. Responses take a long time if you're gonna do it right. And you really wanna win
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Lisa Rehurek | The RFP Success Company: the beautiful about an Rfp, so you know, there's like, what do they say? There's 4 things that need to be present in order for you to make a sale, trust the need, the budget and the urgency. Well, the need is there because they released an Rfp.
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Lisa Rehurek | The RFP Success Company: The urgency is there, cause they've got a due date on it, and they've got money for it might not be the budget you want them to have, but it's there right. And so now your job is to build trust. But it's such a beautiful thing because you're like they're handing this to you on a silver platter. Your only job is to build trust and show them that you're the right solution.
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Lisa Rehurek | The RFP Success Company: So you want time to be able to do that. This is not just an exercise of throw in a bunch of stuff and send it off. You're gonna lose right? And then the beauty, too, is you get a longer term contract, and it's yours to lose
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Lisa Rehurek | The RFP Success Company: as long as you do good work, and they continue to have this need. You're gonna continue to get work off of it, and it makes you. It makes it so much easier to budget staff to.
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Lisa Rehurek | The RFP Success Company: you know. Manage timelines, manage your business.
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Jane Atkinson: I just am. I'm such a big proponent of government contracts because of that. So is there a way
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Jane Atkinson: to find out ahead of time, like what the maximum budget is going to be? Do they ever disclose that information in an Rfp. Do they give you a like a range? Or are you going in blind? Not knowing whether or not you're wasting your time.
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Lisa Rehurek | The RFP Success Company: We would suggest never going in blind. And the the reason is is that if you're going in blind, it's what we call bidding cold, and you have less than a 5% chance to win.
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Lisa Rehurek | The RFP Success Company: Sometimes they'll put the budget in the Rp. But but still, you know, most of the time they won't. And so we always recommend
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Lisa Rehurek | The RFP Success Company: starting the conversation long before that Rfp. Hits the streets, because that's where you're gonna get that goal right? Put in like they're they're likely not gonna put in their budget, but you might get that out of them in a conversation, but you might also get other really good gold out of them in a conversation where they're talking about.
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Lisa Rehurek | The RFP Success Company: yeah, we're so frustrated with our current vendor because they don't do XY and Z.
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Lisa Rehurek | The RFP Success Company: That might be a comment in passing. And now, you know, I'm gonna write to that in my response to make sure that they really see it. So the other thing you can do is there? You can do some research around contract, pass contracts and see kind of what they're paying other people for the same thing.
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Jane Atkinson: How hard is it to speak to a human at the end of the Rfp. Like? Could you say I have a follow up a question about the Rfp. That you sent out and ask for clarification or something. Is there? Is it a robot over there? And you're never gonna get to talk to anybody or what?
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Lisa Rehurek | The RFP Success Company: Well, generally, once the Rfp. Is released, you have to follow their very explicit instructions, and they will tell you who their contact person is, and whether you can ask questions at any time, or whether there's a open QA. Period or a bitter's conference.
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Lisa Rehurek | The RFP Success Company: But generally they're not going to answer.
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Lisa Rehurek | The RFP Success Company: That is not the time to try to relationship build is generally a procurement person that is assigned to that, not the actual buyer, the agency contract. So again, you want to have those conversations ahead of time, because you can't have a monthly Rfp. Hits the streets. Lisa, this is golden, and I think maybe I don't know I'm inspired, hey? I want to go get an Rfp.
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Lisa Rehurek | The RFP Success Company: go get a contract. I don't even know where. But you're just getting me thinking about all the opportunity that is out there for people. I think
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Jane Atkinson: my takeaway is.
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Jane Atkinson: spend the time on the front end and do it well, that's kind of my take away. What would be the final tip before I wanna ask you one more question before I let you go, though what would be your final tip on putting in an Rfp. Is there? Is there a big picture mindset that we need to take going into this.
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Lisa Rehurek | The RFP Success Company: you know, for some reason everybody just hates our keys. I get it. They're a pain in the butt. And so you go in with that mentality that like, Oh, this is gonna be so hard. But if you flip that mindset to say, Oh, my gosh! How great I have this opportunity on paper! Submit this, and win this great contract, flipping that mindset around is gonna help.
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Jane Atkinson: Opportunity is the key word, because it's true. There is a big opportunity. Do they ever come back and ask you for clarification on anything on an Rfp
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Lisa Rehurek | The RFP Success Company: are you mean our clients, or do you mean oh, the people who are going through and reviewing the Rfps. Is there ever like a follow up question, you know, set out to 2 or 3 of the of the people who submitted
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Lisa Rehurek | The RFP Success Company: most of the time? Not. But what will happen is that they'll go to finalists. So they'll ask for a best and final offer, we call it, or they'll ask for finalist presentations, or they'll subm send a question out the same question out to multiple bidders. Tell me, what have you learned about?
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Jane Atkinson: You know, going all in on this one idea to build a 7 figure business. How is it?
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Jane Atkinson: Ha! What is that like for you? In your experience you talked about how many employees, dozens of employees.
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Jane Atkinson: What's that like for you these days?
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Lisa Rehurek | The RFP Success Company: Yeah, it's it's a lot of fun. It's a lot more fun than the year that I made $26,000 for sure. Go ahead.
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Lisa Rehurek | The RFP Success Company: you know. It's it's just interesting, because
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Lisa Rehurek | The RFP Success Company: I'm an entrepreneur at heart, and I have ideas all over the place, but it it
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Lisa Rehurek | The RFP Success Company: forces me to focus, and my team still every now and then has to be like Lisa. Not now. It's a great idea, but not now. Yes, yes, and when you have a focus.
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Lisa Rehurek | The RFP Success Company: then you know how to reel it back in and say, Okay, let's go back here and stay the course, because that's where the results are. That's where the results are showing up. And so when you've got all sorts of things going on, you can't possibly focus yourself. I'll tell you. The other thing that's beautiful about it is that I am so much more clear when I speak it. So now other people can understand
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Lisa Rehurek | The RFP Success Company: before I was like, well, I was a business coach. Well, what? What kind of businesses do you help with? Well, anything I can help you with anything. What's the right? But if we're confused. so good, so good, I want to circle back to my friend David, my good friend, whose name I could not remember in the moment. Is David Avarin. Thank you, David, for sharing the technique about putting in for a breakout session and then flipping it over to a keynote. That's David Aver. And he did a lesson for my school, which we were one of our
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Jane Atkinson: most popular lessons in the wealthy speaker. School, Lisa, connect with you? What should they do?
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Lisa Rehurek | The RFP Success Company: I would say. Connect with me on Linkedin. I'm Lisa Riurk. I'm the only one out there. As a matter of fact, I think you can type in R. And you'll find me cause there's not yeah.
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Lisa Rehurek | The RFP Success Company: Rfp success.
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Jane Atkinson: Fancy Asian word that you don't understand. In order to mean the company name, you get exactly what it is. I love it. When people just call it what it is the Rfp. Success Company. So good, Lisa, thank you so much for sharing your wisdom. We will put some links to you in, and also to defined Rfpcom
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Lisa Rehurek | The RFP Success Company: in the show notes. I appreciate you so much. Thank you for listening. Those of you who are. Listen! Are you inspired? I'm inspired. I think we gotta go find Samara. Peace to fill out alright. Thank you, Lisa. We'll see you soon. Wealthy speakers, bye, for now everyone.
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Jane Atkinson: Well welcome everyone to the wealthy speaker. Podcast now, if you've been in the speaking a while, you likely have filled out an RFP. That's a request for proposal, or to MI. And Rfps are a bit of a mystery to some people, so we wanted to bring in the expert. Welcome to the show, Lisa.
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Jane Atkinson: Thank you, Jane. I'm excited to be here to share Rfp. Wisdom with everybody. You were just reminding me that we talked in a 2,018 or somewhere around that region. So it was a while ago, and you were kind of thinking about what to do with your business. Catch us up on what I mean. It looks to me like you've gone all in on our fees, which was why we bring brought you in here, but catch us up. Give us a snapshot of what your business looks like today.
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Lisa Rehurek | The RFP Success Company: Yeah, absolutely. So we I started my business a long time ago, like back in 2011, and I struggled for many years trying to figure out what the niche was. I was trying to be this
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Lisa Rehurek | The RFP Success Company: just general business coach, and our piece was somewhat part of that. Just because that was my corporate career. I did a lot of Rfp's, and so prior colleagues would call me and say, Hey, can you help with this and this and this? And so I just remember being at lunch one day with a friend of mine who said, You've been looking for a niche, and I think the niche just found you because the Rfp. Stuff was really starting to be more.
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Lisa Rehurek | The RFP Success Company: I got more calls on that. And so yeah, in 2,018, we rebranded and went all in 2019, I hired my first employee, and now we have. I don't even I lose track all the time. But I think we have 15 or 16 employees.
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Lisa Rehurek | The RFP Success Company: Yeah. And then we also have a bunch of bench contractors, too, but it's a ton of fun. And it's yeah. So we're all in on our piece. So what I wanna point out to our listeners is that when you go all in on something
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Jane Atkinson: it can reach such massive rewards. And honestly, Lisa, I think I've evolved in my thought process on that. If you would have told me back in 2,018 when we met
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I'm gonna go all in on Rfp. I don't know if I would have, said Yay, that's a great idea, because I've evolved a lot now, and I know now what the benefit is of going all in, even when people think it's not a good idea where there's some naysayers along the way for you.
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Lisa Rehurek | The RFP Success Company: I was one of them, right, because it's scary. It's
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Lisa Rehurek | The RFP Success Company: it's scary to go all in. It feels like.
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Lisa Rehurek | The RFP Success Company: well, I'll I can focus on that while still keeping things open for all the other people that are gonna need me. And it's just messy to do that.
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Lisa Rehurek | The RFP Success Company: I have heard that a million times, Jane, from coaches, from industry experts. You gotta find the niche. You've got to find the niche, and I always wanted it. But there was this part of me that didn't believe. Whatever right, it's so true, especially as you're building a business. You know. You can broaden out once you get
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Lisa Rehurek | The RFP Success Company: your sea legs and you get your systems in place and all that then you can go broader. But it just made such a big difference to focus on this and and plant my flag in it. I'm so excited for you and congratulations on the success. So
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let's talk about Rfps. There are people who might be keynoters list tuning in. And let's just establish who is in the speaking industry is really gonna be most interested in Rfps. Who do you think
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Lisa Rehurek | The RFP Success Company: I would say anybody that wants to do training or coaching in the government space, and even in the corporate space. Quite frankly, corporations all the time release Rfps. The bigger corporations. You're generally gonna see some Rfps come out for a lot of that stuff. So if you have that, add on of executive coaching, coaching, training any kind of programs like that, you're probably gonna come across rfps at some point.
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Jane Atkinson: Okay? So I really wanna establish that there is a training section to this. And I wanna go deep into the government stuff with you in a little bit, cause I think there's some profitability there for people.
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Jane Atkinson: But also don't forget that there's Rfps for concurrent sessions at association events. And so a lot of this information can be successful on that. I want to share a story. That
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Jane Atkinson: Oh, gosh!
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Jane Atkinson: That one of my best buddies in the industry shared with us, and I am having a hard time. Remembering his last name David he talked about they would go in, so their goal was to get the keynote. But association that had concurrence, and they asked for Rfps. He would put in a proposal.
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Jane Atkinson: and then he would once, they said, yes, you've been accepted. They would upsell them into a keynote. I wouldn't. So he would reject it, and then he would say, but I would do it if
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Jane Atkinson: you could also get me a keynote as well. And so that's worked quite nicely for him. Oh, gosh! I'll remember his name before the end of thing. This is my almost 60 year old mind at play here. So, apologies David, I love you dude so
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Jane Atkinson: if you are mainly focusing on keynote speaking Rfps may not be as much of a part of your world. Am I right?
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Lisa Rehurek | The RFP Success Company: Agreed. Now there might be some corporations that are still like we're gonna go to Rfp for this. But mostly I don't see that mostly they wanna be talking to you. They want your speaker reel, and you know the the normal ways. You all get business. But I would guess you're probably not gonna see a lot of our piece if keynote is your solo decision making process is perhaps a little bit different, and I also encourage my clients to go in and have the key.
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Lisa Rehurek | The RFP Success Company: Be kind of the start of it, and then to build a whole package around it so that they're solving a big problem for big dollars. And that may require some sort of process to get approved by the purchasing department and things like that. So okay, alright. So we kind of know who is going to go after. And let's say you do want to do some training
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Jane Atkinson: for some of the groups that we have mentioned. If you wanna fill out a lot of our Rfps. Is there like a templated process? What's the best best practice in terms of like
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Jane Atkinson: cut and pasting? Cause you don't wanna start from scratch every time. Do you know it's brutal to start from scratch? However, the challenges is that every Rfp is different, every format of the Rfp.
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Lisa Rehurek | The RFP Success Company: What is different? And so what we suggest you have is what we call like a library or repository of some standard language, so things that the Rfp. Ask a lot of like. Tell us a little bit more about you know how you communicate. Tell us you know the history of your company. Things like that. You can have those kind of
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Lisa Rehurek | The RFP Success Company: ready to go you you for the Rp. That you're responding to. But it's so much easier to edit right. I'd much rather edit and start from scratch, especially when you're on a deadline. So that okay, I like that. Now, you're gonna have speech descriptions already available and having them in a format that you can just cut and paste and go is so helpful. You're gonna have your bio on your about page. You know you're you're gonna be ready to
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Jane Atkinson: to drop those pieces in, I think, having a library. I love your term library of information, you know. Just drop an on Rfp. And existing one that you really spent a lot of time and effort and crafting. And let's talk about that a little bit. Craftsmanship.
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Jane Atkinson: I mean, don't you need to capture their attention right out of the shoot. Maybe there are talk titles or something like that that is going to get their attention. What are some things that can help set people apart.
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Lisa Rehurek | The RFP Success Company: Yeah, great question. Because one of the things that we talk about a lot is distinction. If you don't have the distinction. You're just gonna blend in with everybody else. And so
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Lisa Rehurek | The RFP Success Company: that you have 2 to. There's a statistic out there that says you have 2 to 3 s to capture somebody's attention. And even today there's a lot of talk about how that has decreased. So it's probably more like one to 2 s now, right? Because the world crazy.
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Lisa Rehurek | The RFP Success Company: Oh, my gosh! I know. So you know. And and here's the other thing I always say, Jane, is that you've got to think about the fact that there's a human on the other side of that Rp. A lot of times we think of it transactionally and like the city or the state or the company. But there's a human being, and they're reading 3, 5, 1020. We just were talking to somebody recently who went through the dB. Process, and there was 23 other bidders
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Lisa Rehurek | The RFP Success Company: in there. And so this poor person or people are having to read all of those Rfp responses do to stand out first thing. And you were talking about kind of like copying and pasting. Yes, but then, please, edit to
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Lisa Rehurek | The RFP Success Company: focus on their solution like, what's in it for them?
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Lisa Rehurek | The RFP Success Company: Why are they gonna care about your topic? What is it gonna do for the challenges that they're having? So you know you've gotta do some upfront that here. Here's the interesting thing about Rfp's people think, well, I'll just get the Rp. I'll respond to it and be done there is work to be done. The more you know about that prospect going into that Rfp. Cause you can't ask them questions. Once the Rfp. Drops.
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Lisa Rehurek | The RFP Success Company: the better you'll be able to position yourself to capture their attention. Deal with the what's in it for them
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Lisa Rehurek | The RFP Success Company: piece of it, the better. They're gonna lean in and pay attention. I think that's so important that if you do your homework, a lot of people wanna kinda copy and paste and just get her done right. But think about taking that extra. I don't know 20 min of research
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Jane Atkinson: and using their language back to them. Some of the challenges of our industry are this and this and this. If you can show those in your bullet points, you're going to be that much further along, and maybe you need to talk to some people. Maybe it's gonna take you a week to fill out an Rfp. Because you've got questions into some people out on Linkedin, or something like that.
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Jane Atkinson: There's the research. Can you give me an example? I'm totally putting you on the spot here. Can you give me an example of a client of yours who took the time and it paid off.
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Lisa Rehurek | The RFP Success Company: Yeah, we actually have a a client. Her name is Missy Enlar, and she has a training company like a an educational slash training company, and she was bidding against a bunch of big big time companies, and she was like, I just don't know I'm not. I can't be competitive. I'm just a little guy
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Lisa Rehurek | The RFP Success Company: and I think there was 20 different bidders. And and she won because we helped her position her content so that it was very specific to what that client needed. The other thing you wanna do is you wanna put in some mic drop moments. You know those golden nuggets where they're gonna be, we call them. II hope that this is okay, that I'm gonna say this, we call them the oh, ship moments right?
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Lisa Rehurek | The RFP Success Company: I got that that term from a coach of mine which calls in the Oh, ship moments where you kind of drop that there, and they're like, Oh, I hadn't thought about that, you wanna you're the industry expert, and that's what Melissa did in her in her Rfp. Like we proved that she was the one that was gonna solve their solution.
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Lisa Rehurek | The RFP Success Company: that she had credibility in the industry, and she blew out the big guys and she was beside herself, obviously excited to win the contract for the fact that she beat them out just took it to a whole other level. Oh, that's so good. Okay, so give me like an industry. So I can wrap my mind around this. Co, this what Missy was going for? Was it like a government contract. Was it a particular industry? Where was she playing?
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Lisa Rehurek | The RFP Success Company: She was playing in state government, space.
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Jane Atkinson: state government? Okay? And so what types of dollars are these contracts? Are they? 10,000, a hundred 1,000 a million?
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Jane Atkinson: I believe that it was 750,000 over a few years. Okay, you're giving me some ideas for some of my clients, actually, because
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Jane Atkinson: I don't think you're just exposing me to things that I wasn't really thinking about. So thank you. Thank you. And for those of you who are tuning in, thanks to Lisa Ryerk for kind of maybe inspiring you to go after some of these larger.
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Jane Atkinson: larger contracts. Are there any strategies any other strategy? So we talked about research. Anything else we can do to really differentiate ourselves. I know, when we were doing selection for the Canadian National Speakers Association caps. It's called I was looking through a lot of proposals.
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Jane Atkinson: and for me the title of the speech they were proposing cause. We were talking concurrent sessions. The title either jumped out or didn't, so I would put my yet that would help me reduce the pile, you know. Oh, that sounds really good. Okay, you know. And now I have 6, and then I'm gonna go down to 3, and so on. And so.
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Jane Atkinson: what are some of the things that people can do to really differentiate? Aside from that crucial research piece?
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Lisa Rehurek | The RFP Success Company: Yeah. So a a couple of things. First is in your content again, the more that you can tie your solution to the what's in it for them.
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Lisa Rehurek | The RFP Success Company: stop using. We help
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Lisa Rehurek | The RFP Success Company: stop using that phraseology, make it more about them and use statistics when you can to prove things. So you can't. You shouldn't just claim like we're very successful at blah. Blah blah! We've seen a lot of success with blah blah blah proof in the pudding. Right?
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Lisa Rehurek | The RFP Success Company: For sure. The other kind of strategy that I wanna this feels like a little bit of a digression. But it's really powerful. If you have
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Lisa Rehurek | The RFP Success Company: clients, that are
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Lisa Rehurek | The RFP Success Company: can be a diverse business, and if you don't know anything about diverse businesses, there are so many ways to be a diverse business. But all of your women clients.
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Lisa Rehurek | The RFP Success Company: If they own 51%, not just own, but own control and manage 51% of the business, they can go get certified as a women business enterprise. So women, minority veterans, all of that. And what's so beautiful about that when you get certified is that there are supplier diversity
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Lisa Rehurek | The RFP Success Company: departments within States, some States are really great, like Missouri, Pennsylvania, Illinois. They're all in on the supplier diversity. So you can actually call the supplier diversity agency and say, Hey, I wanna do work in your state. Can you help me do this? This and this? That's their whole job procurement introduce you to people and on the corporate space as well.
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Lisa Rehurek | The RFP Success Company: So many corporations have supplier diversity initiatives, and they've got those people as well. And you call them you build the relationship with the supplier diversity people, and they become your advocate in the organization. So
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Lisa Rehurek | The RFP Success Company: those are huge things to do for that pre work. When I'm talking about research. I mean you're a heterosexual white male. You're kind of out of the game here, but almost anybody else can get certified, and there's just so much gold there. You still have to work. And it's not just gonna show up, but it's out of the game, but only on that front. Only on getting certified. Diverse. Okay.
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Jane Atkinson: That leads me to another opportunity that may be awaiting so I'm going back to say you're applying to the National Association of Widget Makers
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Jane Atkinson: and the Widget makers have education credits if you can. If you know that you really want to play in this space, and you know real estate and insurance and a lot of places, I think. Hr. Have
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Jane Atkinson: cease or ceus talk a little like getting yourself certified for that. It may take some time on the front end, but that might pay off in putting you above other people in the proposals. Am I right?
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Lisa Rehurek | The RFP Success Company: Absolutely, you know. Again this kind of comes down to research. Are they requiring that as a requirement? Or is it just a nice to have? It's gonna differentiate, right? And you one of the things that I always suggest people doing is like focus. So I'm gonna talk about state government, because that's just the easiest.
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Lisa Rehurek | The RFP Success Company: there are aggregators out there. So there one is called findr.com. It's like 2999 a month. What I would say is, go out there, put in your keyword. Sign up for it, even if there might even be a trial. Put your keywords in.
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Lisa Rehurek | The RFP Success Company: see what you get. So just see what kind of Rfp start coming out, and you can start seeing. Here's what some of the requirements are. They are gonna require ce credits they are gonna require that kind of certification they require. A lot of states do require. Maybe we be that minority women, business enterprise certification you can see what some of those insurance requirements are gonna be because that trips up a lot of like solopreneurs
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Lisa Rehurek | The RFP Success Company: right? So proprietors but just kind of see what kind of Rfs are out there and start to get a feel for their terms and conditions. Oh, that's so interesting to me. So find Rfpcom, did you say.
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Jane Atkinson: okay? And I'm thinking about one of my clients who's in the education space. She speaks to teachers and educators. She could go in and maybe search. Could you search under your topic of education.
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Lisa Rehurek | The RFP Success Company: Yeah, it's all driven off a keyword so she could, and then also again sign up and put your keywords in. And if you're not getting what you think. You know it just sometimes it takes a couple of months to play around with that. Adjust your keywords. But there's a lot of gold in that that some of your research homework is that's so good. Okay, so some of these things that you can do to kind of
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Jane Atkinson: just distinguish yourself slightly more to get a little bit of a leg up. Are there any common pitfalls or mistakes that speakers and trainers should avoid when doing process? Do tell we have, we do a lot of what we call an Rfp audit. So we look at past Rfs, and we see the same themes
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Lisa Rehurek | The RFP Success Company: that people do wrong. And also we ask a lot of evaluators. Tell us your top 3 pet peeves like, what's the number one mistake people make. And here are the 3 mistakes that people make the most. The number one. Is that what I'm telling you is that they talk too much about themselves where I was talking about. We help you right like
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Lisa Rehurek | The RFP Success Company: you've got to relate it to their challenge. And there, even if you see a different challenge, and you know that's not really their challenge. You still have to speak their language into your point, Jane. Use their vernacular like it's really good for you to use their language and understanding theirs. Another piece of the puzzle is making sure that you answer all of the question
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Lisa Rehurek | The RFP Success Company: it's asked, and this sounds so ridiculous, and I've had people say to me, well, we would never miss anything. And inevitably, when we review our fees, we've Rp responses, we find that people have missed
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Lisa Rehurek | The RFP Success Company: a part of the question, and I think we get too much in our heads like I remember one in particular. It was a Yes, no
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Lisa Rehurek | The RFP Success Company: question, and they just
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Lisa Rehurek | The RFP Success Company: rambled on about all sorts of stuff, and you never really understood like, is it a yes or no? So yes or no question. Answer it. Yes, and then you can extrapolate off of that. But and yes, yes, talk about you. You kind of touched on it a second ago once versus needs.
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Jane Atkinson: They're asking for this. I know that they need this. Which do you focus on in your proposal what they are asking for? I'm assuming
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Lisa Rehurek | The RFP Success Company: always, always focus on what they're asking for, because you've got these evaluators that have score sheets, and if you don't give them what they ask for, they're gonna give you doesn't meet expectations or whatever they're scoring, because so you wanna give them what they ask for and then give them more. But here's a deal. You've gotta be really careful there, because you don't wanna just start rattling off all the stuff. And you know, sounding like a know-it-all.
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Lisa Rehurek | The RFP Success Company: you know, there's something else you may want to consider as having been in this industry for Xyz years. We've seen a lot of businesses that have the same challenge that you have. And in addition to Xyz, which is what they're asking for, we might also suggest that you do. Xyz. So you want to be a little bit more consultative about it and not feel small for not knowing it. Don't shame them. Okay?
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Jane Atkinson: So government contracts, we're talking state level, are we talking national as well.
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Lisa Rehurek | The RFP Success Company: So we can. So there's a whole. So there's Federal, which is a whole beast. My company doesn't focus on Federal because it is very unique, right. But there are certifications for Federal. There's a lot of small business set aside for Federal, but Federal is a beast. It is a beast.
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Lisa Rehurek | The RFP Success Company: We focus on what's called the sled, which is state, local and education. The smaller the entity, the generally, the easier they are to work with, the smaller their Rfs are, the smaller their contracts are. But it's still like, if this is something new to you, maybe start looking in the education, the universities, the
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Lisa Rehurek | The RFP Success Company: the whole education realm right? local municipalities, counties, things like that. They put out tons of rfps for stuff all the time the state ones are, gonna be a little more lucrative. They tend to be more of the 2 to 3 year contracts.
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Jane Atkinson: but it will take maybe a little bit longer to get into those. Yeah, let's talk about the process. So people kind of understand what to expect. You're going to put in this much time on the front end. But the payoff is going to be this at the back end. And how long do you think it might take? I think Missy was a great example talk through maybe another example of a state contract that
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Jane Atkinson: maybe took some time, but paid off.
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Lisa Rehurek | The RFP Success Company: Yeah, absolutely. So. I'll give you a really extreme example. And this is not in the speaker.
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Lisa Rehurek | The RFP Success Company: Coach world. It's our trainer world. This is a consulting firm. But on the Rp. For 3 years 3 years.
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Lisa Rehurek | The RFP Success Company: 650 pages, the response, 650 pages. Okay, so you lost me there. I'm like, I'm out for for the type of work that we're talking about here. I mean, you're likely gonna get an Rfp. It's gonna be a 2 to 3 week turnaround. So please don't think you have plenty of time because Rfp. Responses take a long time if you're gonna do it right. And you really wanna win
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Lisa Rehurek | The RFP Success Company: the beautiful about an Rfp, so you know, there's like, what do they say? There's 4 things that need to be present in order for you to make a sale, trust the need, the budget and the urgency. Well, the need is there because they released an Rfp.
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Lisa Rehurek | The RFP Success Company: The urgency is there, cause they've got a due date on it, and they've got money for it might not be the budget you want them to have, but it's there right. And so now your job is to build trust. But it's such a beautiful thing because you're like they're handing this to you on a silver platter. Your only job is to build trust and show them that you're the right solution.
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Lisa Rehurek | The RFP Success Company: So you want time to be able to do that. This is not just an exercise of throw in a bunch of stuff and send it off. You're gonna lose right? And then the beauty, too, is you get a longer term contract, and it's yours to lose
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Lisa Rehurek | The RFP Success Company: as long as you do good work, and they continue to have this need. You're gonna continue to get work off of it, and it makes you. It makes it so much easier to budget staff to.
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Lisa Rehurek | The RFP Success Company: you know. Manage timelines, manage your business.
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Jane Atkinson: I just am. I'm such a big proponent of government contracts because of that. So is there a way
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Jane Atkinson: to find out ahead of time, like what the maximum budget is going to be? Do they ever disclose that information in an Rfp. Do they give you a like a range? Or are you going in blind? Not knowing whether or not you're wasting your time.
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Lisa Rehurek | The RFP Success Company: We would suggest never going in blind. And the the reason is is that if you're going in blind, it's what we call bidding cold, and you have less than a 5% chance to win.
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Lisa Rehurek | The RFP Success Company: Sometimes they'll put the budget in the Rp. But but still, you know, most of the time they won't. And so we always recommend
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Lisa Rehurek | The RFP Success Company: starting the conversation long before that Rfp. Hits the streets, because that's where you're gonna get that goal right? Put in like they're they're likely not gonna put in their budget, but you might get that out of them in a conversation, but you might also get other really good gold out of them in a conversation where they're talking about.
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Lisa Rehurek | The RFP Success Company: yeah, we're so frustrated with our current vendor because they don't do XY and Z.
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Lisa Rehurek | The RFP Success Company: That might be a comment in passing. And now, you know, I'm gonna write to that in my response to make sure that they really see it. So the other thing you can do is there? You can do some research around contract, pass contracts and see kind of what they're paying other people for the same thing.
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Jane Atkinson: How hard is it to speak to a human at the end of the Rfp. Like? Could you say I have a follow up a question about the Rfp. That you sent out and ask for clarification or something. Is there? Is it a robot over there? And you're never gonna get to talk to anybody or what?
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Lisa Rehurek | The RFP Success Company: Well, generally, once the Rfp. Is released, you have to follow their very explicit instructions, and they will tell you who their contact person is, and whether you can ask questions at any time, or whether there's a open QA. Period or a bitter's conference.
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Lisa Rehurek | The RFP Success Company: But generally they're not going to answer.
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Lisa Rehurek | The RFP Success Company: That is not the time to try to relationship build is generally a procurement person that is assigned to that, not the actual buyer, the agency contract. So again, you want to have those conversations ahead of time, because you can't have a monthly Rfp. Hits the streets. Lisa, this is golden, and I think maybe I don't know I'm inspired, hey? I want to go get an Rfp.
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Lisa Rehurek | The RFP Success Company: go get a contract. I don't even know where. But you're just getting me thinking about all the opportunity that is out there for people. I think
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Jane Atkinson: my takeaway is.
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Jane Atkinson: spend the time on the front end and do it well, that's kind of my take away. What would be the final tip before I wanna ask you one more question before I let you go, though what would be your final tip on putting in an Rfp. Is there? Is there a big picture mindset that we need to take going into this.
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Lisa Rehurek | The RFP Success Company: you know, for some reason everybody just hates our keys. I get it. They're a pain in the butt. And so you go in with that mentality that like, Oh, this is gonna be so hard. But if you flip that mindset to say, Oh, my gosh! How great I have this opportunity on paper! Submit this, and win this great contract, flipping that mindset around is gonna help.
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Jane Atkinson: Opportunity is the key word, because it's true. There is a big opportunity. Do they ever come back and ask you for clarification on anything on an Rfp
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Lisa Rehurek | The RFP Success Company: are you mean our clients, or do you mean oh, the people who are going through and reviewing the Rfps. Is there ever like a follow up question, you know, set out to 2 or 3 of the of the people who submitted
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Lisa Rehurek | The RFP Success Company: most of the time? Not. But what will happen is that they'll go to finalists. So they'll ask for a best and final offer, we call it, or they'll ask for finalist presentations, or they'll subm send a question out the same question out to multiple bidders. Tell me, what have you learned about?
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Jane Atkinson: You know, going all in on this one idea to build a 7 figure business. How is it?
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Jane Atkinson: Ha! What is that like for you? In your experience you talked about how many employees, dozens of employees.
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Jane Atkinson: What's that like for you these days?
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Lisa Rehurek | The RFP Success Company: Yeah, it's it's a lot of fun. It's a lot more fun than the year that I made $26,000 for sure. Go ahead.
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Lisa Rehurek | The RFP Success Company: you know. It's it's just interesting, because
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Lisa Rehurek | The RFP Success Company: I'm an entrepreneur at heart, and I have ideas all over the place, but it it
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Lisa Rehurek | The RFP Success Company: forces me to focus, and my team still every now and then has to be like Lisa. Not now. It's a great idea, but not now. Yes, yes, and when you have a focus.
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Lisa Rehurek | The RFP Success Company: then you know how to reel it back in and say, Okay, let's go back here and stay the course, because that's where the results are. That's where the results are showing up. And so when you've got all sorts of things going on, you can't possibly focus yourself. I'll tell you. The other thing that's beautiful about it is that I am so much more clear when I speak it. So now other people can understand
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Lisa Rehurek | The RFP Success Company: before I was like, well, I was a business coach. Well, what? What kind of businesses do you help with? Well, anything I can help you with anything. What's the right? But if we're confused. so good, so good, I want to circle back to my friend David, my good friend, whose name I could not remember in the moment. Is David Avarin. Thank you, David, for sharing the technique about putting in for a breakout session and then flipping it over to a keynote. That's David Aver. And he did a lesson for my school, which we were one of our
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Jane Atkinson: most popular lessons in the wealthy speaker. School, Lisa, connect with you? What should they do?
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Lisa Rehurek | The RFP Success Company: I would say. Connect with me on Linkedin. I'm Lisa Riurk. I'm the only one out there. As a matter of fact, I think you can type in R. And you'll find me cause there's not yeah.
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Lisa Rehurek | The RFP Success Company: Rfp success.
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Jane Atkinson: Fancy Asian word that you don't understand. In order to mean the company name, you get exactly what it is. I love it. When people just call it what it is the Rfp. Success Company. So good, Lisa, thank you so much for sharing your wisdom. We will put some links to you in, and also to defined Rfpcom
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Lisa Rehurek | The RFP Success Company: in the show notes. I appreciate you so much. Thank you for listening. Those of you who are. Listen! Are you inspired? I'm inspired. I think we gotta go find Samara. Peace to fill out alright. Thank you, Lisa. We'll see you soon. Wealthy speakers, bye, for now everyone.
Highlights you won’t want to miss:
- Lisa found her niche. [1:00]
- Who needs to know about RFPs? [4:00]
- You must be distinctive. [8:30]
- Oh $h!t moments. [11:30]
- Supplier diversity matters. [14:30]
- Mistakes to avoid. [20:00]
- Your job is to build trust. [24:00]
- Change your mindset. [29:00]
Lisa is an advocate of knowing yourself and identifying how best to contribute your unique gifts to the world. She embodies ambition, resilience and optimism and is a woman deeply rooted in her own power. With over 26 years of RFP experience and her down-to-earth, “get it done” personality, Lisa leads the company from the front. When she steps away from the office, Lisa can be found spending time with her two dogs, Oliver & Tuck, and out with family & friends.
If you want to learn some great strategies on how to fill out an RFP and be successful, you simply can’t afford to miss this episode!
I hope you’ll listen and learn.
Links:
Lisa’s website
FindRFP.com
Lisa’s book
Lisa’s LinkedIn profile
Jane’s LinkedIn profile
Jane’s coaching options
The Wealthy Speaker School
