Proposal 101: ATFQ

I've spent several hours this weekend working on a proposal for work. It's a rush job, as many proposals are. But this one was in bad shape.

I have high standards in this regard. I used to work for a firm that did a lot of government contracting. They had responding to RFPs down to a science. My job was to manage the final assembly of the proposal, including all its forms, attachments, slides, spreadsheets, pictures, and other paraphenalia. This meant that I had to study the RFP closely and make sure that the final response conformed to all of the requirements.

My responsibilities included the mechanical aspects of the proposal: page counts, font sizes, whether the graphics matched the captions, etc. But the editors I worked for were concerned with the technical approach. One in particular used to scrawl "ATFQ" in flaming red pen next to the margins of questions. He would refuse to do any editing on a question that had ATFQ written next to it. One day I asked him what it meant, and why he was so insistent about it.

"It means" he said dramatically, and somewhat more crudely, "Answer the Freaking Question!" It's the best advice I've ever had for responding to RFPs.

Answer the Friggin' Question

The most imporatant thing to remember about responding to an RFP is that your audience is really, really bored. They've probably read three other proposals before yours, and all they really want is an easy way to separate the good proposals from the bad.

You want to make your answer as concise as possible, so that they can tick their mental checkbox that your product or service satisfies the requirement. In round two, you can always refine your statements and expand upon your answer. But for the first look, your job is to make it easy for the reviewer to put your proposal in the stack of "compliant" proposals.

This means that your response to each question in an RFP ought to come in the very first line of your answer. If possible, it should come in the very first word.

For example, if an RFP asks this:

Does your gizmo conform to the Phoom 2.3 specification for advanced wuzzle?

Your answer should not begin:

Since 1872, ACME Corporation has manufactured advanced fizzlers to the highest standards of nazblad quality, in accordance with our mission of serving the needs of the gibbler market better than our competition and for a more reasonable price....

Your answer should begin:

Yes, ACME gizmos are compliant with the Phoom 2.3 specification.

See how much better the second answer is than the first? A lazy reviewer only has to read the first word to know everything he needs to know in a first-pass review. Later, he can read the entire first sentence, first paragraph, or extended essay if he wants more detail. But he doesn't need to do that. You've ATFQ'd in his mind, and everything else is window dressing.

Make it Obvious

I deliberately used nonsense words in my examples above, because frankly that's how most technical RFPs look to the average person. What's a wuzzle? What's the Phoom specification? Not only might you not know what the words mean, but chances are the person who assembled the RFP document doesn't know either. They're just parroting some phrases they heard the other day. It sounded important, so it went into the RFP.

Chances are, your answer is going to be just as difficult for a nontechnical reviewer to evaluate. What's the gibbler market? What's nazblad quality? So the idea is to make the those first words or sentences clear enough that a layman can make one of the following determinations:

1. The respondent answered yes.
2. The respondent answered no.
3. The respondent gave a qualified answer.

That's all that's necessary for the first round.