The Hidden Cost of Ignoring RFPs in B2B Sales | Ray Meiring

The hidden importance of RFPs is frequently overlooked in modern B2B sales. While sales teams obsess over top-of-funnel activities, pipeline generation, and initial discovery calls, the final mile—where deals actually close—remains a massive missed opportunity. RFPs were once sidelined or even used as a reason to disqualify deals, but their frequency and criticality have grown radically over the last five years, especially in enterprise and mid-market spaces. There is a massive hidden cost in unoptimized proposal processes. Revenue teams suffer hard costs in the sheer time spent by sales reps and subject matter experts answering repetitive questions. More importantly, they suffer steep opportunity costs when missing out on high-value deals due to a lack of professional proposal methodology. By establishing a dedicated bid function, tiering responses, and leveraging specialized software, sales leaders can accurately track ROI, manage win rates, and direct strategic focus where it matters most. Winning proposals require more than just checking compliance boxes; they demand deep personalization, visual polish, and a clear articulation of business value. Modern AI agents are revolutionizing this space by automating peripheral tasks like 'bid vs. no-bid' decisions, drafting executive summaries, and interviewing internal experts. By strategically combining AI efficiency with human empathy, sales teams can drastically lower the cost of responding while radically increasing their win rates.

Discussed in this episode

• Why the frequency and criticality of RFPs have radically increased over the last five years in enterprise and mid-market deals.
• Calculating the hard time costs and hidden opportunity costs associated with unoptimized RFP response processes.
• The strategy of tiering RFP responses to route high-value, strategic deals to dedicated proposal management teams.
• How different industries handle RFPs, contrasting the CRO-led software approach with the CMO-led, reputation-driven law firm model.
• The importance of moving beyond compliance checkboxes to deeply personalize the executive summary and prove business value.
• Using machine learning and AI to automate the bid/no-bid decision process based on historical win rates and competitor data.
• Leveraging AI agents to identify ambiguity in RFPs and automatically generate lists of clarifying questions.
• Implementing human-in-the-loop AI workflows to capture subject matter expert knowledge via voice interviews rather than manual writing.

Episode highlights

1. 0:00 — The historical stigma against RFPs
2. 2:15 — Why the final mile is a missed opportunity
3. 4:30 — Calculating the hidden costs of proposals
4. 6:45 — Strategic vs. non-strategic RFP tiering
5. 9:00 — Industry differences in handling RFPs
6. 11:30 — Moving past transactional checkboxes
7. 14:15 — The role of design in winning bids
8. 16:45 — CRO vs. CMO process ownership
9. 19:20 — Automating the bid/no-bid decision
10. 22:10 — Voice interviewing SMEs with AI
11. 24:50 — Balancing AI efficiency with human empathy
12. 27:15 — Rapid fire: RFPs and dream vacations

Key takeaways

• Treat RFPs as a strategic advantage, not an administrative evil.
• Calculate the massive opportunity cost of poor proposal processes.
• Never submit a proposal without clearly articulating customized business value.
• Automate bid/no-bid decisions before wasting hours on doomed proposals.
• Keep humans in the loop for empathy, creativity, and relationship building.

Transcript

RFPs have been there, but they kind of been like the sideline thing that we have to do. In fact, you know, years ago, some people said if an RFP came along, we would disqualify the deal. We spend so much time talking about top of funnel, and so much time talking about pipeline, and so much time talking about, you know, discovery. Why are we not talking about proposals and RFPs?

There's a real cost in the in the time that that you spend responding to to these RFPs. And then there's an opportunity cost associated with it as well. Welcome back to another episode of the Bridge the Gap podcast powered by Revenue Reimagine. Today's guest is Ray Mering, who is the CEO of chorus software, which is a company that's been quietly powering one of the most critical parts of go-to market, which is how deals actually get done.

We're not talking your SMB deals, we're talking like your real deals. Ray spent over a decade helping revenue teams improve how they respond to RFPs, build proposals, and execute at the final mile of the sales process. This episode is this episode is about what really happens between we have a pipeline and we close the deal, and why that gap is still one of the biggest missed opportunities in GTM. And Dale still has that great outside background.

But we'll we'll skip that. Ray, thanks for joining. Welcome to the show. Oh, thank you so much, Adam and Dale.

Great to be with you guys here. Ray, I appreciate your time and you know, it's interesting. We talked a little bit about the a little bit before the show about RFPs and how many people are uh are are do them well or don't do them well. Um but one of the one of the things that we talk a lot about as well is just pipeline in general, which RFPs actually flow into.

Um so, while everyone obsessives about pipeline, you spent your whole career focused on what happens after, and where deals actually fall apart. So, talk to us a little bit about that. Well, you know, RFPs are interesting because many of them can like bold the pipeline and then several of them, as Adam says, they're in that last mile. So, so we have customers that you know, the first opportunity they get or first touch point is if they receive this RFP or RFI and get asked to respond to it.

Uh that's the type of of process. And then we have many who have been working the deal for a while and to close it out, they need to go and and uh complete the RFP. And I would say the final step in that as well is that for several customers, the renewal is also RFP based. So, you know, they've finished up with a three-year contract, they need to renew, the the customer goes back out to RFP because of a procurement process.

So, RFPs, proposals, they really affect like every part of that of that process. And as we all know, they're incredibly painful because, you know, we've got to go and answer hundreds and thousands of questions that to to get the uh to get the deal. So, it's a real problem for customers. So, it's it's a gazillion questions that have to be answered over and over and over and over again.

That likely there isn't um someone to answer um correctly and they're going back like there's not a dedicated person. And they're going back over and over again to do it. But my question is why why isn't this thought of as part of the sales process? Like why is this some thing that we're talking about now is like super novel of like, oh, you know, we have to deal with the RFP.

Like we spend so much time talking about top of funnel, and so much time talking about pipeline, and so much time talking about, you know, discovery. Why are we not talking about proposals and RFPs? I think historically, RFPs have been there, but they kind of been like the sideline thing that we have to do. In fact, you know, years ago, some people said if an RFP came along, we would disqualify the deal.

Right? It it was at that level. But what we've seen happen over the last five years is that the number of RFPs has increased radically, and it keeps increasing year over year. And how critical that is to the sales process keeps going up.

And I think sales leaders are starting to realize, this is not some ancillary function that we can put over here to the side. This is actually the, you know, part of the beating heart of what we need to do to close enterprise or or, you know, big deals. And even move down into the mid-market to to some extent as well, where you're having close an RFP there. So, it's the it's the frequency and how critical those RFPs have become that's creating more emphasis and discussion around it.

What what are some of the Go ahead. No, go ahead. No, please, let let let me collect my thoughts as I stutter, cuz I I have a very specific question I want to ask, but I need to think about how to word it. Go ahead, Dale.

Um, I I guess the question is, like, there's a lot of costs associated with these RFPs and like the amount of work that goes into them. And so, like, is it just become an afterthought for go-to-market teams on like, yeah, we should go answer them. They don't really associate cost with them, like you would like an event or something like that. So, like, how would you um recommend a uh customer look at RFPs from like that costing perspective?

Well, there's a real cost in the in the time that that you spend responding to to these RFPs. And then there's an opportunity cost associated with it as well. But let's just take the time piece cuz that's uh that's an important bit. What we've seen many customers do is start to build out these kind of specialized bid functions or RFP response functions, which often starts with one, you know, proposal writer, and then expands beyond that.

And the way they handle this is to kind of two-tier the responses. When it's a strategic response, high value, high profile customer, they're All in. Yeah, all in. They root it to that team, right?

To that specific team. And there's a cost associated with that team. So, the math on that's pretty it's much easier to be able to say, team costs X, we did X RFPs, what's our win rate, you know, stop to build a perspective there. Where that starts to get blurry is with maybe the lower value or non-strategic RFPs, which the sales teams asked to respond to.

Right? And we know that no one in sales wants to really go and keep a time sheet of how much time they spent uh on an RFP. But we can start with the help of software, we can start to get a perspective on, you know, how many touch points did you have into this document? How many questions were there, which starts to build out a cost associated with that RFP response.

We can do a real kind of ROI on, hey, how many did we do? What is the win rate on these things? What's the impact that's happening there? Um, that's one way to, you know, to cost that out.

I think the other element to that is the opportunity cost side where it's, hey, how many RFPs did we not get to because we don't have a professional team, or we don't have a methodology to approach this or some software to help us with that. And that can be a much bigger cost in certain industries. Isn't it true though, and gut check me here, by the time you get told about an RFP, unless you're designing that RFP, or unless you you, you know, were in that initial conversation like before the RFP, Dale knows exactly what I'm going to say, isn't it too damn late? Haven't you lost that RFP already?

Well, for chorus docs responding to an RFP as a SAS AI company, we would 100% agree with that. And if we're just getting a last minute RFP slapped on our desk, which we have had no prior engagement with that prospect, we'll probably DQ that and not participate. But, if you're an engineering company or a construction company or an architectural company, they get notified of the need through an RFI RFP. And it's from that point that they might work to actually capture that deal or or work on that deal.

We also work with a lot of law firms, right? And it works completely different there. They have these panel RFPs where you get selected to be part of a preferred vendor to that uh to that company, uh, before you even actually win the work. So, you're just basically responding to an RFP to be in a semi-exclusive relationship with that that that firm.

Um, or that customer, that prospect. So, you know, RFPs take on such different shapes and forms. So what we see in software isn't necessarily the real world of RFPs. Oh, well, yeah.

I mean, every industry's got a slightly different spin on that. So, when we talk about like sales content versus marketing fluff, like, how do you generate content that wins from proposals to RFPs versus just kind of checking the boxes and sending someone out a proposal? Like, how how are you actually getting rid of the fluff and making it win? Here's something I keep seeing with sales teams I work with.

Generic sequences don't work anymore. We've all gotten so good at turning out the noise that even your own buyers are ignoring you. The problem isn't your reps. It's that your sequences are static and your signals are somewhere else entirely.

That's why our clients use Nooks. And the thing that's stuck with me is that their sequences actually stay fresh because the signals update them automatically. Right buyer, right moment, with no manual babysitting. If your outbound feels like it's shouting into a void, go check them out at nooks.

ai/bridge the gap. Yeah. There's there's two types of kind of parts to those RFPs. Very often there's this transactional part in the RP where it's just like, hey, what's your tax number?

Do you have redundancy in your data center? I mean, these questions are not winning questions. They're compliance type questions. I have this, I don't have it.

But then you get to the point where you need to prove out the value and why you're different. And that's where the personalization comes in. And if you're talking about software, it is about a deep understanding of that prospect's problem and being able to reflect in your RFP response that you understand that problem very well and that you're able to actually solve that that problem. Now, you know, executive summary in those RFPs or kind of the intro cover letter.

That can be a big part of that personalization and that that win strategy. Um, the way you present your solution outside of the check boxes. That's another area to really draw the the the value there. And of course, if you have some financial data to be able to size the problem on the customer side as well, and you can build ROI and some kind of uh, you know, business case into that response, that's even that's even better uh, in in that world.

Um, if if you're a law firm though, the way you're going to prove your value is by showing that you've got the best people and you've done this type of work in the past very strategically. And that's what's going to help you to win that. So again, it's slightly different based on your industry. Adam just brings donuts.

So he'll he'll bring the RFP with the donuts. I have never in my life brought a client or a prospect a donut, to be very clear. Ever. And that says a lot cuz I I started my career in pharmaceutical sales where like all they wanted you to do was bring people food.

Okay, bourbon. That sounds like a better way to win. I I I've done that. Um, what makes a proposal actually resonate with buyers?

Like we talked a little bit about the checkboxes and everything, but, you know, is it when you're talking maybe about the strategic ones, like how do you stand out in that whole world of sameness? It's personalization, right? It's not just saying the boiler plate stuff. It's that depth of understanding that will make you make you stand out.

And then the way that you write that and express that will make you you stand out. Um, there is this group of people. It's actually a big growing group called the Association of Proposal Management Professionals. Seriously.

Seriously. Right? We're going to actually attend. Just when you think there couldn't be a group for it.

Right? But we're talking about thousands of people. I mean, when we started in this maybe 10 years ago, we went to the APMP event and there were like 50 people in a room geeking out about proposals. Uh, I think the last one was like 3,500 and that's just a small subset of these proposal professionals.

But these guys are trained and taught best practice on how to make your proposal stand out. How to write in a way that is going to resonate with uh with your customer. And there is a there is a there is an art and a science to actually making it it it So that that I believe. I very as a company that does proposals that are fairly bespoke for every single one of our clients.

I certainly believe no matter what your industry is, unless you're very SMB and it's literally transactional, you know, there is if it's more than an order form, there's absolutely a a science to speaking their language and getting them to understand it. How we would write a proposal for a a a restaurant tech company is very different than the proposal we would write to a legal tech company. Right. And and it's also about the visuals, right?

It's about the design on on those documents as well. Um, because in certain areas, what that document looks like is also critical. Things like call outs uh in and summaries down the right hand side of the page or if you're in, you know, engineering or even in legal, um, you know, great head shots for the lawyers involved and how the visual elements of that looks. It's another key, key way to to stand out.

Uh, I know on some of these like super bespoke high value RFPs, design agencies have been called in to take the creative bits that you're allowed to to put out there, the non-transactional stuff, and actually design that in a way that makes this very real to Coca-Cola who you're pitching or or who Who owns that? Is that sales or marketing? Or how how do they come together to do that? Because I know like as the sales leader, I'm going to say, I want to control that verbiage.

I know the customers. The marketing leader, I'm going to say, well, I control the brand. Like who who owns that? Typically, software, CRO, head of sales function owns that.

Law firm, CMO. CMO. Yeah, it's just that's different different spaces. Yeah, I can see that.

Yeah, There's a lot of reputation stuff happening. Yeah. I was going to say, Dale, like your your daughter's worked at law firms. I'd imagine that they are very structured with who owns what and there is probably very little gray line in a law firm.

Yeah. Reputation means everything. Like one wrong thing goes out in a law firm and you're done. And it and it's a lot of transactional stuff as well, right?

There's a lot of people calling in, you got a lot of inbounds, like it's a lot of it's a lot of uh advertising to get people in. Um, you know, if somebody's in an accident or something or debt consolidation, like they're they're looking who has the best reputation, not like what salesperson's calling them to give them the best pitch. Right? Um, and when you think about a law firm, like I'm sure you guys have been into many law firm offices, but they spend tons of money making those offices look amazing and having the butler deliver coffee to you when you're when you're sitting there, right?

They want to make sure that their pitches and proposals and RFPs represent their brand in the same way. So the CMO is is like really critical to that function. Whereas, let's say in a software company, it's more about the words on the page and it's about, you know, making sure we hit all the the needs there and we have a depth of understanding of the solution, that that's important. So it makes sense maybe to be more CRO focused there.

It's it's about the transaction. So in the in the software world, there's been a lot of conversations on AI and AI at the last final mile. And so in the proposal world, like how is AI changing that proposal world, how the responses are built? Like talk to us a little bit about AI, how you guys incorporate AI, and what what some of the like things people that are looking for this your type of software should be looking out for.

Well, the first place that your mind goes to with AI is like, can it help me answer all these questions, right? It's almost like the obvious place. Can it search through my past RFPs and find the answers that I've given before and then answer answer the questions. And I think that's been the starting point for us for for years.

And and we've been doing AI and proposals since the late 2010s, right? It wasn't generative AI or gentic AI, it was machine learning. Because you need a an AI way to take a question that's asked in a very variable format and go and find an answer in your library or your past RFPs that answers that. So, that's the kind of the number one ground to break.

But where we've seen it play more and more of a role is helping with the peripheral tasks that take up so much time around an RFP. For example, determining whether we should even answer this RFP or not. We call that the bid no bid process. What's our history?

Super important though, right? How much time are we going to waste on this? If any. Critical.

Critical, critical function. So, should we bid on this or shouldn't we bid on this? What's been our historical win rate in this space? Uh, how does this RFP compare to our strengths?

Does it match that or you know, can is it written by a competitor? Uh, so that's one area. Another one is something like, hey, let's uh, there's some lack of clarity in this RFP. Let's go find some clarifying questions that we need to to ask back out there.

AI's graded, writing you a list of clarifying questions because there was ambiguity in the ask, in the original RFP. Um, and then we start to get to some of the kind of exciting agentic things, right? Like if you're responding to an RFP and you need help from a subject matter expert, right? Historically, that's been send an email to a colleague in the in the firm and ask them to answer this question and then bug them like every five minutes.

Have they answered it yet because you've got a deadline? It's one of the most painful parts of any RFP response. Now we have opportunities to kind of pre-gen a lot of the stuff that they might want to say, so they're red lining instead of inventing. To use voice agents to almost interview them on that question.

So instead of them sitting down and typing out a bunch of stuff, they're on a call, we're asking them questions and we're transcribing that and converting that back into an answer. We have the opportunity to capture more of that SME knowledge so that we don't have to ask them that every single time. So, you know, it's those peripheral things that you wouldn't maybe initially jump to, but it drives the cost of those RFPs down significantly and drives the quality output up radically as well to get you to the win. Ray, isn't there a risk of over-automating though?

Sure. There is. How how how how do you balance that? Like how do you balance what human does versus what AI does?

Yeah. That's a question that comes up very frequently with with our customer base is, you know, where's the human in this, where's the AI agent in this? Humans are great with creativity, with judgment, with relationships, with empathy, with all of those elements there. AI is great writing and doing stuff that humans get bored with or don't have the attention to detail around those areas there.

So it's that human in the loop combination of saying, I just wrote this executive summary, but I'd like you to sign that off. Or, hey, can you give me five points that will make this resonate with the with the customer and then I'll write you a first draft and then you review it. So it's that hand off between the agents and the humans, that's uh that's absolutely critical. Because those agents they don't have empathy.

They don't have genuine creativity outside of their specific domain. That part's hard, right? I think everyone with AI struggles with that is where do you have the human nature that needs to come in versus, you know, just using AI and I think we see that whether it's RFPs, whether that is people posting on LinkedIn, whether no matter what it is, I think there's this over-reliance on AI and I I say it a lot, Dale says it even more, um, AI will accelerate the good 100 times over. AI will accelerate the bad 1,000 times over.

Shit in equals shit out. Yep. Totally. Totally, totally, totally.

And that's When you're bet your brand and reputation, as we were kind of talking about in the law firm side of things. Yeah, 100%. Exactly right. But you know the thing that we feel is, when when a when a software sales happening or a law firm sale is taking place there.

What are you what do you want in that transaction? Well, you want to know that someone, some human is going to come and sit across the table from you in your board room, when you're dealing with a litigation issue, and they're going to say to you, you know what, you can trust me, I've got this, I'm going to handle this for you. I understand the problem. I've worked with clients like you before, it was painful, but we're going to handle this.

You also want to know that executing behind the scenes on the kind of the surgical elements of that transaction, that you're going to have a highly accurate AI agent that's going to take care of some of the kind of surgical elements of what needs to be done there, or the production of the content or the documents. So you want the, you want the empathy from the humans in the table, across the table, in the board room, and you want the surgery of the agent to be able to perform some of those kind of very, very specific steps that need to follow from that. 100%. All right.

Let's move to some rapid fire as we come up on almost the 30 minute mark. Here's the rules. You get 10 words or less to answer the question. Every word more than 10, um, is money that Dale has to pay me, so feel free to go as long as you want.

Um, what's the most overrated part of the sales process? Don't get time to think about this this question. But not too long. It's rapid fire.

It's designed to not really give you a whole lot of time. 30 seconds. Yeah, fair enough. Pricing discount conversation.

Oh, I like it. I like it. I like it. That's a good one.

RFP, necessary evil or strategic advantage? Strategic advantage. One. It didn't even hesitate on that one, by the way.

Um, one thing that every proposal should include but usually doesn't. Business value. Love that. Last one as we wrap up.

Dream vacation destination, Ray, where are you going? Where are you bringing Adam? I'm taking Adam to a safari in Africa. That is my dream vacation, so I'm down, Ray.

Let's go. Let's let's go have a good time. We'll uh we'll talk some business, we'll make it a tax write-off. Yeah, perfect.

I love it. Ray, where could people uh learn more about you? Where can people learn more about chorus and how to uh do RFPs the right way? Well, feel free to link in with me.

Otherwise, our website, uh chorusdocs.com, that's chorus with a Q-U-O-R-U-S-D-O-C-S. And uh, yeah, come and visit us at APMP if you're interested in proposals. Awesome.

Awesome. Ray, thank you so much for joining the show, sir. Thank you. Appreciate it, man.

Great. Appreciate you guys. Bye.