Buying RFP Software is easy. Getting people to use it? That’s the big battle.

"Respond to RFPs faster and more efficiently so you can bid more."

This or similar claims by software vendors has been a pet hate of mine for years. But I've realised part of the problem is this message isn't meant for me or any bid and proposal professional. It's meant for the decision-making executives who might buy the product. And what they want to hear is growth, efficiency, ROI.

The problem is getting Executive Buy-In is one thing but getting Everyday Buy-In is a whole different problem. Because selling RFP software is a two-stage game: First, you sell the vision to decision-makers. Then, you need to sell a better everyday reality to the people who'll actually have to work with it.

But those two audiences want completely different things.

Selling the Vision to Decision Makers

Executives want to hear how a new tool will be an investment in their business. It will make revenue grow, reduce costs, increase profitability, expand market share, improve customer experience or mitigate risk. Or, to put it another way: better bids, faster, more efficiently, so you can bid more, improve quality, and increase compliance. Sound familiar?

It's easy to see how speeding up the bid function can directly correlate with business success. RFPs now influence over a third of company revenue, submission volumes are climbing, and top teams are leaning into tech to gain a competitive edge.

The Executive decision becomes simple: by making bid teams faster, RFP software pays for itself in the time it takes to write "Autonomous AI Agents". That's why we're seeing an escalating arms race of Time to First Draft claims. But any bid professional knows the time to first draft is completely, utterly, laughably meaningless!

No one ever won a bid because they wrote their first draft first!

Technology Won’t Work... Unless Your Team Believes in It

"Faster and more efficient" doesn't motivate bid professionals. Not really. Especially if the implication is we can be made to bid more or with fewer resources or with less reliance on our hard-won skills.

Bid teams are famously (or is it infamously? You decide.) permastressed by unreasonable expectations with unrealistic deadlines. But we do it anyway. And we do it in the way that works for us because, honestly, if we were to stop for one minute to try a new approach the whole thing would collapse. Or so it feels.

We're too busy answering RFPs today to worry about how tomorrow could be easier. The last thing we want is more speed and efficiency. We're going as fast as we can while still delivering high quality, winning outputs. And you want us to go faster and bid more?

Right now you might be wondering what's happened to the BidGeek Darrell: the dazzlingly handsome, relentlessly upbeat advocate for bid technology, RFP software, and AI-powered proposals. Don't worry, I haven't had an epiphany and repented my techie ways. I still believe technology can help us bid better, inspire more creativity, and improve our wellbeing.

We're just hearing the wrong messaging for the wrong audience.

Winning the Hearts, Minds and Habits of Users

So, how do you sell that "better everyday reality" to the people who will use the technology? Well, what users need to hear is very different from the vision sold to executives. They need to hear how it will make their job easier, how they'll be able to find the right answer first time, how they'll be able to spend more time on the parts of their jobs they enjoy, and how it will help them make their bids better, smarter, and more human.

Talk to their day-to-day pain. Talk about saving them from the dictatorship of bid tracker spreadsheets and out of control version control. Make it relatable because you're replacing not just old manual processes, but years of ingrained memory and a whole lot of DIY heroism. Honour that.

It's all very well to trot out phrases like Work Smarter Not Harder but you have to mean it. Too often what happens in practice is Work Smarter so you can Work Harder. It doesn't have to be like that. It shouldn't be like that.

How then can we change the messaging for the bid team audience? Well, we could start by addressing some of the biggest stressors in bids. Repeated surveys* have found our biggest challenges are:

• Collaborating with SMEs (48%) and difficulty getting input from multiple subject matter experts (48%)
• Finding up-to-date, accurate answers (39%) or choosing the best answer from a group (30%) or overwhelming volume of siloed and scattered information (46%)
• Having bandwidth to answer all the RFPs we can bid on (31%) or too few resources to effectively handle the volume of requests (50%)
• Feeling overworked (82%) and burnout among team members (31%)
• Time wasted providing sales team members with ad hoc answers (67%)

These are all real challenges where bid technology can have a huge positive impact. But it's not about going faster, being more efficient, and bidding more. It's a different message. It's about being easier, offloading tasks for automation, and empowering others.

Of course bid professionals are going to welcome ways to save time. If we can speed up the dull and boring parts of the process, count me in! But, as I've said before, saving time is really a feature of bid tech. It doesn't become a benefit until we decide what to do with that time. If we're just going to bid more then what's the point?

My neighbour recently bought himself a new petrol lawnmower and he can cut his grass in half the time. Imagine if I told him he can now mow my lawn too!

(If it was a ride-on lawnmower I'd offer to cut his lawn for him because that looks like great fun. But it isn't, so I won't.)

I'd love to save time in bidding but I want to spend it making bids better, more human, and more fun.

Technology is nothing without people

Investing in RFP software is a really simple and obvious decision with a clear return on investment (much like buying a ride-on lawnmower). The tricky bit is deciding which software (much like buying a ride-on lawnmower). But deploying software so you can simply bid more is a false return (like buying a ride-on lawnmower but now you mow everyone's lawns). Instead, let's use technology to free bid professionals from boring tasks, inspire them to be more creative, or even just allow them to relax a little (exactly like buying a ride-on lawnmower!)

Buying software is easy. Getting people to love using it? That's the real return on investment.

*2025 RFP Response Trends & Benchmarks Report and 2024 State of Strategic Response Management Report