RFP RESPONSE INSIGHTS
How to Evaluate Your RFP Response Before Submission: 7 Questions That Reveal Weak Win Positioning
By Informed Pursuit
You've completed the required sections, collected input from subject matter experts, and assembled the proposal. But before you submit, there's a more important question than whether every field has been filled in:
Does your response give the buyer a compelling reason to choose you?
A strong RFP response must do more than satisfy requirements. It should connect the buyer's priorities to your proposed approach, demonstrate relevant proof, and explain why that approach matters.
The following seven questions can help your team evaluate its response before submission.
1. Does the response address what the buyer actually values?
Start with the original RFP, not the draft proposal.
Identify the buyer's stated objectives, evaluation criteria, required outcomes, and any evidence of priorities in the solicitation.
Then ask whether those priorities are visible in the response.
A technically accurate answer may still fail to explain why the proposed solution matters to the buyer.
Check: For each major evaluation area, can you point to a clear explanation of the buyer benefit?
2. Is your differentiation specific and defensible?
Statements such as "experienced team," "high-quality service," and "customer-focused approach" are easy for competitors to make.
Effective differentiation explains what is meaningfully distinct, why it is relevant to this buyer, and what evidence supports the claim.
Check: If your company name were removed from the response, would the most important claims still sound distinctive?
If not, the proposal may need stronger positioning.
3. Are your most important claims supported by evidence?
Evaluators need more than assurances.
Relevant examples, measured outcomes, implementation details, documented capabilities, and appropriately scoped client experience can help a buyer judge whether your claims are credible.
The best supporting evidence connects directly to the requirement or concern it is intended to address.
Check: Can a reviewer identify the evidence behind each major promise without searching through unrelated material?
4. Does the response explain your proposed approach clearly?
A long description of capabilities does not necessarily explain how work will be delivered.
The response should make relevant responsibilities, implementation steps, timelines, assumptions, and operating decisions understandable.
Where appropriate, process diagrams, timelines, or concise comparison tables can make the approach easier to evaluate.
Check: Could a buyer explain how you intend to deliver the promised outcomes after reading the response?
5. Is the strategic message consistent across sections?
Complex proposals often contain contributions from sales, operations, technical teams, finance, and leadership.
Without a shared positioning strategy, sections may describe different priorities, use inconsistent terminology, or emphasize capabilities that don't support the central case.
Check: Can you identify two or three consistent themes that appear throughout the response and are relevant to the buyer's decision?
6. Have you separated compliance from persuasion?
Compliance is essential. Missing a mandatory requirement can make an otherwise strong proposal unacceptable.
But completing required forms and addressing every question does not automatically make a response compelling.
A useful final review examines both dimensions:
- Compliance: Have we satisfied the RFP's instructions and mandatory requirements?
- Positioning: Have we made a relevant, credible, and differentiated case?
Check: Has your team reviewed these two dimensions separately?
A positioning review should complement—not replace—an appropriate compliance check.
7. Can an evaluator quickly understand why your company should win?
Evaluators may review multiple responses under time constraints.
Important differentiators and supporting evidence should be visible where they matter, rather than buried in lengthy company descriptions or generic introductions.
Review your executive summary and major response sections from the buyer's perspective.
Check: Can you summarize the central reason to choose your organization in two or three specific, evidence-supported sentences?
If the answer is unclear, the proposal's strategic message may need refinement.
A practical final-review exercise
Before submission, bring together the pursuit owner and reviewers who understand the buyer's requirements.
For each of the seven questions:
- Identify the relevant RFP requirement or buyer priority.
- Locate the corresponding response content.
- Mark the area as strong, needs improvement, or unclear.
- Assign any required revisions to an owner.
- Recheck the response after revisions are made.
Treat this as a structured editorial exercise, not as a statistically validated score or prediction of award probability.
When an outside perspective helps
Teams that have worked on a response for weeks may find it difficult to recognize unclear positioning, generic claims, or gaps between their intent and what the document actually communicates.
An outside review can help identify these issues before submission.
Want a fresh perspective on your RFP response?
Informed Pursuit’s Free Win Positioning Score provides eligible organizations with a concise assessment of buyer alignment, differentiation, evidence, and strategic clarity.
The score is AI-assisted and human-reviewed. It requires an active RFP and a substantially complete draft response, but no documents are needed for the initial request.