Marketing Ops Advisor vlog

Stop Wasting Time on RFP Responses That Never Win

Written by Marketing Operations Advisor | Mar 23, 2026 2:18:42 PM

AEC firms sometimes pursue “no-go” projects to stay in front of a client.

Instead of fighting this decision I'm asking you to lean into it and measure these types of pursuits.

I am recommending firms reframe such pursuits with the objective of "being seen" rather than winning, with leadership explicitly agreeing to spend resources for visibility.

In the video, I explain a simplified five-step process:

  1. set a hard time budget in advance and submit whatever is completed when time runs out;

  2. aggressively reuse content from the last two to three similar proposals with minimal tailoring;

  3. assign single ownership with a coordinator/marketing lead, one technical reviewer, and no more than a brief principal review;

  4. skip extensive strategy work while keeping a concise story;

  5. submit then document the effort in the CRM as “relationship maintenance” rather than “win track” to segment results and track relationship impact over time.