Outsource It!

Evaluating Proposals

As many as 50 percent of submitted proposals will fail your expectations. Some poor proposals demonstrate the vendor’s lack of attention to detail or inability to meet core requirements, some illustrate a confrontational nature, and some contain too much “we’ll tell you exactly what you want to hear” instead of any meaningful content.

Chances are you’ll still have a reasonable number of proposals to consider. My general rule of thumb is to exit the evaluation process with no fewer than two and no more than five vendors to select from. Picking the three best proposals from a list of ten decent ones can be challenging, but thanks to the wonders of spreadsheets, you won’t need to flip a coin or write a PhD thesis. I use an ...