LeapComp - Sales Performance Management Blog

A lot of my readers end up on LeapComp looking for information about various vendors. I presume this is because they are considering getting a sales performance management solution at some point. In the next few posts I will discuss the vendor selection process, and I will address the following topics:

1. Creating a good Request for Proposal (RFP)
2. Creating a shortlist of vendors to be considered
3. Getting the most out of sales performance management vendor’s demos / Proof-Of-Concepts / Interviews
4. Conducing reference calls
5. Negotiation
6. Getting help

Let’s look at the first topic; creating a good RFP.

Creating a Request for Proposal (RFP)
A Request for Proposal (RFP) is a document inviting companies, in this case SPM software vendors, to submit a proposal. The RFP includes many sections including the project definition, the project requirements (functional and technical), vendor questions, an explanation of the selection process, scoring process, etc. The quality and completeness of the proposals will only be as good as the information provided in the RFP, so it’s important to get this document right!

Before even starting to write an RFP, make sure you understand your business needs, business and technical requirements.  I wrote a scenario about the importance of getting the requirements right, which is relevant again.

Organizations often have an RFP template which they use for every RFP they send out. These templates will include common information such as a letter of invitation, instructions to bidders, a common glossary, and other forms. If you do not have such common template, you should look at various examples, and pick which sections you want. Many places on the web have “sample RFPs”.  Here is an RFP gold mine, containing all Canadian’s government issued RFPs.  They are not specific to SPM, but they can provide some good ideas.

Requirements and vendor’s questions

Formulating good requirements, and good questions for the vendors, is key to ensure the “winning solution” is the best fit for your organization.  After all, you don’t want this winner to not meet one of your “must-have” requirements which was left out of the RFP.  Secondly, what could be the best system for one company is not necessarily the best for yours.

Asking questions such as “The product must be able to calculate commissions accurately”, or “The product must be robust”, is bad.  Why?  Because this is the type of questions every vendor will answer “yes”.  Not only is it important to ask questions specific to your needs, it is important to ask questions which will distinguish vendors from each other.

Specific must-have yes-or-no questions could be “The solution must be able to support multiple calendars”, “the solution shall be hosted in a data center with a SAS 70 accreditation” or “the solution shall be able to integrate with SAP without significant configuration”, are examples of questions which may be important to you, and which not all vendors may be able to check “yes” so easily.  In general, most yes-no questions will be answered by “yes”.  That’s why RFP for packaged solutions often add other answer options such as Supported,Modifications, 3rd Party, Customization, In the future and not supported. I would also recommend leaving space for vendor’s to add comments on that spreadsheet.

When scoring the RFPs, relying on these answers will give very similar scores.  That’s why essay-type questions are often preferable, and can be a good complement to those questions.

Questions such as “Describe how your organization supports customers and resolves issues” will give a better picture of what the vendor has to offer compared to asking the question “can resolve issues in a timely manner”.  Essay questions will also make the scoring more time consuming and potentially more subjective.
When formulating questions, first think about major categories such as compensation, technical, organization, etc.  Keeping your specific needs, requirements and current challenges in mind, write questions related to each of those categories.

So you get the idea, the proposals will often be pretty large documents.  That’s why my next post will focus on short-listing SPM vendors.