Everyone involved in any aspect of RFP submissions, from proposal managers to the SMEs and beyond, knows how time-consuming and hair-pulling completing an RFP can be. In fact, according to our 9th Annual Proposal Management Benchmark Survey, in 2024, the majority of respondents took between 6 and 10 days to complete an RFP response, spending an average of 9.3 days on the request.
Here's the (sad) kicker: completion time appears to be trending longer, with the 2024 and 2023 levels both greater than nine days, on average—up from an average of six business days in 2022 and seven days in 2021. Yet, over half of survey respondents noted a YoY increase in pitch volume.
Change is Needed
Simply put, to win more RFP proposals and land more clients, something has got to give. So, what’s an over-scheduled, over-stressed and overwhelmed proposal professional to do?
If our latest report is any indication… embrace AI proposal management software. Leaders say they feel the pressure to boost AI adoption. McKinsey reported that in 2024, 65% of respondents said that their organizations are regularly using GenAI, nearly double the percentage from a previous survey just 10 months previous.
Survey Says…
When it comes to RFP management software, things seem to be moving a little more slowly. A full 38% of those surveyed have not yet deployed GenAI to fuel their proposal process!
As competition intensifies and organizations seek to streamline their operations, the demand for smarter, faster RFP solutions has never been greater. So, how can AI RFP software help you land more clients and have a direct impact on company revenue? Let’s dive in.
How to Land Clients & Boost the Bottom Line with AI
With the ability to extract, summarize, compose, format, and design content, GenAI is a gamechanger for proposal and business development teams. Our survey found that organizations are loving GenAI for driving efficiency, ease-of-use, and optimized performance across a variety of content-related tasks.
The 9th Annual Proposal Management Benchmark Survey outlined several of the ways proposal teams are taking advantage of GenAI to win more business. You can use AI RFP proposal software to:
-
Prioritize Opportunities Strategically
Not all RFPs are created equal. But time is ticking away while you decide manually which opportunities are a better fit. Savvy proposal teams can now use AI-driven RFP software to prioritize the ones that have a higher chance of success. This brings a concentrated focus, enabling teams to allocate resources more accurately, improve their odds of landing the sale, and reduce wasted time.
-
Respond Faster with AI RFP Software
As we noted in a previous post, proposal teams grapple with wrangling and creating content. Traditional RFP responses take hours and hours to complete, and that doesn’t even consider the time spent hunting down previous responses, talking to SMEs, editing and formatting. Our survey showed that proposal teams are using GenAI for:
-
Researching and summarizing content (46%).
-
Writing copy blocks (40%), executive summaries (36%), and bios (28%).
-
Answering questions in an RFP (34%).
With an AI-driven solution, it takes mere minutes to extract info from the RFP and generate tailored responses that are in sync with the specific requirements. It means that no money is left on the table, and scaling responses is now possible.
-
-
Improve Response Quality
Our survey also showed that 14% of respondents were using GenAI for quality assurance – from ensuring the best responses to guaranteeing a polished and error-free submission. (More on that second part next.) Here’s a neat trick: you can use AI to analyze past RFP responses and bid outcomes to help inform you on what worked and what didn’t. By using the highest quality responses that have had previous success, you immediately up the odds of winning the RFP.
-
Minimize the Mundane
We all make mistakes and do our best to catch them. Despite that, troublesome grammatical errors, little typos and inconsistent tone and voice eat away at the credibility of the proposal. This is where AI can be your new best friend. It’s like having an editor on demand, as AI can quickly spot any of these issues that may have been missed with manual proofing. Not only that, but AI RFP software can also make suggestions to help improve readability, clarity and persuasiveness. An error-free, more compelling RFP submission goes a long way to making the short-list and then winning the account.
Get a Competitive Edge
Your organization might be sitting on a wealth of knowledge without even knowing it! Using the right tools, data insights can be extracted and analyzed directly from RFP responses and proposals, resulting in better business decisions, more streamlined operations, and increased revenue. QorusDocs equips your team with:
-
Data insights about winning content, supporting critical deals and opportunities.
-
The ability to easily assemble, create and proofread content.
-
Customer and prospect intelligence, such as what’s read, clicked, and shared within your RFP responses and proposals.
-
A full view of content shared, how often, in what sales situations, and win rate.
-
An increase in proposal (and sales) velocity, for more productivity and profit.
To explore these key takeaways in greater depth and discover more actionable insights to help you boost the performance of your response process, check out the complete 9th Annual Proposal Management Benchmark Survey.
If you are looking to increase sales in your organization, take a look at how leveraging AI can be a gamechanger and let us show you how our AI-driven RFP software can help.
