RFPs Explained: The Ins & Outs of A 'Request for Proposal', and Why Many Creatives Avoid Them

Erin Ratliff
Feb 3
6 min read

Updated: May 29

There are few business acronyms capable of triggering simultaneous anxiety, exhaustion, and skepticism quite like three little letters: RFP. Short for 'Request for Proposal', an RFP is a formal document organizations use to solicit bids from vendors, consultants, agencies, contractors, or service providers for a specific project or initiative.

In theory, RFPs exist to create fairness, transparency, and structure. In practice, they often become bloated procurement exercises that prioritize price comparisons over strategic thinking, collaboration, or long-term partnership.

And increasingly, RFP-style thinking has leaked into hiring, marketing, creative services, and consulting in ways that create transactional, extractive dynamics rather than healthy working relationships.

When you reduce valuable creative work to an act of commodity bidding, you compress deeply relational and strategic work into rigid checkboxes and ultimately undermine the quality of the final outcomes.

What Is an RFP?

An RFP (Request for Proposal) is essentially a company saying: “Here is our project/needs. Tell us how you would approach it, what it would cost, and why we should choose you.”

Organizations typically issue RFPs when they need:

Marketing or branding services: Website development, Branding, Public Relations
Software implementation
Consulting
Event production
Architecture or construction
Government contracts
Enterprise-level services

The company sends the same document to multiple vendors, who then submit proposals competing for the work.

Bottom line: Strategists, writers, designers, and marketers need to be compensated fairly for their labor, insight, and value they provide. RFPs are a disservice to these qualified professionals.

The best outcomes happen when businesses and organizations evaluate not only cost, but also communication, expertise, adaptability, and long-term fit.

What an RFP Typically Includes

The typical RFP process looks something like this:

Opportunity is published and released
Vendors review requirements and specifications
Proposals are submitted
Responses are evaluated
A contractor is selected

A standard RFP often contains:

Company Background: Who the organization is and what they do.
Project Overview:The problem they want solved.
Scope of Work: Deliverables, timelines, expectations, and technical requirements.
Budget or Budget Range: Sometimes disclosed. Often mysteriously omitted.
Submission Requirements: What vendors/applicants must provide:
- Portfolio
- Pricing
- Timeline
- Team bios
- Case studies
- Strategic recommendations
- Sample work
Evaluation Criteria: How proposals will be judged.
Deadlines: Submission timelines and project launch expectations.

Writing a Strong Proposal

Strong RFP responses typically include:

Relevant experience and qualifications
Clear methodology and strategy
Timeline and deliverables
Transparent pricing
Required compliance documents

“Partnership is not about scale. It’s about fit.”

When RFPs Make Sense

RFPs are intended to create transparency, competition, and consistency when selecting vendors. They’re commonly used by government agencies, nonprofits, and large corporations. In the following contexts, they are necessary and useful.

Government & Public Sector Work: Many public institutions are legally required to issue RFPs to ensure fairness and accountability with taxpayer funds.
Large-Scale Enterprise Projects: Complex projects involving compliance, procurement, legal review, and multiple stakeholders may require formal bidding processes.
Clearly Defined Commodity Services: If the work is highly standardized and comparable across vendors, RFPs can help organizations evaluate options efficiently. Examples:
Office equipment, Uniform printing, Standardized software licensing, Facilities maintenance
Risk Management & Documentation: RFPs create paper trails, scope clarity, and formal procurement records.

"The most expensive project is the one you have to do twice.”

Where RFPs Start to Break Down

The biggest problem with most RFPs is that they assume the client already knows exactly what they need. But often, they don’t. And that’s precisely why they need to hire an expert in the first place.

Many RFPs focus heavily on:

Deliverables
Timelines
Technical requirements
Pricing

But skip the most important question: Why are we doing this in the first place?

This creates a dangerous dynamic where vendors are treated like fulfillment engines rather than strategic partners.

The result? Companies end up evaluating who delivered the prettiest document, who bid the lowest price, or who promised the fastest turnaround.

All of those factors matter, but you must also consider the reality of who ultimately understands the business problem, the risks and benefits of decisions, and who can guide strategy effectively.

"Procurement without strategy is just shopping.”

Why Creative Professionals Often Dislike RFPs

Many experienced consultants, marketers, designers, and strategists avoid RFPs entirely, for a few understandable reasons, because RFPS are known for:

Front-Loading Massive Amounts of Unpaid Labor: Detailed proposals, mockups, strategy recommendations, timelines, audits, and creative concepts may take dozens of hours before any relationship exists.
Encouraging Spec Work: Some companies unintentionally crowdsource free ideas from multiple agencies without hiring any of them.
Reducing Expertise to Pricing: When proposals are compared side-by-side, strategic nuance often gets flattened into spreadsheets.
Creating Misaligned Incentives: Vendors feel pressure to underbid, overpromise, or simplify complexities just to win.
Filter Out the Best Partners: The most experienced agencies are often too busy to participate in lengthy procurement competitions.

The outcome: RFPs can attract vendors who need work — not necessarily vendors who are best suited for the work.

“The cost of anything is the amount of life you exchange for it.”

Henry David Thoreau

Toxic Hiring Practices

Recently, many companies have begun treating job candidates like vendors. Instead of normal interviews, applicants are asked to:

create detailed strategy decks,
complete unpaid projects,
build mock campaigns,
write extensive proposals,
or essentially audition for the role.

This creates what many people call “RFP-style hiring.”

And candidates increasingly resent it because employment is supposed to be relational — not purely transactional.

A healthy job description says: “Here’s who we are. Here’s the role. Let’s see if we’re aligned.”, while an RFP-style hiring process says: “Prove your value before we invest anything in you.”

This dynamic naturally obscures compensation, creates power imbalances, and filters out experienced professionals with healthy boundaries.

Inexperienced, ineffective leaders are often concerned with timing, cost, and output rather than risk asssessnent and longterm value.

Questions Every Good RFP Should Ask

One of the biggest failures of traditional RFPs is that they focus on outputs rather than obstacles.

If you must issue an RFP, ask questions that uncover operational realities:

Where have similar projects stalled before?
What compliance steps slow implementation?
Who owns approvals internally?
What happens if timelines shift?
What resources are already committed?
What would failure realistically look like?
If the pilot is inconclusive, what happens next?
Where could this realistically fail?
What dependencies could delay progress?
Who actually owns approvals?
What happens if the strategy underperforms?
What internal bottlenecks already exist?

These questions shift the conversation from a capitalist patriarchal mindset of “Who’s cheapest?” to a healthier, more supportive procurement mindset of “Who can produce the best outcome with the least risk?”

“If you think it’s expensive to hire a professional, wait until you hire an amateur.”

Why Agile Work and RFPs Often Clash

Traditional RFPs are rigid and assume projects can be fully scoped upfront. This unintentionally forces 'waterfall thinking' where everything is predetermined before meaningful collaboration begins.

The result?

scope creep,
resentment,
unrealistic timelines,
bloated deliverables,
and disappointing outcomes.

The thing is, modern creative marketing and digital work is rarely linear. Strong strategy evolves through a dynamic process of discovery, iteration, testing, feedback, and adapting to market shifts and changing business conditions.

“The bitterness of poor quality remains long after the sweetness of low price is forgotten.”

Better Alternatives to Traditional RFPs

An RFP typically evaluates both strategy and cost. Instead of jumping directly into formal procurement, many organizations now use:

Discovery Projects: A smaller paid engagement to assess fit before larger commitments.
Strategy Workshops: Collaborative planning sessions before defining scope.
RFIs (Request for Information): Used to gather background and expertise before formal bidding.
RFQ (Request for Quotation): focuses mainly on pricing
Referral-Based Partner Selection: Choosing vendors through trusted recommendations and relational vetting.
Pilot Engagements: Testing collaboration through a smaller initiative first.

These approaches often produce stronger outcomes because they prioritize communication,

alignment, strategic thinking, and trust.

“Price is what you pay. Value is what you get.”

Warren Buffett

What Fair Pricing Actually Looks Like

One major challenge in RFPs is unrealistic budgeting and time allocation.

For example: A company may allocate $10,000 but then issue a massive marketing RFP with

cross-channel strategy
SEO
branding
copywriting
paid ads
analytics
social media
email campaigns
and so much more

While that lump sum may sound enticing emotionally, in professional services it disappears quickly.

A competent freelance marketer charging $75–$150/hour would deliver approximately 65–130 hours of work at that budget.

That’s enough for a focused project, campaign, audit, or short-term engagement in one area, but likely not enough for a full multi-channel strategy and execution ecosystem.

That also doesn't include research and discovery phase of onboarding and collaboration.

Low-budget RFPs on massive scopes often lead to underdelivery, change orders, burnout, rushed work, or project failure. If you're offered that situation, RUN!

The Real Shift Happening

Businesses are increasingly trying to commoditize expertise, but the most valuable consultants, strategists, marketers, designers, and advisors are not selling time alone.

They are selling lived experience, pattern recognition, discernment, strategic thinking, systems awareness, and the ability to prevent expensive mistakes.

The best partnerships are collaborative and long-term, not quick and extractive.

The best projects begin not with asking "who understands the problem well enough to help us solve it sustainably", not simply "who can do this the cheapest and fastest?

Lastly, the best outcomes often happen when organizations evaluate not only cost, but also communication, expertise, adaptability, and long-term fit.

That distinction changes everything.

Ready to elevate your brand, clarify your message, and create marketing that actually connects? Let’s work together in a gentle, aligned way to build a strategy rooted in authenticity, creativity, and sustainable growth.