Re: How do you charge for drafting a Response to RFP

["Barry Campbell" <barry -dot- campbell -at- gmail -dot- com>]

On 4/14/07, Krishna Raya <vskdraya -at- gmail -dot- com> wrote:

> can someone tell me how a response to RFP should be charged?

> What is the reasonable per-page charge for drafting an RFP response?

Especially if there is project management involved, I would make every
effort to charge an hourly rate (time and materials basis) with a
retainer up front, and scheduled payments at defined internal
milestones and at completion, rather than a flat fee per page.

I manage proposal responses for a living, and the project management
tasks and revision cycle can rapidly eat up both your life and your
effective hourly rate if you work on a flat-fee basis.  If the client
insists on a flat fee, make it a flat fee up to X number of hours/Y
number of changes and quote a rate for all hours/changes beyond that.

How much you can charge depends on a lot of things:

(1) The scope of your responsibilities - are you "just" writing the
response after someone else has figured out the business strategy, set
the project schedule, coordinated with the subject matter experts,
etc., or are you doing some or all of the business and project
management tasks as well?  Will you have graphic artists to help you,
or are you expected to produce graphics as well?

(2) The scope of the proposal effort - how big is the RFP response,
and how tight is the deadline?  (Note: A short response does *not*
necessarily take less time to prepare; a really well-crafted letter
proposal that answers the customer's requirements precisely can take
quite a long time to develop.)  Will you be mostly writing new
material, or will you mostly be re-using existing material to develop
the response?

(3) The going rate in your location for the services you'll be performing.

(4) The going rate in the client's location for the services you'll be
performing.

(5) Your experience with this kind of thing.  Have you written RFP
responses before?  Managed their development?  Did they win and result
in actual orders/closed sales?

- bc

-- 
Barry Campbell -- <barry -dot- campbell -at- gmail -dot- com>
Blog: http://campbell-online.com
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