Why We Don’t Do RFPs (And Why That’s Good News for Our Clients)
The traditional RFP is a lottery where the odds are stacked against everyone involved. With win rates as low as 4% and a process that treats expert strategy like a generic commodity, the beauty contest model is a losing game. We’re breaking down the math of why we’ve stopped dancing for RFPs to focus on building partnerships that actually last past the pitch.
If you work in marketing, you know the drill. A company needs a new agency, so they blast a 50-page Request for Proposal (RFP) to 20 different firms and wait for the song-and-dance to begin. For agencies, it’s a month of late nights and guesswork. For the client, it’s a mountain of paperwork that all starts to look the same by page ten.
So we’ve decided to stop dancing.
It’s not that we’re afraid of competition. It’s that the traditional RFP process is fundamentally broken for the person who matters most: the client. It’s an expensive, time-consuming way to end up with a vendor you might not even like three years from now.
We aren’t interested in being a 1-in-20 long shot or a line item on a spreadsheet. We want to be a partner, and when you look at the math, it’s easy to see why we’ve traded the pitch for a real conversation.
1. You Deserve a Partner, Not a Lottery Pick
When you send an RFP to a couple dozen firms, you aren’t looking for a partnership; you’re hosting a lottery.
From an agency perspective, a single response takes about 25 hours of high-level strategy, creative energy and project management to get out the door. Even then, the average win rate responding to an RFP — without a prior relationship — is just 4.2%. If someone asked you to invest dozens of hours into a project with a 4% chance of success, you’d show them the door.
This should matter to you for a couple of reasons.
First, Every hour an agency spends guessing what a prospective client wants is an hour they aren’t driving results for their actual clients. We’d rather give 100% to the people who have already hired us.
And second, it’s an open secret that many RFPs are sent just to satisfy procurement. Often, a preferred firm is already picked, and the process is just a formality. We feel the process should be about finding the best fit, not wasting everyone’s time for the sake of a paper trail.
4.2%
of blind RFP responses end in a deal – the rest is just wasted effort
Procurement Cube
2. We Refuse to Commodify Your Success
An RFP is designed to turn marketing into a commodity, like toilet paper or gasoline. It forces every agency into the same box so a buyer can pick the lowest price.
But you can’t spreadsheet creativity or strategy. When the process is built to find the cheapest option as quickly as possible, quality is the first thing to go. Many businesses end up looking for a budget line rather than a real, viable solution. And that’s a disservice to everyone.
As a natural contrarian, I’ve found our best work happens when we can challenge a client’s assumptions and offer a better way. In a rigid RFP, there’s no room for that. You just get what you asked for… even if what you asked for won’t work.
3. Real Strategy Requires a Deep Dive, Not a Test Drive
Most RFPs want the big idea before the agency has even met your team. They ask for free creative and free strategy as a prerequisite for the job.
While that might feel like a good test drive, it’s a waste of time and talent.
Real strategy requires a deep dive into your business needs and specific goals. Without that, you end up with shiny objects that look great on a screen but fall apart in the real world.
Marketing strategy is a professional service, just like legal or accounting advice. You wouldn’t ask a lawyer to argue a spec case for free to see if you liked their style. We value our expertise too much to give it away, and we think you should value your strategy enough to want it done right.
4. Long-Term Relationships Outlast Quick Wins
The marketing industry has a reputation for high turnover, with the average relationship lasting just 3.2 years. Nearly 40% of agencies lose their clients before the two-year mark.
Relationships fail when they start as a transaction. When you hire a vendor based on a snapshot in time, the honeymoon phase of that flashy pitch deck wears off quickly.
- Building for the Long Haul: Only about 26% of agencies keep clients for over five years. We want to be in that group, which requires building trust, not winning a dance-off.
- Chemistry Over Paperwork: Real work is messy and involves hard conversations. You can’t get a feel for that from a written proposal. You get it by sitting across the table and seeing if the cultures and personalities actually click.
- Maintaining Momentum: Every time you fire an agency and start a new RFP, you lose months of momentum and thousands in onboarding costs. We’d rather build something that lasts.
40%
of client-agency relationships don’t make it past the 2-year mark
Agency Analytics
A Better Way to Start
When an RFP lands in our inbox, we usually say this: “We don’t typically respond to traditional RFPs, but we’d love to grab a coffee and actually talk about what you’re trying to achieve.”
It’s an invitation to do things the right way. The data proves this isn’t just theory — agencies that build real relationships years before a project starts see their win rates jump from 4% to 50%. The guessing is over because the chemistry is already there.
By skipping the dog-and-pony show, we get to the stuff that makes you money much faster.
If you’re looking for an agency that values strategy over spreadsheets and partnerships over pitches, let’s talk. No 50-page PDF required.
About the Author
A prominent marketing strategist and nationally recognized thought leader, Grant A. Johnson is president and CEO of Responsory. He is a sought-after public speaker, direct marketing trainer, copywriter, award-winning author and the creator of Direct Branding℠, Responsory’s method for producing sure-fire measurable results.
