Stop Responding to RFPs and Start Forcing a Choice

Most companies treat RFPs like lottery tickets. They pour hours of staff time into lengthy proposals for deals they have roughly a 3% chance of winning. In this direct-to-camera breakdown, the coach behind @tenfoldcoach argues that the entire RFP response cycle is a trap -- one that drains resources, dilutes your brand, and pulls your company toward mediocrity.

The RFP Trap

The only RFP worth pursuing is one that was designed for you to win outright. Every other RFP carries a hidden cost beyond the lost hours: to even compete, you have to customize your offering well past the point where your business can scale. The coach sets the threshold at roughly 20-25% customization. Go beyond that, and you lose the repeatable systems and processes that make you great at what you do. A fully customized engagement is almost impossible to scale because there is nothing standardized left to build on.

Worse, the more you shape your product or service to fit someone else's spec, the more you start to look like your competition. The entire exercise pulls you away from the things that make your company distinct.

Force a Choice, Not a Comparison

The alternative is to take every dollar and hour you would have spent on RFP responses and redirect it toward initiatives that make you unique, valuable, and hard to copy. The goal is a brand that forces a choice rather than inviting a comparison. When a potential customer encounters your company, the reaction should be immediate: "This is for me" or "This is not for me." That filter is a feature. It attracts your ideal customers and repels the ones who would grind down your margins anyway.

The coach credits this framing to Christopher Lochhead, host of the Follow Your Different podcast and co-author of Play Bigger. The core idea: occupy a unique and valuable position in the mind of the consumer. If you think back to the classic price-quality-speed triangle, you stand for one of those three things, not all three. You will lose some non-ideal customers because of that clarity. You will gain far more of the customers who actually matter.

The Organizational Cost

Beyond strategy, the RFP habit creates organizational discipline problems. Growth initiatives get deprioritized every time a new RFP lands. Teams get pulled off long-term projects to spend hours assembling a response document for a deal that is statistically unlikely to close. Over time, this cycle trains the entire company to be reactive instead of building toward something durable.

Key Takeaways

• The only good RFP is one designed for you to win. Every other RFP is a resource drain with roughly a 3% hit rate.
• Customizing beyond 20-25% of your core offering makes scaling extremely difficult. Full customization kills repeatability.
• Chasing RFPs makes you look like your competition. The more you bend to someone else's spec, the less differentiated you become.
• Redirect RFP time and budget toward building a unique, valuable market position that forces a choice instead of inviting a comparison.
• Stand for one thing in the customer's mind -- price, quality, or speed -- and accept that clarity will filter out non-ideal buyers.
• Credit for the "force a choice, not a comparison" framework goes to Christopher Lochhead (Play Bigger, Follow Your Different).