What Makes a Good RFP? Diagnose Yours by the Bids It Draws
A good RFP produces comparable bids from qualified vendors at prices close to your budget. When it doesn't, the document caused it - and each failure points at a specific defect. Here's how to read your own responses as a diagnostic, and what to fix before the next solicitation goes out.
A good RFP produces comparable bids from qualified vendors at prices close to what you budgeted. That is the whole test. If the bids that come back are wildly different from each other, priced nowhere near your estimate, or submitted by firms that clearly cannot do the work, the document caused it - not the market. The useful thing about those failures is that each one points at a specific, fixable defect in the solicitation.
How Do You Know If Your RFP Was Well Written?
Read the responses, not the document. A handful of symptoms show up reliably, and each has a narrow set of causes:
| Symptom | What it usually means | What to fix next time |
|---|---|---|
| A flood of vendor questions | The scope is ambiguous or internally contradictory | Have someone outside the project read the draft cold and list what they cannot answer |
| Prices spread across a huge range | Bidders are pricing different amounts of work | Specify quantities, service levels and assumptions; give a pricing template |
| Prices all far above budget | The requirement is bigger than you think, or your estimate was stale | Do market research before drafting; consider phasing the scope |
| Proposed staff lack the skills | You described tasks but never stated qualifications | State minimum experience and certifications as requirements, and score them |
| Wildly different delivery timelines | Milestones and dependencies were left implicit | Publish the milestones you need and let vendors price against them |
| Very few bids at all | Too little notice, too narrow advertising, or terms nobody will accept | Lengthen the window, widen the posting, and reconsider one-sided terms |
Why Do You Get Buried in Vendor Questions?
Because bidders are pricing risk, and ambiguity is risk. Every question you receive is a place where a vendor could not tell what you wanted and had to choose between guessing high, guessing low, or asking. The ones who ask are doing you a favor; the ones who guess are the reason your price spread is enormous. A question period is not a sign of failure - some questions are inevitable and healthy - but a hundred questions on a modest scope means the document was not finished when it was published. The cheapest fix is a cold read: hand the draft to a colleague with no involvement in the project and ask them to price it. Everything they cannot answer is a question you were about to receive.
Why Are the Prices All Over the Place?
Almost always because bidders are pricing different amounts of work. If you ask for "website maintenance" without stating how many pages, how many hours, what response time and who supplies the hosting, you will get quotes that differ by a factor of five and none of them are comparable. Two changes fix most of it: state the quantities and service levels explicitly, and require pricing in a template you supply, so every bid arrives in the same shape. If you cannot state the quantities because you genuinely do not know them, say so and ask for unit rates instead of a lump sum. That is an honest requirement; a vague one is not.
Find the bid that fits.Search Bid BananaWhy Did the Wrong Vendors Apply?
Because you described the work but never described who is allowed to do it. Tasks attract anyone who can read; qualifications filter. If the job requires a licensed engineer, five years of comparable work or a specific certification, say so as a minimum requirement and score against it - a scope of work alone will not keep unqualified firms out. The mirror-image problem is worth watching too: requirements written so tightly that only the incumbent can meet them will keep everyone out, and in public procurement that is the kind of thing that draws a bid protest. Aim for the narrowest set of qualifications that genuinely predicts success, and be able to justify each one.
What Makes an RFP Easy to Bid On?
The same things that make it easy to evaluate. State the evaluation criteria and their weights up front, so bidders spend their effort where you will actually be scoring. Ask for the sections in the order you will read them. Give page limits that leave room to answer what you asked - a five-page cap on a scope with twelve technical questions guarantees thin answers. Put every date in one place. And answer questions in writing to all bidders simultaneously, which is both fairer and cheaper than answering the same thing eight times. A well-specified scope of work does most of this work on its own.
What Should You Change Before the Next One?
Keep the question log. It is the single most useful artifact your process produces and almost nobody saves it. Every question you were asked marks an ambiguity, and the same ambiguities recur across solicitations because they come from your templates rather than from any one project. Reviewing that log before you draft the next RFP - alongside the range your bids came in at, and what the evaluation panel struggled to score - will improve the next document more than any amount of rewriting from scratch.
See What Good Solicitations Look Like
The fastest way to calibrate your own document is to read live ones from comparable organizations, including the ones drawing plenty of bidders. Search open RFPs on Bid Banana.
Frequently asked questions
What makes a good RFP?▼
A good RFP produces comparable bids from qualified vendors at prices close to your budget. That means an unambiguous scope with stated quantities and service levels, minimum qualifications that filter out firms who cannot do the work, evaluation criteria and weights published up front, a pricing template so bids arrive in the same shape, and enough time for good vendors to respond.
How do you know if your RFP was well written?▼
Judge it by the responses. A flood of questions means the scope was ambiguous. A huge price spread means bidders priced different amounts of work. Proposals from unqualified firms mean you described tasks but never stated qualifications. Very few bids at all usually means too little notice, too narrow advertising, or contract terms vendors will not accept.
Why do vendors ask so many questions about an RFP?▼
Because ambiguity is risk, and bidders have to price it. Every question marks a place where a vendor could not tell what you wanted and had to choose between guessing high, guessing low, or asking. Some questions are healthy, but a large volume on a modest scope means the document was published unfinished. A cold read by an uninvolved colleague catches most of them first.
Why are the bid prices so different from each other?▼
Because bidders are pricing different amounts of work. Asking for a service without stating quantities, service levels, response times or who supplies what produces quotes that differ several times over and cannot be compared. State the quantities explicitly and require pricing in a template you supply. If you genuinely do not know the volumes, ask for unit rates instead.
How do you stop unqualified vendors from bidding?▼
State minimum qualifications, not just tasks. Licenses, years of comparable work and specific certifications belong in the solicitation as requirements you will score against. A scope of work alone attracts anyone who can read it. Keep the qualifications to the narrowest set that genuinely predicts success, since requirements written so tightly that only the incumbent qualifies invite protests.