It's amazing how those three little letters can turn into a such a large undertaking.
They stand for Request for Proposal. It's a common idea throughout the various business industries, but what I'm most familiar with is the way it works in the marketing business.
Say you're a company that either wants to switch marketing partners or simply start doing so. You can select your partner agency in a number of ways, but two of the most common ones involve 1) interviewing a handful or 2) sending out an RFP.
One of the larger insurance firms in Indiana recently went through this process. They created their RFP, which contained a series of questions and requests (What are your firm's operating policies and values? How do your account teams manage communication with your clients?), and they sent that to the top agencies in Indianapolis. We then chose to respond, so we had about a month to put together our proposal.
It can sound simple up front, but it often is a big project. You want to do your very best, because it's your opportunity to win a bit of new business. And as a creative marketing agency, we couldn't just type our response in a Word document and send it off. Instead, we chose to use our staff design talent and really dress it up.
By the time we were done, I'm guessing a dozen different people worked on this proposal. Now? We keep our fingers crossed and wait for the email that says we've made it through to the next round of selections.
Whew!
Camera: Canon 40D, 1/60s, f/4 at ISO 1600
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