Congratulations! You’ve decided to send out a website RFP.
It’s a huge undertaking, building a new site. And since going from day one to launch can take several months, it only makes sense that you’d want to get that RFP out there as soon as possible, right?
Solid plan. Except for one seemingly minor oversight that’s pretty much guaranteed to throw a wrench into all that efficiency you were hoping to achieve:
You didn’t include discovery.
So you skipped discovery.
What’s the worst that could happen?
When organizations skip this critical step and jump straight to publishing the RFP, they’re effectively manifesting the worst-case scenario. Sadly, we’ve seen this happen countless times.
Here’s what it looks like:
The RFP makes its way around your organization. Along the way, every interest-holder gets to add all the items on their website wishlist.
By the time it’s published, instead of a focused plan with clear objectives and priorities that gives potential vendors an accurate picture of what you really need, your RFP has become a collected work of assumptions and disparate desires. A proverbial shopping cart filled with conflicting priorities, bloated requirements and a scope that’s disconnected from real outcomes.
Naturally, the proliferation of AI has only made the problem worse.
AI is great at generating ideas. But it doesn’t know your priorities, your constraints or what will actually drive value for your organization. So it tends to produce everything, instead of the right things.
The inevitable result?
The vendors have questions. Lots of them.
Many are repetitive (albeit slightly varied) versions of the same question. You end up answering hundreds of questions just to clarify what the project actually is. It’s time-consuming and often frustrating for your team.
This is not what you were hoping for.
Start with discovery, not the RFP
Preventing the chaos we’ve described above is just one reason why we strongly advocate for a discovery-first approach.
That means working with a partner to run discovery to help you clearly define the essentials:
- your goals
- your audiences
- your key user pathways
- and most importantly, your scope
Once you have clarity on these, then you can write and publish an RFP that sets everyone up to succeed.
What changes with a discovery-first approach
When you lead with discovery, everything tightens up. You have exactly what a focused RFP needs:
- a defined strategy
- aligned interest-holders
- a prioritized, realistic scope
You’re no longer asking agencies to help you figure out the problem. You’re asking them to execute a clear plan.
The benefits immediate and unmistakeable:
- fewer clarification questions
- more focused proposals
- stronger, more relevant agency responses
Best of all, you’ve sent the right message to all potential vendors: that you’re a competent client with clearly defined goals and expectations. Any vendor worth their salt appreciates that.
Better RFPs lead to better projects
A discovery-led RFP isn’t just easier to manage. It sets the foundation for the entire project.
You’ll get quotes on what will actually drive value, not based on the bloat that was thrown into an unfocused RFP.
That means:
- more accurate budgets
- clearer timelines
- and a smoother path from selection to execution
By the way: if you’re looking for tips on RFP writing, we wrote a blog post about how to write a great one, as well as this one about how to evaluate the responses.
What we’ve seen in practice
We’ve used this approach successfully with a range of organizations, including:
- College of Western Idaho
- San Francisco Conservatory of Music
- Centre for Digital Media
- Roosevelt University
- Humane World for Animals
- Exploratorium
In each case, discovery helped bring focus before going to RFP, resulting in stronger outcomes and more efficient procurement.
RFIs don’t build relationships.
Conversations do.
In response to the growing number of Requests for Information we’re seeing, we have one request of our own:
If you want to get to know us, the best way is to book a call.
After all, the amount of work that goes into responding to RFIs is significant even at the best of times. But these days, RFIs seem to be suffering from the same lack of quality control as non-discovery based RFPs: long lists of repetitive, generic questions with no clear connection to actual business goals.
If the real question is, “Can you help us solve X?” then let’s start there.
A simple conversation will get you more honest, useful answers than a 50-question document ever will.
The bottom line
An RFP shouldn’t be an exercise in figuring out what you need.
It should be a clear, confident ask to the market.
And it all starts with discovery.
