The Most Common RFP Mistakes (and How to Avoid Them)

Common RFP mistakes are easy to avoid if you know what to look for.

We’ve been responding to RFPs (request for proposals) issued by governments and private businesses for over 20 years. During that time, we’ve seen teams knock it out of the park – and make embarrassing mistakes.

This guide is intended to help you and your team knock it out of the park and avoid those embarrassing moments when you wish you’d never clicked ‘send.’

What Is an RFP?

Before I get started, let me define an RFP: a Request for Proposal.

An RFP or its cousins in the alphabet soup of procurement – RFI, RFQ, RFA – is a document issued by either a government entity or a private sector business. Procurement departments issue these documents to provide a common set of guidelines to companies. Companies use the guidelines to prepare bids. They submit the bids. Procurement evaluates the final proposals, which now provide an apples-to-apples comparison of responses and make it easier for them to determine the best fit for the project.

Why RFP Mistakes Happen

Responding to a Request for Proposal takes enormous effort. I won’t sugarcoat it for you. They aren’t easy to read, understand, or respond to. Plan on spending 10-20 hours on a simple RFP, more on a complex one.

There are requirements to understand, teams to coordinate, deadlines to meet, and a story to tell, all while your regular work still needs to get done. That’s why many companies outsource their RFP writing to firms like us. We take some of the heavy lifting off their shoulders.

However, whether you decide to respond on your own or work with the RFP professionals at Seven Oaks Consulting, one thing is certain: you’ll win some, and you’ll lose some.

In this article, I intend to help you avoid some of the most common mistakes I have seen RFP teams make. Some are subtle. Some aren’t. Regardless, the more I can help you sidestep the obvious and win more bids, the better.

Ready? Let’s get started. Here are the most common RFP mistakes I see – and how to avoid them.

Please note: I’ll use the term RFP throughout, but this also includes its cousins, the Request for Quote (RFQ), Request for Information (RFI), and Request for Application (RFA, use in grant proposals). 

 

Mistake #1: Bidding on Everything

It feels counterintuitive, but pursuing every RFP that lands in your inbox is one of the fastest ways to lower your win rate. When you treat every opportunity as a “must bid,” you spread your team thin, rush your responses, and end up submitting proposals that feel generic because, under the time pressure, they are.

The organizations that win consistently aren’t the ones that respond to the most RFPs—they’re the ones that respond to the right ones.

A simple bid/no-bid decision framework can change everything. Before committing to a response, evaluate each opportunity against a consistent set of criteria:

•  How well does this align with our core competencies? 
• Do we have a realistic shot at winning? 
• Is the contract size and scope worth the investment of time?
•  Are there relationships or incumbency advantages working against us?

A scoring rubric doesn’t have to be complicated. It can be a one-page template that your team fills out before any major decision to pursue is made. The goal is to give your team permission to say no, and to make that decision based on data rather than instinct or obligation.

Mistake #2: Not Reading the Entire RFP

This one sounds almost too obvious to mention, and yet it happens constantly. Teams skim the overview, jump to the questions, and start writing. They miss a mandatory certification requirement buried in Appendix C. They overlook the instruction that tables must be no wider than 6.5 inches. They don’t notice that the evaluation criteria were updated in an amendment issued two weeks after the original release.

Any of those oversights can mean disqualification, lost points, or a proposal that simply doesn’t answer what the client actually asked.

The fix is to assign a compliance lead, someone whose job, before a single word of the response is written, is to read every page of the RFP and build a compliance matrix. We do this automatically for our clients, but if you’re pursuing it on your own, select one team member whose job it is to understand and fix any formatting compliance issues. 

Mistake #3: Using Templates Without Customizing Them

Proposal templates help you respond faster, maintain consistency, and capture the best language your team has developed over time. Used well, they’re a competitive asset.

Unfortunately, most companies don’t use them well. They get lazy. They pound out the template, update a few things, and send it off. 

You need to go through your response template and update it to match the bid opportunity. 

Think about it: evaluators read dozens, sometimes hundreds of proposals. Generic language doesn’t cut it. When they see it, it signals two things: low effort and low understanding. Neither is the impression you want to make.

Start with your template and then customize it to the bid language. Reference the specific challenges they described in the RFP. Tailor your case studies to the closest parallel in your portfolio. If they’ve mentioned a priority such as implementation speed, experience with a specific platform, etc., make sure your response addresses it directly, in the same terms they used. Don’t assume they will read your case studies and recognize your expertise; point it out. Remember, evaluators are staring at dozens of responses and perhaps hundreds of pages. Make it easy for them to see your competitive advantages.

Mistake #4: Failing to Research the Competitors or the Incumbent

This is a big mistake most companies make. They don’t take the time to research the competition or find the incumbent.

In most government contracting, prior contracts are published on a public-facing portal. This is a goldmine of information on your competition. If the RFP is new, you can see who has contracts in place already with the issuer and figure out how you stack up against them. If the RFP is a renewal, you can view the previous winning proposal and position your response accordingly.

If there’s an incumbent, they do have advantages: established relationships, institutional knowledge, perhaps a proven history with the issuer. But incumbents also have weaknesses. The RFP may be issued because the issuer isn’t happy with the incumbent. Your proposal is an opportunity to speak to those realities without being negative or presumptuous.

 

Mistake #5: Being Too Text-Heavy

Even a beautifully written proposal can lose points if evaluators can’t get through it. Dense paragraphs, long blocks of unbroken text, and heavy jargon are exhausting to read and evaluators are often reading under time pressure, scoring multiple proposals at once.

Make your proposal scannable. Look for opportunities to present information visually: callouts, quotes, statistics, comparison tables, timelines, process diagrams, milestone charts. 

Use headings and subheadings to create a clear structure that lets reviewers navigate quickly. I like to set up the shell in Word or Google Docs, assigning the formatting to style shortcuts. This enables the response team to use preset styles when adding text. 

I keep a separate style sheet printed out since, inevitably, with a large response team, someone’s going to get creative and go off in their own direction. I always conduct a last proofread simply for visual style when we’re just about ready to submit the RFP response, so I can make sure it’s scannable and visually appealing. 

Break up long explanations with bullet points where appropriate. And keep an eye on sentence length. If you’re routinely writing sentences that run past three lines, simplify them. Some of our clients in fields like technology and education tend to write complex sentences; that’s okay if it’s an industry norm. However, try to simplify very complex sentences to make them easier to read, if at all possible. 

I know this can feel like you’re dumbing things down, but it’s really about clarity. You want everything simple, clear, and easy to understand. 

Mistake #6: Being Too Promotional

An RFP response may be a selling opportunity, but it shouldn’t read that way. It must address the issuer’s requirements directly.

Evaluators don’t want to read about how great you are. They want to see proof that you can solve their specific problem. Those are very different things.

Specificity can help you avoid the marketing-speak. Replace “we have extensive experience in this area” with “we’ve completed seventeen similar implementations in the past four years, with an average go-live time of eleven weeks.” Replace “our team is highly qualified” with the credentials, certifications, and relevant project histories that demonstrate it.

Case studies are one of your most powerful tools here. A well-constructed case study describes a challenge similar to the client’s, explains exactly what you did, and quantifies the outcome. A case study persuades better than marketing copy. It’s the old “the proof is in the doing” motto.

 

Mistake #7: Ignoring the Evaluation Criteria

Most public-sector RFP documents contain the evaluation or scoring criteria. Each is written differently, so you’ll have to decode it, but it’s there. The procurement team literally tells you exactly what they are looking for an how heavily they will weigh each section.

For example, you may see a scoring rubric that looks something like this:

 

• Technical Response (50%)
• Past Projects (20%)
• References (20%)
• Pricing (10%)

 

This scoring rubric informs bidders that the technical response carries the most weight, so they should put their efforts behind it. Pricing is the least important qualification.

 

Another rubric may assign points: 

• Technical Response (50 points)
• Past Projects (20 points))
• References (10 points)
• Pricing (10 points)

 

Points may not equal 100; each issuer has its own point system.

Typically, the issuer then tallies the points assigned by the evaluators. If there are several evaluators, the points each assigns to a response are averaged. The winning bidder has the highest point score.

I typically review my response based on the scoring criteria. I ask myself, “If I were the issuer, would I give a high mark to this? How well does it meet the information shared in the scope document?”

Mistake #8: Submitting Without Full Team Review

The thing everyone hates about RFPs is the deadlines. The pressure is real, and it can get intense.

However, rushing to submit a document without giving it a final read-through can be a disaster.

Typos sneak in. Reused text has a former client’s name in it. Someone’s comments are still in the margins. The formatting is off. You forgot to add form XYZ to the end of the packet and that’s an immediately disqualification.

Yup, it’s all happened to teams I have worked with. We caught them all. 

This is why it’s critical to have people assigned to read through the RFP with fresh eyes. Even if you don’t have a big team, leave enough time in the schedule to set the document aside, and go back to it the next day after a good night’s sleep. 

I like to have someone read through for factual errors, someone do a typo read-through, and someone else for compliance and formatting. My company has great proofreaders, but the client is always responsible for finding any factual errors. After all, it’s their product, service, and company.

Build your timeline backward from the submission deadline, and allow enough cushion to do a thorough proofread.

 

Mistake #9: Overlooking Formatting and Compliance Details

This is a stupid mistake I see all the time. Teams rush to respond and don’t bother reading through all the supporting documents. Hidden on page 99 of Appendix Q in the RFP  packet is something like, “All proposals must be submitted in PDF format. Use Times New Roman type, black, no smaller than 12 point, with one-inch margins all around.”

Federal RFPs are even stricter. I just wrapped up an RFP that required a header and footer with extensive information: the issuer’s name, the respondent’s name, the RFP number, and a bunch of procurement codes. Failure to include this lengthy text string would result in immediate disqualification.

Most of the time, I see these little mistakes trip up response teams more often than big errors. Page limits, font requirements, margin specifications, file naming conventions, submission portal instructions, required attachments and more are details you can’t ignore. They’re part of the evaluation, whether they’re explicitly scored or not. A proposal that exceeds the page limit may get disqualified.. Missing a required attachment can mean automatic disqualification, too.

You’ve spent so much time writing your response. Surely, you can spend time reading the formatting requirements. And following them.

Winning Is a Discipline, Not a Stroke of Luck

Throughout my 20+ years of helping clients respond to RFPs, I can say for sure that winning is more than luck. The teams that have consistently high win rates take the time to evaluate which RFPs they’ll bid on. They craft the response with care, following guidelines. They leave enough time for a thorough review. And they take the time to consider who they’re up against, whether it’s the incumbent or general competition, and create their responses accordingly. 

The organizations that consistently win RFPs have one thing in common: they treat the process as a discipline. They make deliberate decisions about which opportunities to pursue. They read thoroughly and plan carefully. They customize every response, use evidence instead of hype, and build in enough time to review and refine.

None of this is complicated, but it does require commitment. And if you look back at your recent proposals, you’ll likely recognize at least a few of the patterns described here. 

And you know what? That’s good news. Everything I’ve shared here is fixable. We all make mistakes. The key to improvement is recognizing and fixing them.

Start by auditing your current approach. Which of these mistakes shows up most often? Where is your process breaking down? Even small improvements in bid selection, compliance mapping, or review structure can meaningfully improve your win rate over time.

Ready to Build a Stronger RFP Process?

At Seven Oaks Consulting, we’ve spent nearly two decades helping technology and education companies win the contracts they deserve. Our RFP Writing Services take the pressure off your team. We bring proven strategy, expert writing, and rigorous process to every proposal we touch.

We’ve also just launched our RFP Learning Center, a dedicated resource for teams who want to sharpen their in-house capabilities. Whether you’re looking for templates, frameworks, or step-by-step guidance, the Learning Center is designed to help you respond smarter and win more.

Explore our RFP services and the Learning Center. Or get in touch directly. We love to talk through where your process stands and how we can help.