The Strategist’s Edge This is an occasional series about how to lead with intent, nuance, and purpose, whether you’re building brands, guiding teams, or making decisions that matter. Check out the rest of the series here. When was the last time you cut through complexity so effectively that everyone in the room understood what to…
An agency executive reached out to me after reading my recent RFP Clarity series. They wanted to understand why their team’s RFP efforts were falling short of expectations. Our conversation reminded me that the classic 4 Ps of marketing (Product, Price, Place, Promotion) don’t explain much about who wins or loses in a competitive agency…
Every agency knows the thrill of a new RFP landing in the inbox. The scope looks compelling, the brand name has impact, and the team’s first instinct is to say YES. But just as clients should be intentional about what they ask in RFPs, agencies should be intentional about which opportunities they pursue. Not every…
To close the RFP Clarity series, let’s return to where it all begins: the RFP itself. Over the course of this series, we’ve explored the quiet forces that shape how agencies respond to RFPs and why brands might not get the proposals they hoped for. It’s not necessarily about the caliber of the agencies. It…
When you issue an RFP, you’re not simply looking for a vendor. You’re setting the tone for the kind of partnership you want to build and signaling your organization’s approach to integrity. That signal starts well before any contract is signed. Whether consciously or not, your RFP integrity sets the tone for a future working…
From wasted hours to missed opportunities, here’s what a poorly constructed RFP really costs you. Not all RFPs are created equal, and not all of them are worth answering. By this point in the series, we’ve looked at how to make RFPs clearer, more strategic, and more effective. But what happens when you don’t? The…
This is the time of year when agencies and brands start thinking about their corporate gifting strategy for the holidays. Some will pass. Some will default to “we’ve made a contribution in your name.” Some will send out the same branded swag as last year. But those who get it will do something else entirely….
Your RFP is complete and you’ve selected a partner – but the relationships you maintain beyond that choice can be just as valuable. Once the RFP process concludes, many brands go quiet. A contract is awarded and the rest of the agencies – which have invested serious time and thinking – are left with a…
Somewhere along the way, “networking” became a dirty word. It started to conjure images of working a room, collecting business cards, or adding people on LinkedIn you’d never actually met. At its best, though, networking has never been about card stacks or contact lists. It’s about relationships: think of it more like networking as a…
Not every project needs a formal proposal. Sometimes, a clear brief and a conversation are the better path. RFPs have their place. When thoughtfully constructed, they bring structure, consistency, and fairness to complex decisions. They help compare options side by side, especially when the stakes are high or the partners are unfamiliar. But not every…
When the Proposal Looks Polished, But Something Feels Off Even a well-written RFP won’t guarantee perfect proposals, although it should make off-base ones less likely. When the responses start coming in, it’s worth reading with two lenses: What does this proposal reveal about the agency? And what might red flags in agency proposals be telling…
When organizations issue an RFP, they often focus most of their energy on the questions. What should we ask? What information do we need? How can we ensure the proposals we receive are apples-to-apples? What gets less attention, but deserves far more, are the RFP evaluation criteria. The scoring model, if you will. Evaluation criteria…
Resource Expectations Shape The Team You’ll Actually Get. When you’re hiring an agency, you’re not just hiring a brand name; you’re hiring the people behind it. And yet, many RFPs focus heavily on services, timelines, and budgets while leaving critical questions about the team itself frustratingly vague. If you want the right team on your…
Respect the Work You’re Asking For There’s a subtle but powerful way to improve the quality of proposals you receive: build a timeline that respects the effort required to deliver great work. Too often, RFPs are issued with aggressive deadlines based on internal pressures that have nothing to do with the agencies you’re soliciting. Your…
Questions Are Already Part of the Process. Are You Using Them Strategically? Most RFPs include a formal opportunity for vendors to ask questions, typically with a deadline for submissions and a promise of shared answers. But how that window is structured – and how those questions are handled – can dramatically influence the quality of…
We’ve always been a city of splurges. Whether an exclusive wine dinner, a Michelin-worthy repast, or a one-night-only chef collab, there’s no shortage of high-impact, big-ticket prix fixe tasting menu experiences in Las Vegas for those seeking them. In the right context, they’re worth every dollar. But in a summer marked by slower tourism, shakier…
The Strategist’s Edge This is an occasional series about how to lead with intent, nuance, and purpose, whether you’re building brands, guiding teams, or making decisions that matter. Check out the rest of the series here. Whether or not “strategist” is your title, a core part of leading smart, effective agency work is helping ideas…
“Tell us about your team.” It’s one of the most common requests in an RFP, and one of the least revealing. On the surface it seems reasonable: you want to know who you’re going to be working with. You want to understand their experience, their capabilities, their bandwidth. But more often than not, this question…
An article I published a decade ago about business words that start with “C” has been getting some recent traction. It gave me pause to reflect on how relevant it remains today, and whether there were additional “C words” beyond the original eight that might be worth adding to the mix based on the same…
The Flip Side of Strategic Ambiguity In our last RFP Clarity post, we made the case for purposeful restraint in RFPs, explaining how leaving some space can prompt more revealing, strategic responses. But not all ambiguity is helpful. In fact, when key details are missing or unclear, it can lead to confusion, misalignment, and responses…
Spotify has “Wrapped.” We have Taste Track. Just as Wrapped rounds up a listener’s habits and highlights, Taste Track is our midyear restaurant recap, reflecting how we ate dinner out in the first half of 2025. As strategic, analytical types, we turned the lens on ourselves: when and where we dined, how often, which new places stood…
The Assumption of Clarity It’s common to think that the more information you include in an RFP, the better the outcome will be. After all, clarity is kind, right? And a comprehensive brief should, in theory, yield more accurate and aligned responses. But there’s a nuance worth exploring: not everything needs to be defined up…
In his 2005 Stanford commencement address, Steve Jobs famously said: “You can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backward.” It’s true – and I believed it long before I ever heard that quote. My own nonlinear career path has unfolded more like a series of unexpected links than a straight…
Even the most thoughtfully constructed RFP will generate questions. That’s not because you left something out; it’s because your bidders bring a different perspective. What seems obvious inside your organization may feel ambiguous, incomplete, or open to interpretation to someone on the outside. That’s not a flaw in the process, It’s an opportunity. Smart Agencies…