A Pain in the RFP

In the 5 years I’ve been in the business of helping agencies find new business, I’ve heard complaint after complaint about the RFP process – from both sides of the fence – agencies and marketers.

There are some firms that charge agencies to register in their database and some firms that make agencies “join” their consulting group in order to get on the consideration set. And then there are marketers who ‘cattle call’ agencies for reviews. This is a nightmare for agencies and certainly cannot be a fun process for marketers to manage.

With so much not seemingly going right in the world of RFPs, we at RSW/US decided to start our own search agency that tried to do everything that other search firms (and marketers) don’t do:

1) Make the process simple;
2) Provide assistance on both sides of the fence, so everyone “wins”;
3) Eliminate any upfront costs for marketers or agencies;
4) Be nicer and smarter and more transparent.

While we aren’t the be all, end all, we do think we can fill a need that simply doesn’t exist in the market.  We might not get the big Fortune 50 assignments (and that’s ok), but we do expect to get assignments like the two we recently completed: Citrix and Domain Chandon.  Both clients were thrilled with our work and the agencies (even those that didn’t win) felt good about the entire process.

For agencies looking to register in the RSW/US database, click here.

For marketers looking to submit their agency search needs, click here.

Here’s a link to a recent press release on the “official” launch of RSW/US-Agency Search.