RFP Irritation # 33

I hate RFPs, for starters. Today, I hate just about everything, actually.

But right now I hate RFPs.

Soooo, anyway, we have a pretty nice RFP format. It looks very professional and all that happy stuff.

Right after the cover letter, we have a page of graphics. Unfortunately, because we print this page on regular paper and the color printer, though it's expensive, cannot print all the way to the edge, we don't get a full bleed effect on the 'cover'.

So, Marketing, in all their creative glory, has decided to single out this one page in RFPs to make a big deal out of. They are creating a page on 11x17 paper that we will then cut out and put into the RFPs.

RFPs are usually about 50 pages each. And there is a ton of requirements for them too. They have complicated, bullsh*t requirements for printing and assembly and sh*t. So much stuff can go wrong with RFPs, but Marketing wants to focus on this one page.

I can't say enough what a stupid, wasteful idea this is. I'm trying soooooooo hard to not be a complete naysayer. Really. Seriously. I guess Marketing's been going back and forth on this for months. Ugh.

So we're going to do this extra work for how much effect? Does anyone *really* give a sh*t that the 'cover' (which doesn't even appear as the cover; it's behind the cover letter, which is bound into the whole thing) isn't full-bleed? Does anyone even notice besides the anal retentive executive (I mean, thorough, yes thorough is the word…) and his graphic artist minion? Hello, these flippin things usually go out at the last d*mn minute!

I guarantee, the recipients of these things have no flippin idea that this is even an issue. I bet they look at the cover for all of two seconds before they flip to the table of contents or something. If you received an RFP and had to evaluate it, would you critique the cover that's not even a cover, or would you get right to the explanation of how the vendor is going to do its job and how much they're planning to charge for it? As the reviewer, you'd have a job to do, and you'd have a certain amount of time to do it in, and you'd have several other RFPs to evaluate also. Heck, they probably take the electronic version of the document, cut and paste the info into a database or spreadsheet, and then use that to compare vendors! Then they might even ditch the hard copy altogether or just file it away somewhere. They probably don't even look at it.

Unless, like my supervisor, they're from an altogether different century.

Which is rude of me to say.

I will stop complaining now.

No I won't.

That's what this d*mn blog is for.