Winning business has never been harder. Buyers today have higher expectations, increasing demands for customized information, and stricter budgets. Organizations must provide buyers with the information they seek quickly, accurately, and in a way that differentiates them from the competition.
For companies that don’t have the right tools and processes in place, keeping up with buyer demands feels like driving a golf cart on the Autobahn. Artificial intelligence (AI) is the most transformative tool for sales and proposal teams since the introduction of computers, helping companies with AI workflows already in place to speed past those who are still stuck in their pre-AI era golf cart.
By leveraging AI-powered Strategic Response Management (SRM), organizations can keep pace with evolving buyer demands while increasing efficiency, improving accuracy, and unlocking revenue growth. Companies that activate AI-powered SRM are already seeing significant results, including faster deal cycles and higher win rates.
Responsive recently published an AI Handbook for Strategic Response Management goes into greater detail about how AI is revolutionizing sales and proposal management. In this recap, we’ll cover some of those key findings and offer strategies for organizations looking to implement AI-driven SRM for competitive advantages.
The transformative impact of AI on sales and proposals
Bid, proposal, and capture teams are responsible for nearly half of a company’s revenue, yet they face growing pressures as questionnaires and assessments from buyers and partners become longer, more complex, and frequent.
Without AI, proposal managers and/or strategic response teams struggle to meet these demands due to tight timelines, budgetary constraints, or lack of resources, putting high-stakes deals at risk or finding themselves entirely outside of those deals from the start.
Key challenges faced by sales and proposal teams
- Growing complexity of buyer demands – Buyers expect faster responses and are evaluating increasingly complex solutions.
- Increasing workload – 77% of bid and proposal professionals have seen their workload increase in the past year, with over 25% experiencing a 50% or more increase in work related to RFPs, DDQs, and security questionnaires.
- Revenue at stake – Nearly 48% of a company’s revenue is tied to RFPs, bids, tenders, and proposals, making strategic responses a critical business function.
(Note: Data above is from the 2024 State of Strategic Response Management Report)
The thirst for AI solutions to these significant challenges is clear, and many teams out there are still figuring out how AI factors into their already established workflows, especially considering how much revenue is on the line.
"I fundamentally believe that AI will cause a paradigm shift in how we do business – both within and beyond Strategic Response Management – but we are still figuring out how,” said Monika Pradhan, Business Services Strategist, First Citizens Bank.
“It’s an opportunity for us to lead and to get familiar with the technology so we can develop a model that allows us to improve our strategy, creativity, and relationships to add material value to the business and our customers."
How AI addresses these challenges
Responsive and APMP’s 2024 State of SRM Report found that the most successful organizations are investing in their strategic response teams, and overwhelmingly, they’re turning to AI.
This overwhelming adoption of AI is not just to remain competitive, but to give these forward-thinking teams a competitive advantage over those still getting their AI workflows up and running.
"Powering a company’s knowledge-sharing efforts with AI enables better responses, higher win rates, and greater revenue. AI-powered Strategic Response Management is changing the paradigm for buyer-seller information exchange, infusing customer acquisition and revenue generation with unprecedented speed, accuracy, and efficiency."
Ganesh Shankar
CEO and Co-founder, Responsive
By automating and optimizing the strategic response process, AI enables organizations to improve response times, deliver more compelling proposals, and ultimately increase revenue.
Unlocking revenue growth with AI-powered Strategic Response Management (SRM)
As Ganesh defines in the AI Handbook, Strategic Response Management (SRM) is a systematic approach that centralizes organizational knowledge, enhances collaboration, and streamlines the sales and proposal process. In short, AI-powered SRM enables teams to scale efficiently while reducing risk, some of which can be introduced naturally through the implementation of AI.
The key benefits of AI in SRM
AI-led SRM is quickly becoming essential for businesses looking to stay competitive. Its results resonate throughout an organization, enabling greater trust, revenue, and growth — and fewer silos. According to the 2024 State of SRM Report, AI-led SRM helps organizations:
- Close more business faster: Companies with revenue growth are 3X more likely to use AI-powered SRM platforms.
- Reduce business risk: 64% of organizations report that the risk associated with information exchange has significantly increased in the last year.
- Boost employee satisfaction: 97% of organizations that prioritize SRM report increased employee satisfaction.
"Over the last few years, companies have struggled to effectively respond to the rapidly growing volume of information requests that have expanded beyond traditional bids to encompass DEI policies, sustainability practices, AI data privacy, and more,” said Rick Harris, CEO of APMP.
“Most organizations aren’t equipped to handle the increased volume and complexity because they struggle with knowledge management and siloed org charts that isolate bid and proposal teams, which are driving one of the most strategic, revenue-generating functions in an enterprise.”
When an organization struggles with one or multiple of the challenges that Rick outlined, embracing AI-powered SRM can help that organization gain a significant competitive advantage by delivering faster, higher-quality responses to buyers while minimizing operational strain.
AI’s role in creating a more efficient sales process
As we mentioned earlier, AI is the most transformative business technology since the internet. With such a monumental impact already established, most organizations are jumping onboard the AI hype train.
McKinsey recently reported that nearly three-quarters of companies have adopted AI in at least one function, and both the adoption rate and number of use cases are rapidly increasing.
The 2024 State of SRM Report found that 89% of companies are experimenting with AI, for everything from content generation to critical workflow automation. However, as hard as it may be to believe, we’re still in the infancy of the AI era, and many are still wondering what changes AI will bring in the years to come.
Where is AI expected to have the biggest impact for strategic response teams? The sales cycle.
Using AI to accelerate deals — and win more of them
AI makes each step in the opportunity lifecycle more strategic and effective. Companies can use AI to centralize their knowledge, create winning first drafts, and help sellers quickly and confidently respond to buyers’ questions that are peppered throughout the process.
In theory, the lifecycle of a sales opportunity is neat and sequential. The cycle begins with qualifying the opportunity and ending with winning it. It’s short, simple, and efficient. For RFPs, the process may look something like this:
Qualify. Plan. Respond. Audit. Package. These five steps make up the RFP process, and all of it depends on the trusted, up-to-date and approved content in your organization’s Content Library.
While these steps highlight the lifecycle of a major pursuit, the reality is much more complex.
“The average buying cycle involves three considered vendors, four separate departments, and eight buying group members, four of whom are outside the buyer’s company. In addition, the sequence of steps that buyers follow before they purchase varies and is rarely linear — meaning that their planned stream of tactics will rarely line up neatly with buyers’ processes."
More specialized and lengthier questionnaires — coupled with expanded buying committees with diverse stakeholders — have turned the standard opportunity lifecycle into a cross-functional and collaborative process that can take several paths, requiring expert navigation from sellers.
AI-driven automation in strategic responses
AI-powered SRM enhances every stage of the sales cycle, from qualifying opportunities to submitting winning proposals. Here’s how organizations can leverage AI to close deals faster:
- Qualify opportunities: AI can quickly analyze RFPs, perform fit assessments, and recommend go/no-go decisions to ensure teams prioritize winnable opportunities.
- Draft and refine responses: AI automates first drafts of proposals, assessments, and questionnaires by pulling from centralized knowledge bases, reducing manual effort by up to 80%.
- Enhance workflow automation: Among its many workflow automations, AI intelligently assigns proposal questions to the right subject matter experts (SMEs), eliminating bottlenecks.
- Personalize proposals at scale: AI adapts responses to align with buyer-specific needs and preferences, improving win rates.
Actionable strategies for implementing AI in sales and proposals
How can your strategic response team start implementing AI in your sales and proposal process? We’ve outlined a few immediately actionable steps below:
- Adopt an AI-powered SRM platform – Ensure seamless integration with existing systems and enable real-time collaboration.
- Leverage AI-driven analytics – Use AI insights to optimize win rates and bidding strategies.
- Enhance cross-team collaboration – AI-powered workflows connect sales, marketing, security, and proposal teams for more efficient knowledge sharing.
When all three steps are implemented, an AI-powered SRM platform accelerates project timelines and improves cross-functional collaboration. For example, when a proposal manager takes a draft as close to completion as possible with AI — which can complete that task in mere minutes — they not only protect subject matter experts’ (SMEs’) valuable time by reducing the number of questions they need to assign out, but also win back more time for high-impact strategic work.
How JAGGAER found success using Responsive AI
JAGGAER, a provider of cloud-based business automation technology, faced a similar challenge due to the size of their Content Library. Maintaining consistent messaging and voice across multiple external information requests strained their SMEs and other responders, consuming many hours of valuable time each week responding to the same questions.
Through the introduction of an AI-powered SRM platform, JAGGAER gave valuable time back to their SMEs since their strategic response team was able to complete much of each RFP response themselves thanks to a cleaner Content Library and AI-created first drafts.
"We were able to reduce the time maintaining our Content Library by 50% through the elimination of writing/editing tasks involved in each RFP response, and AI has contributed to our increasing win rate."
Autumn Wenner
Content Proposal Specialist, JAGGAER
JAGGAER not only reduced time spent updating their Content Library by 50%, but the organization also saw a win rate increase equal to roughly 15 times their investment in Responsive, realizing their ROI as soon as three months after switching to Responsive.
Key takeaways from AI in sales and proposal management
AI is no longer a futuristic tool—it is a necessity for organizations looking to compete in today’s high-stakes business environment. By leveraging AI-powered SRM, companies can increase response speed, improve accuracy, and unlock revenue growth while reducing risk.
Now is the time to embrace AI-powered Strategic Response Management. Organizations that take action today will position themselves for sustainable growth, while those that hesitate risk falling behind.
Ready to harness the power of AI to accelerate sales and proposal success? Request a demo to learn how Responsive can help you implement AI-powered SRM to win more business, faster.