As business trends and the global market evolve faster than ever before, sustainable growth has risen as a critically important goal of every business and organization.
The industry leaders and innovators who create a long-term vision with a mindset that’s on the pulse of evolving tech innovations are uniquely poised to gain a strategic advantage. These leaders and innovators find new opportunities for sustainable growth and success, and they stay ahead of those who merely adapt to changes as they come.
One way leading companies are staying ahead of the competition and driving sustainable growth has been by embracing Strategic Response Management (SRM) — a modern approach to bid and proposal management that unlocks organizational knowledge and offers a competitive edge.
Together with the Association of Proposal Management Professionals (APMP), Responsive recently published the 2024 State of Strategic Response Management Report: How Leading Companies Are Winning More, a landmark study that unveils industry benchmarks and reveals how the companies growing the fastest are approaching SRM.
Data from over 750 sales, proposal, and IT executives and practitioners revealed that organizations have gained a sharp competitive edge and drive sustainable, profitable growth through the implementation of a comprehensive SRM strategy and by embracing AI.
Read on to learn how and why leading companies have invested heavily in SRM and their strategic response teams to create an environment in which sustainable growth is not only possible, but certain.
What is Strategic Response Management – and why is it important?
Strategic Response Management (SRM) is the people, practices, and technology that unlock organizational knowledge for profitable growth. In practice, SRM allows proposal, sales, and field teams to respond to complex information requests quickly and accurately by democratizing information across the organization.
The companies that have already adopted a SRM solution are currently putting their best foot forward, achieving remarkable results while setting themselves up for future success.
Companies that understand the importance of this mission-critical function and invest accordingly will pull ahead, winning more deals and greater revenue while improving
operational efficiency and employee satisfaction across the board.
Rick Harris, Chief Executive Officer, APMP
Leading companies use SRM with greater success
Organizations field more questionnaires, assessments, and inquiries as businesses become more demanding when evaluating potential partners. This increase in demand strains the bid and proposal teams overseeing responses and surfaces significant challenges.
As data from the report shows, not only have RFPs and other assessments become more numerous, lengthy, and complex, but responses are also significantly growing in importance when it comes to revenue generation, further adding to the already building pressure on bid and proposal teams.
These strategic responses influence, on average, 48% of company revenue generation. Additionally, 70% of organizations say revenue generated through responses to information requests has increased in the past year.
Organizations now have a simple choice: be crushed by the increased demand or crush their strategic responses by driving optimal SRM across the organization.
Data in the report reveals that the organizations leading the field are those that embrace the idea of SRM and harness the power of AI to respond to more proposals and other requests for information which leads to more deals won, increased revenue, and greater employee satisfaction.
Who are these Leaders in adopting SRM?
The 2024 State of SRM Report classified Leaders as organizations with a win rate of 60% or higher, a YoY revenue increase, or a YoY increase in employee satisfaction. So, what are these companies doing differently?
To achieve these results, these Leaders made three highly impactful changes:
- Recognizing strategic response teams as high-impact players
- Investing in resources to help grow these teams
- Designing scalable processes that unify their teams
Companies who had the highest win rates and the highest YoY revenue increase or employee satisfaction growth are those that have already invested in and place a high importance on SRM within their organizations.
97% of companies that reported an increase in employee satisfaction for those involved in response processes (Leaders) consider SRM important to their business, compared to 68% of companies that saw a decrease in employee satisfaction YoY (Novices).
As we’ll see below, investment in and activation around SRM is not only tied to higher win rates and increased revenue, but also a better employee experience that provides greater access to the resources bid and proposal teams need to drive revenue growth.
Strategic response teams fuel revenue growth
Proposal professionals are some of the most informed and knowledgeable employees at an organization. They know how operations work, how organizations attract and retain talent, what a CSM does, and what project reporting tools look like.
You build all of these relationships in the organization. You become intimate with all the little secrets. We are stewards of the company’s most critical asset: its knowledge. That is value — and that is power.
Darlene Smith, Pursuit Centre Manager, Fujitsu
The 2024 State of SRM Report shows us that the companies who have succeeded the most understand that growth requires a significant investment in their bid and proposal teams.
Leaders from the report were far more likely than comparatively underperforming companies to increase the budgets for these teams, invest in technology solutions, and focus on training. In return, they are seeing higher win rates and are more likely to report an annual revenue increase.
Additionally, 24% of the companies that saw a decrease in revenue YoY say that their top proposal challenge is that they have too few resources to handle the volume of requests. In contrast, only 10% of Leaders said it was their top challenge. Instead, Leaders reported that tight deadlines were their greatest hurdle.
Companies with higher win rates were also far more likely to be using data and analytics from response systems to improve processes and increase win rates.
80% of Leaders leverage strategic response data, compared to only 61% of Novices. Leaders view bid and proposal teams as strategic partners contributing to the company’s go-to-market (GTM) strategy. As a result, Leaders are also far more likely to use data and analytics from response systems to improve processes and increase win rates, creating a loop of better results leading to more input from response teams leading to better results, and so on.
Becoming a strategic part of the revenue engine
The report shows us that changes in buying behavior, advances in AI, and the push for efficient growth are creating increased pressure on field-facing functions to contribute to increased revenue generation.
We’ve seen that Leaders have met this increased pressure by elevating their bid and proposal teams to become strategic equals who help shape the company’s GTM strategy. However, not all teams have received this same treatment; some still face a perception problem.
Proposal teams have historically been seen as “cost centers” in their organization. It’s an outdated view as these teams align cross-functional stakeholders, processes, and systems to deliver winning responses to information requests by harnessing a company’s knowledge.
In return, organizations who position these strategic response teams as key parts of the revenue engine see happier employees and greater topline revenue.
The profession has evolved dramatically from being more of an administrative task to now operating as a strategic leadership role. I have a very different dynamic and seat at
the table with our C-suite than I did earlier in my career, and it’s a reflection of how far we have come and the work we have done to get there.
Darlene Smith, Pursuit Centre Manager, Fujitsu
What does it look like when an organization fully invests in their proposal teams as a true strategic partner and driver of growth and revenue? We can turn to Microsoft, one of the largest organizations in the world, as a remarkable example.
Strategic Response Management (SRM) case study: Microsoft
Microsoft invested in an AI-powered SRM platform to guarantee organization-wide access to a centralized knowledge base, which has allowed field teams to quickly (and independently) find vetted, approved answers. As a result, Microsoft saw substantial productivity gains, more efficient operations, and better resource allocation.
An AI-powered SRM platform has been crucial for Microsoft in managing the rapid growth of their proposal volume. Growing from just four members to 65 in about a year and a half, the proposal team needed a robust system to handle the increasing demands. With so much organizational revenue tied to RFPs and other strategic responses, democratizing knowledge through a self-service solution allowed Microsoft’s Proposal Center of Excellence to truly thrive.
Without being bogged down by internal information requests, the proposal team is better equipped to operate as a true strategic partner to the business, driving revenue growth by ensuring the company pursues the right opportunities and truly shines in every proposal.
Carrie Jordan, Global Director of Proposals serving Microsoft’s Proposal Center of Excellence, Microsoft
Now, Microsoft’s proposal team uses Responsive’s SRM platform with built-in AI that powers to scale their operations, ensuring they maintain high standards and timely submissions across all their proposals.
Six steps to making a business case for Strategic Response Management
The 2024 State of SRM Report shows that leading companies recognize strategic response teams as high-impact players, invest in resources and insights to fuel growth, and design scalable processes that unify teams.
However, not every bid and proposal team operates at an organization with a SRM strategy in place. What can you do as a member of one of these teams to make an effective business case for Strategic Response Management — and why is it important?
Danelle Morrow, CF. APMP, VP North America Proposal Development Center at Sodexo, was faced with the same question shortly after joining Sodexo.
Three weeks into my role at Sodexo, our CFO announced that he was cutting my budget by 80%. I was perplexed. How can you cut the revenue growth engine and expect to win more business? So, I did what we do best in our profession. I wrote the proposal of my life.
Danelle Morrow, CF. APMP, VP North America Proposal Development Center, Sodexo
Proposal leaders are more than experienced in making a strong business case to justify the headcount, budget, and technology their team needs to fulfill their charter.
Capitalizing on her expertise, Morrow focused on six key areas to provide an ROI that helped executives understand the need for investing in a SRM platform and strategy:
- Tie success to business goals: Link the team’s success to addressing critical business challenges, such as growing revenue or win rates.
- Understand stakeholder pain points: Look for ways to address needs like generating higher quality responses at scale.
- Provide side-by-side investment comparisons: Compare the investment in proposal management to other go-to-market functions like sales and marketing.
- Educate other teams on the role: Shift perceptions by explaining the importance of proposal management within the customer journey. Spoiler – it’s critical.
- Quantify ROI: Clearly articulate the return on investment to justify the funding.
- Show the impact of funding: Share details on how you would level up the team with the incremental resources.
The strength of Morrow’s proposal not only halted planned budget cuts, but she actually secured an additional 20% for the team. Morrow said creating a compelling business case is crucial for securing the resources needed to drive your team’s success and the organization’s growth.
See more industry insights in the 2024 State of SRM Report
While we covered how and what leading organizations are doing to drive sustainable growth by focusing on SRM and investing in their strategic response teams, the complete 2024 State of Strategic Response Management (SRM) Report goes into far deeper detail than we could here.
Grab a copy of the free report to dive deeper into a slate of topics, including:
- Responding to escalating buyer demands with an effective SRM strategy
- Demonstrating value as bid and proposal teams
- Why Generative AI is not an effective AI strategy on its own
- Pro tips and insights from industry luminaries
- Actionable strategies you can immediately employ to unlock faster growth
Interested in reading more? Access the full 2024 State of Strategic Response Management (SRM) Report to see all the essential data that will shape a winning SRM strategy.
