By Jane Bayler, The Smart Connector. Former MD of FutureBrand, 20+ years in global brand strategy.
Most independent consultants do not lose an RFP because their thinking is weak. They lose before the RFP exists.
The buyer has already formed a view of the problem, the acceptable solution and the people who are credible enough to solve it. Procurement may later issue a formal document, but the real contest often happened in earlier conversations, referrals and internal assumptions.
If you are discovered only when the brief is published, you are entering as an unknown. You are asking a buyer to compare your credentials, approach and price against people they may already trust. That is not a neutral contest. It is a structural disadvantage.
The answer is not to write longer proposals. It is to become relevant before the buying process becomes formal. That means choosing a problem, a buyer and a point of view so clearly that your name belongs in the conversation before anyone asks for a submission.
An RFP is not usually a lead-generation mechanism. It is a late-stage procurement instrument. Treat it as your primary route to work and you will spend your time responding to decisions you had no part in shaping.
The RFP is the visible stage, not the beginning
Independent consultants often describe RFPs as opportunities. That is only partly true.
An RFP can be an opportunity when you have helped shape the requirement, understand the political context and have a credible relationship with the buyer. It is far less attractive when it arrives without warning and asks you to demonstrate, in a few pages, why you should be trusted with a high-stakes problem.
By then, several things may already be fixed:
- The buyer has a preferred interpretation of the problem.
- Internal stakeholders have formed opinions about what a good supplier looks like.
- Incumbents and well-known firms have been discussed, recommended or informally tested.
- The evaluation criteria may reward scale, familiarity and compliance more than judgement.
This is why a capable consultant can produce an intelligent proposal and still fail to win. The proposal is being judged inside a frame that someone else helped create.
Your task is not to avoid every formal process. It is to stop treating the formal process as the first moment that your market should hear from you.
Expertise is not the same as market relevance
Corporate leaders leaving full-time roles often begin with a long list of capabilities. Strategy. Transformation. Growth. Brand. Leadership. Commercial development. They have earned the right to say these things. The market still has no reason to remember them.
Broad expertise feels safe because it preserves options. It also makes comparison easy. If your description could belong to a large consultancy, a former colleague, or twenty profiles on LinkedIn, it does not establish preference.
Buyers do not need to know everything you can do. They need to know whether you understand the particular problem they are under pressure to solve.
A sharper position has three elements:
- A recognisable buyer with a problem they already acknowledge.
- A commercially meaningful consequence if that problem remains unresolved.
- A distinctive perspective on what must change and why conventional responses fail.
For example, “I advise businesses on growth and transformation” creates no useful tension. “I help established professional-services firms turn an undifferentiated offer into a market position buyers can recognise and choose” gives the buyer something to test against their own situation.
The second statement does not claim to do less. It makes the value easier to recognise. That is the difference between having experience and being selected for it.
If your current offer sounds capable but interchangeable, the focus should be message and market fit. My Message To Market Fit course addresses that specific challenge: making the value of an offer clear enough for the right buyer to act.
The proposal is rarely where preference is created. It is where preference is tested.
What to do before the brief is written
Becoming known before an RFP does not require constant content or an artificial personal brand performance. It requires disciplined repetition around a commercially important problem.
1. Pick the problem you want to own
Start with the issue that has both urgency and consequence. Not the subject you can discuss for hours. The problem that affects revenue, margin, reputation, speed, risk or leadership confidence.
Ask: what situation causes a senior buyer to seek help? What language do they use before they understand the underlying issue? What have they already tried? What becomes more expensive if they delay?
This gives you a market entry point. “Leadership advice” is a service category. “Helping a newly independent business leader replace corporate authority with a clear proposition and a credible route to demand” is a problem worth discussing.
2. Make your point of view visible
Expertise becomes commercially useful when buyers can see how you think. State what most people misunderstand, what you would challenge and what you would do first.
This is not a licence for contrarian theatre. A point of view should make decisions easier. It should help a buyer interpret their own situation, not simply admire your intelligence.
Write and speak for the people who can buy or refer your work. Explain the hidden cost of a familiar mistake. Show the trade-off. Offer a practical distinction. The goal is recognition: “This person understands the problem we are dealing with.”
3. Build conversations, not an audience
An audience is useful. A relevant relationship is more valuable.
Identify the people who see the problem early: former clients, sector advisers, investors, non-executive directors, specialist recruiters, agency leaders and peers with access to your target buyers. Share a clear view and ask intelligent questions. Learn how the problem is described internally. Pay attention to the words, objections and consequences.
Those conversations improve your positioning and create familiarity. When a need becomes formal, you are no longer introducing yourself from nowhere.
This is the purpose of a Chosen First System: to build the conditions in which the right people think of you before they begin comparing suppliers. It is not about becoming famous. It is about becoming the obvious relevant option in a defined decision.
How to handle an RFP when it arrives
A sharper pre-RFP position does not mean rejecting every procurement process. It changes the questions you ask before committing resources.
First, establish whether you have access to the person who owns the outcome, not only the person managing the process. You need to understand what prompted the brief, what success would change and which internal interests may affect the decision.
Second, test whether the brief reflects a real problem or a pre-selected solution. If the buyer has already specified the deliverable without discussing the outcome, you may be competing to execute someone else’s assumptions.
Third, ask whether your distinctive value can be recognised within the scoring model. If every supplier is being assessed against identical criteria, find out where judgement and insight matter. If they do not matter, decide whether the work fits your business.
Fourth, qualify the opportunity with discipline. You should know the decision process, the budget range, the timetable, the competing options and your access to the decision-maker. A request for unpaid thinking is not automatically a serious buying signal.
If you do respond, make the proposal about the buyer’s decision, not your biography. Demonstrate that you understand the cost of the current situation. Explain the choices. Show what you would examine first. Use relevant evidence. Keep the method proportionate to the problem.
Do not hide your difference on page one because you are afraid of appearing too narrow. Generic language creates a generic evaluation. Precision gives the buyer a reason to continue.
Common mistakes
- Waiting for procurement to create demand. Procurement can invite suppliers into a process. It rarely creates preference for an unknown consultant.
- Leading with a catalogue of capabilities. A long list signals flexibility, but it forces the buyer to do the work of deciding where you fit.
- Confusing responsiveness with qualification. A polite request for a proposal is not proof of access, budget, urgency or a fair decision.
The independent consultant’s real advantage
Large firms often win because they are familiar, easy to justify and already present in the buyer’s mental shortlist. An independent consultant can’t always match their scale. That is not the point.
Your advantage is proximity to the problem, speed of judgement and the ability to make a specific promise without the weight of a generalist organisation. But those advantages only count when they are visible before the buyer reduces the choice to credentials and day rates.
That requires a deliberate commercial identity. Your former corporate title may open a conversation, but it does not define the reason someone should appoint you now. The transition from senior executive to independent adviser is therefore more than a change in employment status. It is a repositioning exercise.
My Quit Big resource speaks to the broader shift from corporate authority to independent choice. The crucial question is not whether you have enough experience. It is whether the market can understand where that experience is most valuable.
When you answer that clearly, business development becomes less dependent on reacting to anonymous briefs. You can still pitch. You simply stop waiting for the pitch to be the first evidence that you exist.
Frequently Asked Questions
Why do independent consultants lose RFPs before they pitch?
They often enter after the client has defined the problem, criteria and preferred suppliers. If the consultant is unknown or described in generic terms, the proposal must overcome a trust and relevance gap. The pitch becomes a comparison exercise, where established names usually carry the advantage.
Should an independent consultant respond to every RFP?
No. An RFP is worth pursuing when the problem, buyer, access and decision criteria fit your strongest position. If the brief treats you as interchangeable, the cost of responding can exceed the likely return. Selectivity protects time and prevents your business being trained to compete on price.
How can consultants become visible before an RFP is issued?
Choose a narrow commercial problem and speak consistently about its consequences, decisions and outcomes. Publish useful points of view, build relationships with relevant buyers and create conversations before procurement formalises the requirement. Visibility matters when it is connected to a specific business problem, not when it is general self-promotion.
What should an independent consultant say instead of listing their experience?
Describe the situation you help a particular buyer resolve, why it persists and what changes when it is addressed. Experience supports the claim, but it is not the claim. Buyers need to understand your relevance to their current decision, not read a summary of everything you have done.
Can a strong proposal overcome weak positioning?
Sometimes, but it is an expensive strategy. A strong proposal can demonstrate insight, yet it still starts from a disadvantage when the buyer has no clear reason to prefer you. Positioning creates the initial preference. The proposal should then confirm that preference with evidence, judgement and a credible approach.
What is the best first step for escaping RFP dependency?
Define the problem for which you want to be the obvious specialist choice. Then test that language with the buyers who experience the problem and adjust it until it is precise. Your outreach, content, conversations and proposals should all reinforce the same commercial relevance.
If you are building an independent advisory business, start before the next RFP. Define the problem, sharpen the message and create the relationships that make your relevance known. Explore my consulting services if you want support making that shift.
The market does not reward the consultant who is most qualified in private. It rewards the one buyers recognise before they start comparing.
