How Blogging Helped Me Write an RFP

Kyle Judkins — Thu, 03 Dec 2009 22:00:00 +0000

I’ve read lots of posts around the Internet about how blogging will help improve this skill or that skill, and I completely agree with almost all of those posts. Blogging is a great way to improve your problem solving, writing, marketing, social and all kinds of other skills. Today, I’m going to take the idea of those posts, but instead of telling you how it will help you, I’m going to tell you about a real life example.

A Little Background

I don’t blog full time. I have a day job, and that day job is in the market research field. I also only graduated college a little over a year ago, so I’m a little bit of a newbie when it comes to all the responsibilities of a market researcher. Recently, I was tasked with writing an RFP.

What is an RFP?

Well, here is what Wikipedia had to say.

A request for proposal (referred to as RFP) is an invitation for suppliers, often through a bidding process, to submit a proposal on a specific commodity or service.

In most RFPs, you need to be very specific about the type of service you want and the things you want to be included. This RFP was no different.

The Situation

My experience with writing was limited to blogging and technical writing (my undergrad degree is in engineering), so writing an RFP was going to be a completely new challenge.

I’m going to be honest with you and let you know that I was a little scared at what seemed like a very difficult task. What made it more scary was that my boss told me that it was going to be very difficult. So, I went back to my desk with about a week to put together a two page RFP.

The Assignment and Process

Let’s see. I needed to let suppliers know what my company needs in very descriptive terms that are also easy to understand. Where had I done that before? Then, it hit me. I write guides and tutorials every day on my tech blog that are made to be easy and descriptive. I just found a new level of confidence.

I proceeded to structure it like a blog post with fairly short paragraphs and a few headings to allow for quick skimming. I came back and edited a few times to add a little extra polish. Now, it was time to meet with my boss.

The Results

Needless to say, my boss was blown away with the quality and structure of the document. He did have a few minor changes and additions, but overall, he was impressed. What had typically been a hard task for most people to accomplish, I had made look easy.

Getting to a place where writing comes naturally wasn’t easy. I’ve blogged for almost two years now, and I have had plenty of time to hone my craft and improve my writing skills. Because of that previous effort, I was able to effortlessly leap past some of the growing pains of writing an RFP.

Image by TMAB2003