How To Write An RFP That Gets Comparable Answers

Most RFPs in Indian eCommerce fail before a single vendor replies. Not because the brand asked bad questions. Because it asked open ones. Six vendors answer six slightly different questions, in six formats, using six definitions of the same word. The buyer then sits with a comparison sheet that cannot be built, and decides on gut feel or on the lowest headline number. Both are bad outcomes.

An RFP has one job. Produce answers that sit side by side without translation. Everything else is decoration.

Why proposals come back incomparable

First, the brief asks for approach instead of output. “Describe your methodology” invites a deck. Decks are written by the vendor’s best writer, not by the person who will actually run your account. You learn who markets well, not who delivers.

Second, the brief withholds volumes. When a 3PL does not know your monthly order count, your seasonality shape, your average shipment weight and your return rate, it prices for the worst case it can imagine. That padding is invisible in the quote and expensive for two years. When an agency does not know SKU count, marketplace count and creative refresh frequency, it guesses at effort and either overquotes or underquotes. Underquoting is worse for you than overquoting, because the vendor recovers through service quality rather than through an invoice.

Third, the brief lets vendors choose their own units. One quotes per order. One quotes per shipment. One quotes per unit picked. One bundles pick and pack together, another splits them. All four are defensible. None of them compare.

Specify outcomes and volumes, not methods

Write the RFP as a description of your business, not a description of the work you imagine.

State what has to be true at the end. Orders dispatched same day when placed before a stated cut off. Listings live within a stated number of working days from asset handover. Ad spend managed inside a stated efficiency band. Then let the vendor explain how they get there. If two vendors reach the same outcome by different routes and one costs less, you have learned something real. If you prescribed the method, you have only learned who can follow instructions.

Give volumes as ranges with a base case, not a single number. Last twelve months actual, next twelve months plan, and the single peak month. Indian brands live and die in the festive spike. A vendor priced on your annual average will either fail you in October or surcharge you in October, and the surcharge conversation is where relationships break.

Say what you will not do. If you are not moving off your current warehouse system, say so. If creative stays in house, say so. Constraints stated upfront are cheap. Constraints discovered in month two are not.

The response template that forces like for like pricing

Do not accept free format commercials. Attach a sheet and state plainly that any proposal not filled into that sheet will not be scored.

The sheet should carry, for every line, a unit definition you wrote, the volume band the unit price applies to, what the line includes, what it excludes, and the trigger for any variable charge. You supply the definitions and the bands. The vendor supplies only the numbers.

Add a mandatory total. Take your base case volumes, apply the vendor’s own rates, and require them to state the resulting monthly rupee figure themselves. Vendors resist this, because it removes the ambiguity they price into. The resistance is data.

Then add a free text row labelled “anything you would normally charge that is not captured above”. Serious vendors use it. The ones who leave it blank and then raise a change order in month three have told you exactly who they are.

The questions that actually differentiate

Capability questions get identical answers. Everybody can do everything. Ask about failure instead.

Ask for a named account that left in the last eighteen months, and why it left. Ask precisely who will run this account, how many other clients that person carries, and what happens the week they resign. Ask for an escalation path with names and response windows, not a generic support address. Ask what they will need from you to hit the outcome, because a vendor who asks nothing of the client has not thought about the work. And ask them to name one thing in your brief they believe is wrong.

That last question separates operators from order takers. We run an agency, so we will say the uncomfortable part plainly. Agencies are rewarded for agreeing during a pitch. Buyers should push against that incentive rather than enjoy it. A bidder who quietly accepts an unrealistic timeline in the RFP will quietly miss it in delivery.

What you owe the bidders

Honest pricing needs honest inputs. Give a real timeline, the names of the decision makers, the scoring weights, and the contract length you actually intend to sign. Describe the current pain rather than a sanitised version of it. Answer questions once, in writing, and circulate every answer to every bidder. Uneven information produces uneven quotes and a winner who simply guessed closest to the truth.

Be clear about whether an incumbent is bidding. If they are, and you are running the process only to reset their price, either say so or do not run it. Responding costs a vendor real hours, and the Indian services market is small enough that word travels.

When only one vendor bids

It happens more often than buyers admit. It usually means the scope was unattractive, the volumes were below the vendor’s floor, the timeline was impossible, or your payment reputation arrived before your brief did. Diagnose before you negotiate.

Call two of the vendors who passed and ask why. You will get an unusually candid answer, because they have nothing left to lose. Then decide whether to fix the brief and rerun, or to proceed with one bidder on a shorter leash.

If you proceed, do not pretend you have leverage you do not have. Buy terms instead of price. Take a shorter initial period with a clean exit, an open book on any pass through cost, a stated escalation formula rather than an open ended one, and a right to benchmark at renewal. A sole bidder who knows they are alone will not hand you a competitive rate. They may well hand you competitive terms, because terms cost them nothing on the day of signing.

Then run the process again in twelve months with better inputs. A second RFP from a brand that behaved well in the first one attracts a noticeably stronger field.