SC Teams + AI + RFPs.
70% of Solution Consultants report feeling burnt out from juggling RFP responses with their day jobs. Why? Because writing proposals isn’t what they signed up for.
If you know a Solution Consultant/Engineer, then you probably know someone who is forced to write proposals and respond to RFPs, even though they hate it, they don’t actually know how to do it, and none of their KPIs include responding to RFPs.
I feel for you, solution and tech sales people!
But I also know things just got a lot easier for you thanks to AI.
If you’re an SC who has to respond to RFPs, and you just run everything via ChatGPT and Claude, then that’s not really the best way to use AI in your proposals. And that’s ok!
The most successful teams will see AI not as a technology implementation, but as a strategic intelligence amplification tool that transforms how they understand and engage with market opportunities.
I want this post to help you be strategic in how you’re using AI in your proposal writing.
The Critical Role of SC Teams in Proposal Responses
SC teams, whether they are the de facto proposal writing team or just support one, are indispensable to the RFP process.
They’re often the heroes who help translate complex technical capabilities into the perfect, client-tailored solution.
Loopio's 2024 RFP Response Trends & Benchmarks Report indicates that 85% of organizations using AI tools report higher proposal quality and increased client satisfaction.
But their value prop comes with a few (substantial) challenges:
Time Pressures. SCs are stretched thin, juggling multiple proposals alongside demos, client engagements, and internal meetings.
KPIs. These poor souls don’t usually have any of their KPIs or promotions attached to proposal writing. So it’s a thing that takes hours of their week, with zero job benefits. No bueno, folks.
Proposal Writing Know How. Most SCs aren’t proposal pros. Why would they be?! So a lot of them might (accidentally) think RFPs are a check box exercise, and they just need to answer the questions 😭 🫠. This leads them to not actually know the strategy behind proposals or proposal writing best practices. This leads them to spend hours on something that isn’t any good - and they don’t know why!
But I have some good news for my SC and SC leaders. AI can help you fix quite a few things besides answering the RFP questions.
How AI is Driving Results for SC Teams
Here’s where AI is proving indispensable:
Qualification
If your team is being asked to respond to every RFP that lands in your sales reps’ inboxes, it’s time to change things.
You’re an expensive resource - and so are legal, finance, and sales leaders. If you’re spending time on a sales activity that doesn’t bring in revenue or is predicted to bring in revenue, then you shouldn’t be working on it.
But deciding which RFPs to pursue is a high-stakes decision - and it often is an emotional decision brought on by an ‘important’ logo, an especially high contract $ amount, or even just a bad sales pipeline.
AI, luckily, can take out this emotional response to receiving a bad RFP. It can also make the process smarter, faster, and more strategic by analyzing your historical data and flagging the most promising opportunities.
Here’s how it works:
Spotting Patterns in Past Wins and Losses
AI tools can analyze your historical data to identify what’s worked and what hasn’t - and all this info is probably already in your CRM.
Maybe you win deals in a specific industry or lose when timelines are too tight. By recognizing these patterns, AI helps you predict how a new RFP stacks up against your track record.
(Gartner)
Keyword Matching to Identify Alignment
AI scans the RFP for keywords and phrases that align with your strengths, whether it’s technical expertise, compliance capabilities, or pricing sweet spots. It can also spot red flags, like competitor language. It can flag things you won’t do or agree to, like bad T&Cs.
Effort vs. Reward Analysis
Not every opportunity is worth the effort. AI can evaluate the complexity of the RFP against the potential deal size and likelihood of success. This will give you clear guidance on how to invest your time for maximum payoff.
Competitive Insights
Some AI tools can even analyze external data to gauge your competitors’ strengths and weaknesses in relation to the RFP.
For example, did it use your competitor’s specific language, like their product feature names?
Personalizing Responses
Your Solution Consultants can use ChatGPT and Claude to respond to RFPs all day, but that’s only going to create a lot of empty pipeline, not actual opportunities that close and bring in revenue.
It’s just busy work - and it’s actually going to create a freaking bad customer experience (Forrester: Thinly customized generative AI content will degrade the purchase experience for 70% of B2B buyers.)
To create proposals that stand out from the crowd, SCs need to personalize the heck out of their proposals. We used to do this by reading through the customer’s:
Shareholder letters
Stakeholder podcast appearances
Stakeholder blog posts
All the customer interactions we’d ever had with the stakeholders (emails, calls, texts)
Their website
Freedom of Information Requests
Then we’d manually synthesize all this information and decide how to use that info in our proposals.
This took literal days - but the outcome was a winning, personalized proposal that resonated with the evaluators.
But…AI can do all of this in minutes. Here is how:
CRM and Historical Interaction Mining
Imagine an AI system that can instantaneously analyze your organization's entire CRM history with a specific customer or prospect. This goes far beyond traditional review by:
Extracting Communication Patterns
Analyzing email threads, meeting notes, and previous proposal interactions
Identifying key decision-makers, their communication preferences, and historical objections
Tracking the evolution of the customer's strategic priorities over time
MEDDPICC Intelligence Synthesis
Use AI to map stakeholder relationships extracted from CRM data
Automatically categorize stakeholders by:
Economic buyers
Technical decision-makers
Potential influencers/mobilizers or blockers
Generate stakeholder persona maps that reveal potential political dynamics within the organization
Multimedia Intelligence Gathering
AI can now comprehensively analyze a customer's external communications to build a nuanced understanding:
Podcast and Webinar Analysis
Transcribe and semantically analyze recent company or stakeholder guest podcasts
Extract key strategic themes, challenges, and leadership perspectives
Identify specific language and priorities mentioned by executives
Social Media and Public Communication Analysis
Aggregate posts from company LinkedIn, executive Twitter accounts
Analyze investor presentations and quarterly earnings calls
Build a comprehensive view of the organization's current narrative and challenges
Competitive and Market Context Integration
AI can provide additional layers of insight by:
Analyzing the customer's recent competitive moves
Tracking industry trend reports relevant to their sector
Identifying potential gaps or emerging challenges in their current technology stack
Workflow Integration
A typical AI-enhanced RFP preparation might look like:
Input RFP document into AI analysis platform
Trigger automated research across CRM, multimedia (e.g., Gong, Apollo, Notion, etc.), and competitive sources
Generate initial insight report highlighting:
Stakeholder map
Communication preferences
Strategic priorities
Potential solution alignment points
Human review and strategic refinement
AI-assisted content generation
Final human validation and personalization
Smart Data Insights
AI can help transform what (can be) an emotional post-mortem analysis from a retrospective exercise to a predictive intelligence platform. In other words, it takes out the bad feelings and finger-pointing and gives you data on how to improve. Amazing.
I’m talking about providing a:
Granular analysis of each proposal stage
Identifying precise friction points
Quantifying resource investment vs. potential returns
But it can also think outside of just you and your company; it can also:
Automatically tracking competitor proposal strategies
Understand market positioning shifts
Identify emerging customer preference trends
If you had this data after every proposal win/loss + after every quarter and every year revue, then you’re going to be making much more strategic, revenue-generating decisions.
And unlike traditional knowledge management, if you have an AI-native proposal management platform, it might be able to:
Identify high-performing response patterns
Suggests real-time content improvements based on historical performance
Proposal Writing Best Practices
Look, most proposal writers are masters at their craft. They’ve practiced, studied, taken courses, and know the latest and greatest ways of writing a good proposal - because it’s their job.
But SCs?
Well…
Most of them hate writing proposals, and they, quite frankly, don’t have time to learn how to be the best proposal writer of all time.
Luckily, AI can help with more than a bit of grammar and spelling support. I am talking about:
Structural Intelligence
Analyzing thousands of successful proposals across industries (or especially in your industry!)
Identifying optimal narrative structures based on APMP’s Book of Knowledge (IYKYK)
Recommending section flow and content placement based on proven winning patterns
It can provide guidance and write for evidence placement and value proposition articulation -> something SCs often forget to do because that is usually the sales rep’s job.
Language Optimization
Detecting and eliminating corporate jargon or anything too technical
Aligning language with the specific communication style of the target customer
Writing for clarity, persuasiveness, and strategic messaging
Key Takeaways
Invest in Purpose-Built Tools. Select AI solutions tailored to your industry and specific needs. It will save you time and make sure you aren’t hurting your chances of winning - which is what happens without hyper-personalization.
Establish a Strong Content Foundation. Your AI tool is only as good as the content it has to draw from. Make sure your library of content is thorough, well-written, and updated.
Prioritize Training. Many people don’t feel like they have time to learn the latest and greatest tools, even though it will save them time in the long run. Make sure your team understands how to use the AI tools available to them.
The Road Ahead for Winning Proposals
AI is not a passing trend. Seth Goden says it’s the biggest thing since the invention of electricity - and I think he’s probably right.
For me, as a proposal management expert, I see it as a proven enabler of success in the proposal space, especially for teams without proposal pros.
Want to learn more? Sign up for my free email course and uncover the secrets to creating a winning proposal process.
For 1-1 proposal process help, click here.
Questions for you:
How can your current proposal process benefit from AI intelligence?
What unique aspects of your organizational knowledge could an AI system leverage?
Where are the current friction points in your proposal development workflow?
