12 Common RFP Mistakes (and How to Avoid Them)

Responding to a request for proposal (RFP) demands time, coordination and expertise across an AEC firm. It’s a complex process that requires teams to balance precision with persuasion, often under tight deadlines and with limited resources. Even firms with deep experience responding to RFPs fall into familiar patterns — pursuing opportunities that aren’t the right fit, overextending staff or missing submission requirements that disqualify them early in the process.

These missteps come at a cost. Teams burn out, valuable time is wasted and opportunities slip away. But many of these challenges are avoidable with the right approach.

This article outlines common mistakes firms make when responding to RFPs and offers strategies to help teams focus their efforts, improve collaboration and strengthen their proposals.

1. Pursuing Projects That Aren’t the Right Fit

The decision to pursue a project sets the tone for the entire proposal process. It shapes how teams allocate time and resources and whether the effort leads to meaningful outcomes. When firms don’t approach this decision with discipline, they often end up committing to pursuits that are misaligned, unwinnable or unsustainable.

Lack of a Rigorous Go/No-Go Process

Many firms underestimate the importance of disciplined decision-making at the outset. Without clear go/no-go criteria, teams default to chasing every opportunity, regardless of fit or likelihood of success. In some cases, leadership may push to pursue a project based on personal interest or optimism, rather than strategic alignment. Without an agreed-upon go/no-go process to guide these decisions, teams risk expending valuable time and effort on pursuits that offer little return.

Overestimating Experience and Capabilities

Firms also fall into the trap of overestimating their qualifications. Teams often rely on outdated experience or isolated examples of similar work to justify pursuing an RFP. But clients are typically looking for deep, recent and relevant expertise — particularly in specialized markets. Failing to recognize when the firm isn’t the right fit can make it difficult to position the team as the most qualified choice.

Resource Constraints Not Considered

Beyond qualifications, firms often overlook their internal capacity. Marketing and technical teams are frequently tasked with managing multiple proposals at once, on top of ongoing project responsibilities. Without a realistic assessment of workload and bandwidth, teams can become overextended, leading to compromised proposals and diminished team morale.

Solution: Making Smarter Pursuit Decisions

A disciplined go/no-go process is essential to avoiding these pitfalls. This requires clear, objective criteria that evaluate not just the firm’s qualifications, but also internal capacity and alignment with broader business goals.

Pursuits should be prioritized based on factors like relationship strength, recent and relevant experience and the team’s ability to dedicate focused resources to both the proposal and project execution. Leadership plays a key role in reinforcing these decisions, providing support when the right move is to walk away.

2. Overextending Teams and Resources

In many AEC firms, the pressure to pursue multiple opportunities at once can overwhelm even the most experienced pursuit teams. Proposal workloads are often layered on top of existing project responsibilities, stretching both marketing and technical staff to their limits. Without a deliberate approach to managing resources, teams find themselves juggling competing priorities with little time to focus on what matters most.

Concurrent Proposals and Shortlists

It’s not uncommon for firms to manage several active pursuits at the same time. Teams are often developing one proposal, preparing for a shortlist interview on another and waiting for the release of a new RFP at the same time.

This overlap places heavy demands on staff, particularly when marketing and technical contributors are expected to divide their attention across multiple pursuits. The workload quickly becomes unsustainable when deadlines converge or interviews require significant preparation.

Risk of Quality Reduction

As teams stretch to cover multiple pursuits, proposal quality often suffers. Content may be rushed, generic or incomplete, and important details can be missed. The risk of burnout increases as staff work long hours to keep up with competing deadlines. In many cases, both the proposals and the interview preparations are compromised, diminishing the firm’s chances of success on all fronts.

Solution: Manage Team Bandwidth

Firms that consistently deliver high-quality proposals are deliberate about how they allocate resources. Pursuit decisions should account for team bandwidth in addition to qualifications and strategic fit. Limiting the number of concurrent pursuits allows both marketing and technical teams to focus their efforts where they can make the greatest impact.

3. Ignoring Internal Milestones and Deadlines

Meeting internal milestones isn’t just about staying organized—it’s what can make or break the proposal process. When teams treat deadlines as flexible or optional, delays in one area have a cascading effect on everything that follows. Small setbacks at the front end of proposal development often lead to significant problems as the deadline approaches, forcing teams into reactive mode when they should be focused on refinement and final touches.

Missed Milestones Trigger Domino Effects

When content deadlines slip, the time allocated for proposal design, QA/QC and compliance checks shrinks. What starts as a minor delay in gathering technical input or project narratives often results in last-minute scrambling to meet submission requirements. This crunch leaves little room to resolve issues, make revisions or complete thorough reviews, increasing the risk of mistakes that can jeopardize the proposal.

Impact on Marketing Teams

Late content puts additional strain on marketing teams, who are often responsible for coordinating inputs, designing layouts and finalizing the submission. Without the time to polish and refine the proposal, teams are forced to prioritize basic completion over quality. It’s a situation that frequently leads to after-hours or weekend work, contributing to burnout and staff turnover over time.

Solution: Help Teams to Stay on Track

Setting realistic internal deadlines — and holding teams accountable to them — is essential to keeping the proposal on track. Leadership plays an important role in reinforcing the schedule and assuring that pursuit strategies are achievable. When executives support and model respect for the process, it signals that deadlines are non-negotiable. This shared accountability helps maintain momentum and keeps the entire team aligned on priorities.

4. Content That Misses the Mark

Strong proposals do more than check boxes — they tell a cohesive story that convinces the client your team is the right choice. Yet, even experienced firms often fall short by submitting content that’s rushed, generic or misaligned with what the client is really asking for. When proposals miss the mark, it’s usually not because the team lacks expertise, but because that expertise isn’t communicated in a clear, targeted way.

Failure to Fully Answer RFP Questions

One of the most common issues is technical teams skimming RFP questions instead of reading them carefully. As a result, responses often miss key details or fail to address the client’s specific concerns. Without clear, direct answers, proposals can appear incomplete or careless — raising doubts about the firm’s attention to detail and commitment to the project.

'Check-the-Box' Responses vs. Persuasive Storytelling

Firms sometimes default to providing surface-level answers that simply fulfill the basic requirements of the RFP. While these “check-the-box” responses technically address the question, they rarely differentiate the firm from competitors. They miss the opportunity to demonstrate a deep understanding of the client’s priorities, pain points and project vision — failing to show why this team is uniquely qualified to deliver success.

Solution: Elevate Content

Winning proposals require more than compliance; they need to persuade. Start by making sure technical teams fully understand and directly respond to each prompt in the RFP. Then, go beyond the basics by highlighting lessons learned, relevant experience and how the team’s approach will add value. The proposal should tell a cohesive, client-focused story that connects the firm’s capabilities to the client’s goals — making it clear why this team is the best fit for the project.

5. Starting Critical Deliverables Too Late

Successful proposals rely on early alignment between technical plans, graphics and narrative content. Yet many teams delay key deliverables — like logistics plans, project approaches and execution strategies — waiting until the marketing team produces a draft before engaging in meaningful review. This habit compresses the timeline and also creates avoidable rework and misalignment.

Delayed Work on Project Approaches, Schedules and Graphics

One common misstep is teams waiting for marketing to “take the first pass” at technical sections before providing input or updates. Instead of developing logistics plans, schedules and technical narratives early, teams delay decisions until much later in the process. This puts unnecessary pressure on marketing to fill in the gaps and often results in content that lacks the depth and accuracy evaluators expect from technical experts.

Rework and Misalignment Slow the Process

Late engagement leads to multiple rounds of revision on time-consuming deliverables — particularly graphics, BIM models and logistics plans. It’s not uncommon for marketing teams to finalize visuals, only to have technical teams request major changes after the fact. These late revisions increase the risk of inconsistency between the narrative and the graphics and can compromise the overall cohesion of the proposal.

Solution: Align Early in the Process

Start developing logistics plans, project approaches and technical content immediately after the proposal kickoff meeting. Schedule early cross-functional working sessions that include superintendents, project managers, VDC/BIM teams, marketing and graphics staff.

These collaborative reviews confirm that the technical strategy is clear, graphics align with the narrative and revisions happen before design work is complete. Early alignment saves time, reduces rework and results in a more polished final proposal.

6. Undervaluing the Role of Marketing

In many AEC firms, marketing teams are treated as support staff rather than strategic partners. While they’re often tasked with managing complex proposals under tight deadlines, their role is frequently undervalued. When technical teams miss deadlines or provide incomplete information, the expectation is that marketing will find a way to make it work — regardless of the time or effort required to do so.

Marketing Teams Viewed as Service Providers, Not Partners

This mindset places the burden on marketing to compensate for breakdowns elsewhere in the process. Rather than being engaged early as collaborators in strategy and messaging, marketing teams are left to fill gaps, fix issues and pull the proposal together at the last minute. Their role becomes reactive instead of proactive, limiting the overall quality of the submission.

What’s at Stake

The result is predictable. Burnout increases as marketing teams work late nights and weekends to meet deadlines that could have been avoided with better coordination. Morale suffers, leading to high turnover—an ongoing challenge in an industry where marketing professionals play a central role in securing work. Beyond that, firms miss out on the strategic insights marketing can offer when they’re included as true partners in the proposal process.

Solution: Reinforce Marketing’s Role as a Strategic Partner

Leadership sets the tone for how marketing is treated. Reinforcing their role as an equal partner in pursuits creates shared accountability and encourages better collaboration between teams. Recognizing the workload and expertise of marketing professionals — by respecting internal deadlines and involving them early in the pursuit strategy — results in stronger proposals and a more sustainable process for everyone involved.

7. Overreliance on Boilerplate Content

Boilerplate content has its place in the proposal process, but relying on it too heavily can quickly undermine the quality of a submission. When teams pull standard responses without tailoring them to the specific project or client, the result often feels generic and disconnected. Worse, cutting and pasting from previous proposals introduces the risk of simple but costly mistakes — such as using the wrong client name or including outdated project details.

Boilerplate Used Without Adequate Tailoring

Generic content may technically answer an RFP question, but it rarely speaks to the client’s unique needs, challenges or goals. When a response reads as though it was copied from another proposal, evaluators are quick to pick up on it. Firms that don’t take the time to customize their content miss the opportunity to demonstrate real understanding and relevance.

Why Recycled Content Is a Problem

Clients are increasingly sophisticated in how they review proposals and what they look for in contractor teams. They expect responses that show insight into their project, their priorities and their values. When a proposal feels recycled, it diminishes credibility and can make the firm seem out of touch or disengaged. In competitive pursuits, that lack of connection is often enough to take a team out of contention.

Solution: Tailor Content for Impact

Boilerplate should be a starting point, not the finished product. Every section of a proposal should be reviewed and customized to address the specific client’s priorities and concerns. This includes referencing project-specific challenges, leveraging relevant case studies and highlighting lessons learned that apply directly to the client’s goals.

Tailored content shows the team has done its homework and is ready to deliver a solution that aligns with the client’s vision.

8. Missing Opportunities to Differentiate

Many proposals focus on checking the boxes outlined in the RFP — but stop short of explaining why the team is the best choice for the project. Firms often respond to the questions without weaving in their unique value proposition or demonstrating how they’ll deliver an exceptional experience. The result is a submission that feels transactional, rather than persuasive.

Focusing Only on Requirements, Not the 'Why Us'

While it’s important to meet all RFP requirements, proposals that simply restate qualifications or provide standard answers miss the chance to stand out. Evaluators want to understand not just what a team can do, but why they are the right fit. If the proposal lacks a clear message about the firm’s unique strengths and differentiators, it becomes harder for the client to see the added value.

How to Differentiate

A strong proposal demonstrates a deep understanding of the client’s mission, values and goals. It highlights the ways the team’s approach will directly address the client’s needs — whether through community engagement, meaningful diversity initiatives or sustainable building practices. Showing how the team will make the client’s life easier, simplify decision-making or enhance the project’s impact can be a powerful differentiator.

Examples That Make a Difference

Firms that stand out often go beyond standard answers to highlight initiatives that align with the client’s priorities. Examples include apprenticeship programs for local students, partnerships with diverse or minority-owned subcontractors and community outreach tied directly to the project. These efforts demonstrate the team’s commitment to making a positive impact—both during construction and long after the final built project is complete.

9. Treating Proposal Design and Layout as an Afterthought

Proposal design and layout play an important role in how evaluators engage with and understand content. Yet in many cases, design is treated as a final step — something to address after the narrative is complete. When teams delay delivering content, they leave little time for marketing and graphics staff to develop visuals that elevate the proposal. As a result, the design process becomes rushed, and opportunities to enhance clarity and professionalism are lost.

Late Content Limits Effective Design

Late content delivery is one of the biggest obstacles to strong design. When technical teams submit information just days before the deadline, marketing teams are left to focus on formatting rather than creating visuals that tell a story. This reactive approach often results in proposals that are text-heavy, difficult to understand and visually inconsistent.

Proposals that don’t prioritize design early often end up dense and hard to read. Long paragraphs with little white space make it difficult for evaluators to find key information. Inconsistent formatting and poorly executed graphics can make the proposal appear rushed, which can undermine credibility and distract from the firm’s message.

Solution: Strengthen Design and Layout

Delivering content early gives the marketing and graphics teams the time they need to enhance visual appeal and create graphics that support the narrative.

Breaking up text with bullet points, lists, callouts and case studies improves readability and helps evaluators absorb key information quickly. Diagrams, process flows and well-designed visuals make complex concepts easier to understand — helping the proposal stand out and leaving a stronger impression.

10. Poor Collaboration Between Technical and Marketing Teams

A successful proposal depends on proactive engagement and collaboration between technical and marketing teams. Yet in many cases, the two groups operate in silos, with minimal communication until deadlines loom. Without early alignment on strategy, content and visuals, proposals often feel disjointed — missing the opportunity to tell a cohesive, compelling story.

Disjointed Processes and Communication Gaps

When technical and marketing teams fail to engage early, it creates communication gaps that are difficult to bridge later in the process. Technical teams often expect marketing to fill in details or make assumptions about project approaches, while marketing teams are left trying to interpret technical plans without enough input or guidance. This reactive dynamic results in proposals that are inconsistent, lack depth and fail to highlight the team’s strengths in a way that resonates with the client.

Solution: Build a Collaborative Process and Support Mutual Respect

Establishing clear roles and responsibilities at the proposal kickoff meeting sets the tone for better collaboration. Both technical and marketing teams should be involved in early strategy discussions to align on key themes, differentiators and client priorities. Regular working sessions help maintain momentum, allowing teams to review content, graphics and messaging together — resolving discrepancies before they lead to last-minute changes.

The best proposal teams operate as true partners. When technical contributors understand the role marketing plays in shaping the client’s perception and marketing respects the technical team’s expertise, the result is a stronger, more cohesive submission. Leadership has an important role in creating this culture of respect, reinforcing shared accountability and assuring both teams have the time and support needed to contribute effectively.

11. Failing to Understand the Evaluation Process

A well-written proposal can still fall short if it doesn’t align with how evaluators review and score submissions. Many teams focus on telling their story but overlook the practical reality: proposals are often reviewed under tight deadlines, by committees comparing multiple responses at once. If evaluators struggle to find answers or review the submission efficiently, even the most qualified team risks losing the job.

Not Structuring Proposals for Easy Evaluation

One of the most common mistakes is ignoring the structure outlined in the RFP. Proposals that don’t clearly follow the requested format — or that bury responses in unrelated sections—are difficult to score. Evaluators are often pressed for time, and when answers aren’t easy to locate, they may assume they’re missing entirely.

How Evaluators Review Proposals

Evaluators don’t always read proposals cover to cover. Some review each section side-by-side, comparing how different firms responded to the same prompt. Others follow the RFP structure question by question, checking whether each requirement has been addressed. In either case, clarity and organization are key. If responses are hard to find or seem out of order, it slows down the process and can lead to lost points — or disqualification.

Solution: Make It Easy to Score

The best way to support evaluators is to follow the RFP structure exactly. Use clear headings that mirror the questions, and make sure each requirement is addressed directly. Call attention to responses with labels, bullet points or callouts where appropriate. A proposal that’s clear and easy to review builds credibility and also increases the chances of scoring well — helping evaluators clearly understand why the proposed team is the best fit.

12. Overlooking RFP Requirements

Even highly qualified teams can lose an opportunity before evaluators ever review their proposal. Simple mistakes—often caused by rushed timelines or a lack of final review—can lead to immediate disqualification. In competitive pursuits, missing a basic submission requirement is often enough to take a proposal out of contention, no matter how strong the technical content may be.

Common Mistakes That Lead to Disqualification

The most frequent disqualifiers are often preventable. Proposals that fail to meet submission requirements, contain errors such as the wrong client name or include inconsistent data raise immediate concerns about attention to detail. Non-compliance with page limits, formatting instructions or the required order of information can signal to evaluators that the team didn’t take the time to follow instructions — casting doubt on the firm’s ability to manage the project itself.

Solution: Avoid Common Submission Errors

A thorough QA/QC process starts long before the final deadline. The proposal manager, who leads the pursuit from kickoff through submission, is best positioned to oversee this process. As the person most familiar with the RFP requirements, client expectations and internal workflows, they are responsible for leading the final review and confirming that every submission requirement has been met.

Maintaining a clear, organized checklist helps the proposal team stay on top of every submission detail, reducing the risk of oversight. Just as important, building adequate time into the schedule for proofreading and error checking allows the team to resolve potential issues before they jeopardize the proposal.

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Stronger Proposals Start with a Smarter Process

Winning work through an RFP isn’t just about qualifications—it’s about delivering a proposal that reflects discipline, focus and a deep understanding of the client’s priorities. Too often, strong teams are held back by avoidable mistakes: chasing the wrong pursuits, missing internal deadlines or relying on generic content that fails to resonate. These issues aren’t the result of inexperience; they’re symptoms of overextension, poor collaboration and a lack of process.

By approaching proposals with a clear strategy, realistic resource planning and a commitment to teamwork, firms can strengthen their submissions and improve their chances of success. Treat marketing as a true partner, start technical work early and respect internal milestones as non-negotiable. The firms that win consistently are the ones that balance expertise with process —and make every proposal an opportunity to prove they’re the best choice for the job.

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