By Joe Houle

I get excited over the RFP process. Since my life is 24/7 sales, every con-tact with a prospect or existing client is an opportunity to show them that what I’m providing is better than any of my competitors’ offerings. It’s definitely an opportunity to expose a competi-tor’s weakness and put the advantage in my corner.

Sadly, this is not how all AEs in the exhibit marketing space view RFPs. They don’t see it as an opportu-nity to showcase their strengths. I’ve even heard former co-workers refer to RFPs as “Ranting From Purchasing,” “Release of False Pricing,” and the worst being, “Royal F@%’ing Pain.” Although this makes for good water cooler talk and lunch room laughs, it shows a lack of respect and disregard for all the hard work our clients go through to improve their exhibit mar-keting efforts.

Top Account Executives view the RFP process as a way to introduce new and exciting offerings in conjunction with a solid, healthy base of business offerings already provided. This is the opportunity to further differentiate your exhibit company from the 95 per-cent of companies that use duplicated templates in this exciting process. If your exhibit company isn’t getting bet-ter every year, you can’t expect your clients to better their presence at trade-shows either.

From a client’s viewpoint, what they are purchasing is an expensive, custom advertising tool created just for them. If you, as an exhibit company, are going to approach the process with a formatted and mundane approach, you are missing the point of the word “custom.” This is the opportunity to expose the weaknesses that most com-petitors have.

The best approach to starting the RFP process is to look at history. The best way to start this is to have a meet-ing or conference call with your clients after every major show. It’s another touch point and puts you in front of clients or prospects. If you can’t ar-range the meeting or call, writing from a marketing perspective is your best approach.

When answering their RFP inqui-ries, always keep in mind that you are

there to help your client sell their prod-uct, not your exhibit. As exhibit build-ers, we tend to focus on the quality of our exhibits. While quality is impor-tant, the focus should always be about your client’s corporate identity and product focus. Unfortunately, when we focus on exhibit elements over a cli-ent’s corporate identity, we are foster-ing the long time image of tradeshows as the “step child of marketing.” This process, and following through on our promises, puts our companies on a much higher level when we’re compet-ing for marketing budgets.

After corporate identity, you can focus on functionality of design. Po-sitioning corporate identity across the aisle from your client’s competitors, storage areas, and lighting come into

play here. Functionality, just like ex-hibit quality, should be automatic. Cli-ents expect this.

RFPs tend to focus on the past and present. This is an opportunity for your exhibit company to stand out by focusing on the future. Throughout the RFP, respond that post-show per-formance reviews and cost summa-ries are just part of what you do. This post-show review process gives you a chance to learn from any incidents that occurred on the show floor and also provides an opportunity to begin plan-ning for the next event. Remember, it’s all about the future.

So many of my counterpart AEs are insecure. This is unfortunate. They want to be the only point of con-tact within a company because they

don’t want anyone “stealing” the client away from them. This is so limiting for clients and shelters the true capabilities and potential of your exhibit company. What I recommend, and something I practice, is to make every department part of the RFP process. That way, a client can reach somebody on the ac-count team any day and any time. Give them 24/7 accessibility. Giving a client a contact in, for example, Design allows them to provide valuable input and become part of the process. Our company becomes a direct extension of their marketing department. Why would they ever leave?

Lastly, be completely honest with your clients and prospects. I would estimate that more than half the ex-hibit companies put false pricing and capabilities into an RFP. This is an opportunity to educate your client on the intentions of your competitors. In-form them that they shouldn’t look at an hourly rate and derive value from it. I’ve heard competitors say that they always put in a lower hourly rate be-cause when designing and estimating, the client never asks how many hours it takes. That part of the equation is never included in an RFP because of the “custom” aspect of our business. When you’re honest with your clients, they tend to not argue as much about invoices, which improves my working relationship with the Accounting De-partment.

To Summarize, the Top Five Fo-cuses of an RFP should be:

Always keep your client’s corpo-rate identity as the main focus

Functionality and quality of your products and services should be rein-forced

Focus on the future, not the past or present

Provide multiple points of contact across all departments

Be honest. Then, you don’t have to remember anything.

Good Selling!Joe Houle is Vice President of

Strategic Development at LAB Ex-hibits. Joe is a sought after public speaker and is available for book-ings. Please contact Joe at 708-305-0220 or at jhoule@lbexhibits.com

RFPs: Getting the edge on your competitionJune 2011

Joseph Houle is the vice president of strategic development at LAB Exhibits. He is available for speaking engagements and can be contacted via email at

jhoule@lbexhibits.com.