RFP Success with Lisa Rehurek

george grombacher 0:02
Lisa Rehurek is the founder and CEO of the RFP success company. It’s an organization helping small businesses secure state government contracts, and she is the author of winning in state government. Welcome to the show, Lisa.

Lisa Rehurek 0:15
Thank you, George. I’m so excited to be here. excited to talk to your audience.

george grombacher 0:19
I’m excited to have you on tell us a little bit personal lives more about your work, why you do what you do?

Lisa Rehurek 0:26
Absolutely. Well, I am an Arizona native, we were just having this conversation before we hit record, Arizona native, I’ve lived here most of my life outside outside of college in Texas, a little stint in Wisconsin. But I was born and raised in the met on the Mexican border. I now live in the Phoenix area with my two pups tuck and all of her loves of my life for the you dog lovers out there, right. I spent a lot of my career in corporate America, first in the hospitality industry. And then I kind of moved into consulting. I cut my teeth very early in my career on RFPs, which is a request for proposal. And when I started my own business, that niche kind of found me. And that’s where my business focus focuses on. It really love this business for so many reasons. It’s interesting. In the beginning, when people started calling me for it, I was like, Ooh, do I really want to start a business all about RFPs. And now I love it so much, because the passion that I feel for helping businesses grow, particularly small businesses, and the small end of mid market is just those businesses don’t always have the same competitiveness that maybe a large company has. And there’s so much beauty in winning a state government contract for these businesses because they can better manage their business. So I have a huge passion for it now. It’s so fun to help them win contracts and just see their businesses be able to grow. That’s why I do what I do now.

george grombacher 2:00
I love it. Who would have thunk? Who were looking back?

Lisa Rehurek 2:03
Yeah, you know, what’s funny is a friend of mine said to me one day, at least I found I think your niche finally found you because I had been looking for a niche. And I was like, oh, there can’t possibly be enough work in this niche, which now is laughable. But at the time it felt so small. There’s plenty of work out there for sure.

george grombacher 2:21
How much work are we talking? How many? How many state or municipal organizations entities exist in the United States roughly,

Lisa Rehurek 2:30
you know, I don’t know the number. But I will tell you this, that the what we call the sled entity, which is state, local and education, they spend $1.5 trillion on goods and services. So they buy everything, it’s shocking, we’ll get We just helped a mortuary transportation company with their RFP and we helped a party bike company bid on a boat thing. And, you know, we help to Animal Rescue. So all these things that you don’t really think about the government buys a whole bunch of stuff. And and there’s just a lot of opportunity out there for sure. $1.5 trillion a year. What’s

george grombacher 3:05
the acronym again?

Lisa Rehurek 3:06
Sled s l Ed, state local education. State

george grombacher 3:11
Local Education. Nice. Okay, so 151 point $5 trillion dollars. And those are those are three awesome examples, like you said, Animal Rescue, party bikes, and a mortuary service. So there’s human beings that work for state, state, state and local government and human beings need all kinds of services and things. So we’re talking about a huge swath of potential companies that can get into this marketplace. 100%.

Lisa Rehurek 3:40
And a lot of times people think, well, the government’s really hard to work with, or it’s really hard to get in with the government. But here’s what I’ll tell you, you will get a one year or three years, sometimes up to a five year contract. That is amazing, you are guaranteed pretty much that money, they pay better than the private sector in most instances, and you’ve got these contracts. So you can manage your business so much better, like that consistency and that ability to know what’s coming down the pike. From a staffing perspective. It’s just such a great way to be able to manage your business when you get those contracts.

george grombacher 4:16
Yeah, that was something I wanted to I wanted to touch on because you mentioned that in the beginning, it’s an opportunity to help businesses grow by having sustainable revenue knowing okay, I’ve got this great contract for 123, potentially even longer, and that allows me to, I don’t want to use the term triage but it just gives you kind of a foundation knowing you have cash flow coming in 100%,

Lisa Rehurek 4:39
right, and you can anticipate what staff you need and you can add to it. I mean, for small businesses, that’s one of the hardest things really is like when do I step up? Do I step up before or after I get more clients and when you’ve got these contracts, you get three or four really nice contracts you can very much more easily manage your cash flow and you or your staffing and all of that?

george grombacher 5:04
So, we were talking and I, I mentioned that when we had connected about you coming on the show, I thought, well, that that’s, that’s really cool. I don’t know anything about this. I’ve been a professional for almost 25 years, and I’ve never even considered potentially doing an RFP and winning estate contract I imagined that’s not uncommon.

Lisa Rehurek 5:27
That is not uncommon. And I think it’s because people have in their heads will, the government is hard to work with, or the government doesn’t buy what I, what I provide. And you know, if what I would say to anybody listening that’s kind of intrigued by this and is maybe looking for a new revenue source is to play around a little bit and see what’s out there. There are some really great what we call aggregators, one in particular is called Find rfp.com, it costs like 30 bucks a month, sign up for a month or two and put in some keywords and just see what kind of RFPs are out there. For your type of business. There are definitely some, you know, some roadblocks, that you have to get over around terms and conditions and insurance requirements and things like that. So you can start reading those terms and conditions. start understanding what kind of performance past performance you need to provide. But it’s really fun when you start looking at that and seeing what’s out there. I think you’ll be surprised at what is out there and what you can, what kind of contracts you can win.

george grombacher 6:33
How often do you talk to people? And you say, Nope, what you do is not a good fit, Has that ever happened?

Lisa Rehurek 6:40
Yes. But very, very seldom, I mean, usually, or sometimes it’s something like we’ve had a motivational speaker come to us in the past. And, you know, they generally will hire those one off, not go out to RFP for motivational speakers, there are some things that they can sole source, depending on the entity, but anything over a certain dollar amount, almost always they have to go out to RFP. And very, I think, if that’s the only example that I can think of is the motivational speaker, we were like, yeah, probably not really worth your time. But also, some states have what’s called an MSA, they all call it something different master services agreement, you bid just to get on a list so that all the other agencies within that state can just go and pick and don’t necessarily have to go out to RFP for some of that. So there’s just a ton of opportunity out there.

george grombacher 7:34
Oh, interesting. So in order to be considered, you mentioned, we have to have a certain kind of insurance, there’s certainly probably lots of terms and conditions, there’s background checks, what kind of experience do I have to have? Is there a rule of thumb there? It kind

Lisa Rehurek 7:50
of depends, you know, I always hate to use that answer. But it does depend on the service that they’re asking for. And everyone will be different. Some of them will say you have to have state government experience specifically in this. Or some will say you have to have experience in this. And it isn’t state government specific. So you can talk about your corporate experience and talk about the different experiences that you have, and past performance that you have outside of the government entity. So it depends on the state depends on the service offering, there’s sometimes ways to get around that. If it’s something that you say, hey, I really want this as a revenue source going forward. But we don’t have any past performance. And they’re looking for a lot. We suggest, especially for small businesses going out and subcontracting with a prime, because you’ll get that experience, but they’re the ones that are putting their foot forward. They’re the ones really responding to their RFP, and having to meet all of those requirements. But then you get the experience and you can use that in future RFPs.

george grombacher 8:49
What does it mean to subcontract with a prime?

Lisa Rehurek 8:53
Yeah, so generally, there’s generally a larger company, and they need subcontractors. So many states are saying, hey, we want you to subcontract particularly with a diverse small business. So even better, if you’re a woman owned, minority owned veteran owned, you, these larger prime companies need you desperately. And so you go in as a subcontractor, you better and you’re gonna go in as a subcontractor for a very small slice of the pie. So for one particular thing that maybe that corporation doesn’t have, that they need. So for example, this is kind of a crazy example. But if we work with companies that do Medicaid, actuarial rate setting, and sometimes they need CPAs, and they don’t necessarily employ CPAs, so they can go out and subcontract with a CPA firm, bring them in as a subcontractor, that CPA firm better perform well. And then you can use that again as past performance. You’re in really great with a prime and you don’t have to take much of the risk the Prime Day About NPS, you, you contract directly with the prime, not the state. Got

george grombacher 10:05
it perfect. I think about a lot of what I do in terms of there’s an art and a science to it. So for example, if I’m prospecting for new clients, how do I communicate and ask questions and stuff like that? That’s the art of it. But then the science is I need to be talking to this many people. How does that apply, if at all,

Lisa Rehurek 10:24
it really applies the same way, the only, there’s some differences, some people think, Well, I’m just gonna wait for an RFP to come out, and I’m gonna go bid on it, you need to be building a relationship with your target entities long before that, just like you would in any sells environment. And there’s the art and the science in that as well, having conversations, building relationships, asking questions, and getting information around things that they would not put in that RFP, that’s going to give you a leg up when you respond. But it’s really not any different. The only difference is that instead of you having a conversation, all the way through to the sale, you’re going to have a conversation up until the RFP hits, then no more conversation could be had, then you respond to this RFP. And that’s the sales mechanism, if you will. So it’s just some subtle differences. But the process itself is not all that different.

george grombacher 11:18
Okay. So let’s just let’s use me as an example. Or you can say that’s terrible example, let’s use this. Let’s say that I own a coaching financial coaching company. And I go to Maricopa County and say, I wonder if they offer financial coaching to their employees. And let’s let’s let’s forget that I said, Maricopa County, I have no experience in this. Take me from soup to nuts, we shake hands, you’re going to coach me up on how to start winning RFPs? What does it look like from a time perspective, from an effort perspective, stuff like that.

Lisa Rehurek 11:50
The first place that we would start is really identifying what value you bring and what your offering looks like. Then we go out and we start digging around the state, the county, the cities, and we’re looking at their RFPs. Like, do they do anything like this picking up the phone and calling the procurement officials in, say, the city of Phoenix and saying, Hey, have you ever seen anything like this come across? Is this something that you offer? Now? Is this something that you anticipate offering in the future? And then from those conversations, you kind of take it from there, sometimes we’ll say, maybe you can offer some free coaching? If you really need to get in the door? And it’s not something that they do currently? What kind of coaching can you do for free? Or can you do any workshops for their vendors or things like that, just to get a foot in the door. So and then from there, depending on what we find, and then we formulate a plan for how you can really dig in and start winning some RFPs. Okay.

george grombacher 12:48
And it makes sense that I would want to be building relationships in advance of an RFP coming out, and that if I’m in a position that I want to play the long game, and that the seeds that I plant today, maybe I’ll be able to harvest them six months, a year, three years from now. Yes.

Lisa Rehurek 13:07
100%. And, you know, for certain things like financial planning, is that something that they offer you’re going in, and you’re building a relationship to get them to realize they need it? Right? So there’s that element of it. Or if you know, they’ve done this in the past, there’s ways that you can find copies of contracts. This is one of the best things about state government is that that information is pretty much a public domain if you know where to go and how to get it. So we find out okay, yes, the city of Phoenix puts out this RFP for financial planning. It’s, it’s in year two of a three year contract, you start building relationships with the owner of that contract, because you want to find out, hey, do they like the current vendor that they’ve got? Do they? Are they having any hiccups? What value can we be adding so that we’re there, and they’re familiar with us when the RFP comes out? It’s a harder mountain to climb to unseat an incumbent. But it’s 100% doable, especially if you’ve been building that relationship. Got

george grombacher 14:12
it. So the owner of the contract that means like a division head of some kind or Yep,

Lisa Rehurek 14:18
so there’s a couple of different players. There’s usually the the key buyer, who’s the kind of the key decision maker, the agency owner, that you know, the agency director, whatever that looks like, but you’ve also got procurement in there. So every state or city has a procurement official, that’s generally your point of contact in the RFP itself. So they’re going to have very little information, you can only talk to them in a certain timeframe. You can’t talk to the agency owner, director buyer at once that RFP hits the streets. So you want to be building relationships with both the procurement official and the agent, you know, the owner of that contract, but the owner of that contract is the one that’s going to give Be the dirt and the real, what’s keeping them up at night kind of information. So that’s the one you want to do build a deeper relationship with. But the procurement officials also important. Got it?

george grombacher 15:12
And obviously, the more RFPs that I do, the better I will get. But kind of walk me through that process of the learning curve. How do you coach people up and how long it takes them to sort of get it? Yeah,

Lisa Rehurek 15:30
we do something called a go no go spreadsheet. So we work with our clients to identify the key criteria that they’re looking for in a client and a project. So not just because the city of Phoenix puts out a financial planning RFP of some sort coaching RFP does not mean that that entity is best for you. So we really work on the front end to identify what are some of those deal breakers? What are some of the ideal things that you’re looking for, and we put together a scorecard. So when an RFP comes out, you use that scorecard to score whether to score that RFP. And a lot of times, companies will just say, well, we can do this. So let’s bid and they bid on everything. And they keep losing and losing and it’s a lot of time, it’s a lot of resources. So using this scorecard this go no go scorecard really helps you not bid on everything bid on the things that are appropriate. Some of that is do you already have a relationship, if you’re bidding cold, you have less than a 5% chance to win. And I don’t know about you, but that’s a lot of time and effort to put in for a less than a 5% chance to win. So we discourage people from bidding on anything that they can bid on and really bid on the things that they should bid on. And we help them develop that criteria up front. So

george grombacher 16:48
cold bidding cold, I have a less than 5% chance of winning the contract. That means that these people don’t know me from Adam, that I have no relationship at all.

Lisa Rehurek 16:57
Yep, exactly. Now, there’s a time and a place to do that. If you’re just breaking in, and you’re like, hey, I want to get my name out there, I want to get the information on this contract. Once you bid the great thing, even if you lose, you’ll get scoring sheets, how did the evaluator score you, you can get copies of competitor proposals. So sometimes it’s a strategic move to say, hey, let’s, let’s get in there, get our name in, I would only do this on your very, very high, high target clients, or prospects. But there’s so much great information, you can gather that and then be better prepared. And now the entity knows you a little bit more they recognize your name, they’ve seen things from you, and the next time around, it’s not going to be as cold. And it’s also opens the door for you to start building a relationship.

george grombacher 17:41
That makes a lot of sense. In terms of region, should I be focused on the area that I live? Or does that not matter?

Lisa Rehurek 17:50
Theoretically, it doesn’t matter. But you know, there’s 50 states, there’s a gazillion cities and counties and educational entities within every state. So you can’t just say, you shouldn’t just say I can go anywhere in the US because we just don’t have the resources to do that. So I always suggest starting local, in your home state in your home city. Unless there’s a compelling reason why that doesn’t work. Let’s say you’re you’re based here but you have staff in Pennsylvania, well, then it might make sense to bid in Pennsylvania. So it kind of depends on your goals and objectives and the way your company is set up. But best rule of thumb is to start locally.

george grombacher 18:31
I love it. Well, Lisa, thank you so much for coming on. Where can people learn more about you? How can people engage with you people who are curious you pique their interest? How do they how do they dip their toe in the water? Yep, I

Lisa Rehurek 18:44
a couple of things. You can go to our website, the RFP success company.com Verse. There’s plenty of information out there but also connect with me on LinkedIn. I’m the only Lisa rearick out there. You can ask me questions, shoot me a message. I’d love to chat with you. And, you know, give you some resources. We’ve got a ton of resources from free to pain, and we’re happy to help share some of that with you. So

george grombacher 19:08
yeah, excellent. Well, if you enjoyed as much as I did, surely show your appreciation. share today’s show with a friend who also appreciates good ideas, go to the RFP success company.com Check out all the great resources, pick up a copy of Lisa’s book, listen to our podcast. She does have a ton of great resources on the site, but take her up on the opportunity to connect on LinkedIn. It’s Lisa and last name is Rs EHUREK and send her a message and find out if this is a great opportunity for you or a terrible one. I’m sure that she will tell you.

Lisa Rehurek 19:43
Thanks, George. I so appreciate you having me on.

george grombacher 19:45
Thank you Lisa. And until next time, remember, do your part by doing your best

george grombacher 16:00
So if I want my iPhone, and my Tesla and my Bitcoin to work, we need to get the metal out of the ground.

Pierre Leveille 16:07
Absolutely. Without it, we cannot do it.

george grombacher 16:13
Why? Why is there a Why has production been going down.

Pierre Leveille 16:21
Because the large mines that are producing most of the copper in the world, the grades are going down slowly they’re going there, they’re arriving near the end of life. So and of life of mines in general means less production. And in the past, at least 15 years, the exploration expenditure for copper were pretty low, because the price of copper was low. And when the price is low, companies are tending to not invest more so much in exploration, which is what we see today. It’s it’s, it’s not the way to look at it. Because nobody 15 years ago was able to predict that there would be a so massive shortage, or it’s so massive demand coming. But in the past five years, or let’s say since the since 10 years, we have seen that more and more coming. And then the by the time you react start exploring and there’s more money than then ever that is putting in put it in expression at the moment for copper at least. And what we see is that the it takes time, it could take up to 2025 years between the time you find a deposit that it gets in production. So but but the year the time is counted. So it’s it’s very important to so you will see company reopening old mines, what it will push also, which is not bad, it will force to two, it will force to find a it will force to find ways of recalibrating customer, you know the metals, that will be more and more important.

george grombacher 18:07
So finding, okay, so for lack of a better term recycling metals that are just sitting around somewhere extremely important. Yeah. And then going and going back to historic minds that maybe for lack of technology, or just lack of will or reasons, but maybe now because there’s such a demand, there’s an appetite to go back to those.

Pierre Leveille 18:33
Yes, but there will be a lot of failures into that for many reasons. But the ones that will be in that will resume mining it’s just going to be a short term temporary solution. No it’s it’s not going to be you need to find deposit that will that will operate 50 years you know at least it’s 25 to 50 years at least and an old mind that you do in production in general it’s less than 10 years.

george grombacher 19:03
Got it. Oh there we go. Up here. People are ready for your difference making tip What do you have for them

Pierre Leveille 19:14
You mean an investment or

george grombacher 19:17
whatever you’re into, you’ve got so much life experience with raising a family and doing business all over the world and having your kids go to school in Africa so a tip on copper or whatever you’re into.

Pierre Leveille 19:34
But there’s two things I like to see and I was telling my children many times and I always said you know don’t focus on what will bring you specifically money don’t think of Getting Rich. Think of doing what you what you like, what you feel your your your your your, you know you have been born to do so use your most you skills, do what you like, do what you wet well, and good things will happen to you. And I can see them grow in their life. And I can tell you that this is what happens. And sometimes you have setback like I had recently. But if we do things properly, if we do things that we like, and we liked that project, we were very passionate about that project, not only me, all my team, and if we do things properly, if we do things correctly, good things will happen. And we will probably get the project back had to go forward or we will find another big project that will be the launch of a new era. So that’s my most important tip in life. Do what you like, do it with your best scale and do it well and good things will happen.

george grombacher 20:49
Pierre Leveille 21:03
Thank you. I was happy to be with you to today.

george grombacher 21:06
Damn, tell us the websites and where where people can connect and find you.

Pierre Leveille 21:13
The it’s Deep South resources.com. So pretty simple.

george grombacher 21:18
Perfect. Well, if you enjoyed this as much as I did show up here your appreciation and share today’s show with a friend who also appreciate good ideas, go to deep south resources, calm and learn all about what they’re working on and track their progress.

Pierre Leveille 21:32
Thanks. Thanks, have a nice day.

george grombacher 21:36
And until next time, keep fighting the good fight. We’re all in this together.