Before You Write the RFP Response, Really Know Who You're Writing To

Forrester's 2026 research found that generative AI search has become the starting point for how B2B buyers discover and evaluate vendors.[1] Some members of your next RFP's buying group have already asked an AI tool what it knows about your organization, forming an impression, all before your sales team has had the opportunity to meet them.

That creates both a risk and an opportunity in how you respond to the RFP that's just landed.

Not a new idea, but it is a new opportunity

Understanding a buyer and considering how to strategically position yourself to win before responding to the RFP is not a new concept. The Association of Proposal Management Professionals (APMP), the leading professional body for proposal and bid specialists, treats this kind of pre-RFP buyer research as a key best practice.[2]

But this level of rigour and RFP discipline was typically reserved for large enterprises pursuing Canada's largest benefit, retirement, or HR cases. It has been a luxury step that mid-market Canadian group benefits, group retirement, and HR firms rarely had the role or capacity to invest in to support their sales leaders.

AI changes that.

Since buying group members are using AI to research your organization, your organization can use AI just as deliberately to build a stronger response.

The analytical work a dedicated RFP specialist would once do manually, reading a buyer's public record, mapping their committee, sensing their risk tolerance, can now be done without a dedicated hire. What once required significant time from an RFP specialist is now a new habit.

What to actually learn about your buyers

Putting more focus on your RFP strategy and getting to know your buying group doesn't need to add a lot more work, and it doesn't mean overhauling your RFP process. Your strongest content, your capabilities, your credentials, your proof points, can all stay exactly as they are. What changes is how you marry what you learn about your prospective client with your existing content.

A strong buyer's guide typically explores questions like these, among others:

1. 1.Motivations. What business problem is driving this RFP right now, beyond what is written in the document, and how does the reason for the RFP look from each buying committee member's point of view?
2. 2.Culture. How does this organization make decisions, and who holds real influence versus formal authority? Has anyone new recently joined the buying committee? A new voice often signals a shift in priorities.
3. 3.Style and risk tolerance. What do their customer and employee experience, governance posture, and regulatory environment suggest about their risk tolerance: bold and innovative, or conservative and measured?
4. 4.Market perception. What do AI tools already say about them, and about you, through their eyes? A quick way to check your own side of that picture is to run an AEO audit on yourself.
5. 5.Track record. What have they valued in past vendor relationships? Patterns tend to repeat.

Make it a habit, not a hire

Organizations that add a buyer's guide to their RFP strategic planning, before a word of the response gets written, create stronger, more compelling responses that show the prospect you understand them and care about getting it right.

Create a pre-built, reusable AI prompt to draft a buyer's guide: build it once, run it for each new opportunity, and turn hours of manual digging into a structured guide in a fraction of the time. I've built a sample you can try, and you'll find details at the end of this piece.

Keep on gathering what your sales leader and other internal stakeholders already know about the prospect. Merged with what AI surfaces, is a combination that makes for a strong buyer's guide.

Then use the buyer's guide you've created to adapt your existing RFP content, elevating the strength of a proposal that was already good to begin with.

Where this fits

To help you get started, I've created a sample RFP Buyer's Guide AI prompt. Send me a message on LinkedIn and I'll share a copy with you.

Building this kind of intelligence into your RFP strategic planning is exactly the sort of gap Hurdle1 RFP Success was built to close, helping your team turn buyer research into a real competitive edge.

If it would help to talk through how AI can strengthen this step without adding to your team's workload, let's talk. You can learn more at hurdle1rfp.ca.

In my next piece, I'll look at the other half of this equation: once you know your buyer, how do you help them get to know you.