mediumScenarioCase StudyMidSeniorLead
An RFP has just landed. How do you decide whether to bid on it?
6 min readUpdated 2026-08-15
Answer
Short answer
Treat bid/no-bid as capital allocation: a response costs scarce senior engineering days, so qualify on stakeholder access, who authored the requirements, timeline realism and prior relationship, then bid with a real win theme, bid conditionally, or decline so the relationship survives.
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Likely follow-ups
- You are overruled and told to bid anyway. How do you change how you run the response?
- How do you decide what a conditional bid should be conditional on?
- The requirements are clearly written to a competitor's product. Is there any version of this you would still bid?
- How do you write the no-bid letter so the client invites you next time?
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