Finding Projects Before they Become RFPs

If you want to improve your win rate, stop waiting for RFPs. While RFPs feel safe and familiar, they come too late to position your firm effectively. This article breaks down why technical professionals are drawn to reactive business development and what it costs them over time. You'll learn how to calculate your lead funnel, why early pursuit matters, and how to create a lead-generating engine that delivers predictable, measurable results.

If you want to change your project win rate, you’ll have to change your team’s habits. Changing doesn’t happen easily. Plus, we can still win the odd project by simply responding to RFPs, so the temptation is always there. The trouble is that waiting for RFPs has us working in a hazier arena. In the “waiting game,” our results are never as reliable as we need them to be if we want to grow. This series provides resources for teams hoping to change their approach to BD so they can have earlier awareness of projects and set themselves up for the win.

This video is the second in a series on creating a lead generating engine for your team. We’ve created a prompt set called Pre-RFP Business Development Culture – What Does Your Team Believe About BD?, which goes along with this series, and a template to analyze the results. They're designed to reveal how your team thinks about early-stage business development a week or day at a time, where they feel confident, where they hesitate, and where old habits or misconceptions might be holding them back.

This video will help you get to the finish line on this series. I will walk you through the exercise, The Tasks that Power your Lead Generation Engine, during which you will make use of the two templates, The Tasks that Power Your Lead Generation Engine, and the Pre-RFP Business Development Planning Task Cards. Then we will wrap up by looking at the prompt set, Pre-RFP Business Development Habits – Sources for Leads Other than Purchasing Sites, which helps you establish the habits that drive your lead generation engine.

Missing an RFP creates unnecessary stress, lost opportunities, and last-minute chaos that could have been avoided. The issue isn’t effort—it’s structure. Monitoring purchasing sites is often informal, unclear, and easy to overlook, especially when support staff are pulled into urgent work. A simple internal work order changes that. It defines expectations, clarifies instructions, and creates accountability on both sides. It also allows for continuity, backups, and regular improvement.

This set of 20 prompts is designed to help technical professionals and their leaders understand how their team currently approaches business development, especially the early, pre-RFP stage. While the team may believe they are doing “some BD,” these prompts reveal the gaps in awareness, ownership, and process that often prevent a strong lead-generating engine from forming. By encouraging open-ended reflections, this set helps leaders pinpoint individual and team-wide misconceptions, cultural norms, and internal excuses that contribute to reactive rather than proactive business development behavior.

You might be used to responding only to RFPs, but not to recognizing opportunities upstream, before formal requests are issued. This prompt set is designed to shift that mindset. It teaches consultants and business developers how to hunt for leads in unexpected places: capital plans, blog posts, competitor websites, public engagement events, old colleagues, and casual conversations. The goal isn’t to find a guaranteed project with every prompt, but to build the "muscle memory" that make opportunity recognition second nature.

Over three months, this prompt set guides you through actively monitoring a Nugget to determine whether it is becoming a real opportunity. You’ll combine web research, conversations, internal insight, and pattern recognition to test your assumptions and track meaningful signals. Rather than passively observing, you’ll take small, focused actions to uncover timelines, decision-makers, and early indicators of movement. By the end, you’ll have a clearer, evidence-based understanding of whether the opportunity is advancing—and what your next move should be.

Over six months, this prompt set progresses from monitoring to interpretation and positioning. You’ll reassess earlier assumptions, analyze emerging patterns, and evaluate how the opportunity is evolving within its broader context. Through deeper research, conversations, and comparison to similar projects, you’ll clarify timelines, client intent, and potential barriers. The focus moves toward strategic thinking—understanding competitors, refining your firm’s angle, and identifying early engagement opportunities. By the end, you’ll make a clear decision: pursue, monitor, or pause—and define how to position yourself effectively if the opportunity advances.

This prompt set designed to monitor a nugget gradually shifts from analysis to action. You’ll confirm whether the opportunity is real, identify its current stage, and engage directly with the people shaping it. The focus turns to positioning—understanding competitors, refining your win angle, and closing gaps in your approach. You’ll anticipate procurement, test your messaging, and prepare for a rapid response. By the end, you’ll make a clear pursuit decision and define how your team will position itself to compete effectively—and win if the opportunity moves forward.

The Pre-RFP BD Exercise helps teams move from reactive proposal writing to proactive opportunity positioning before an RFP is released. Using task cards and collaborative planning, participants define business development activities, identify required learning, establish consistent terminology, and plan marketing efforts such as events and content. The exercise assigns accountability, budgets time, and encourages creative, engaging approaches to client interaction.