How have other companies implemented an intake process?

Our goal for 2023 is to spend less time on potentially bad deals, but using Intake will cause a process change. What intake fields are other companies using and what has been the best method of gathering buy-in from other departments to start leveraging it?

Comments

Helene H

The good news is once your team sets up an intake process, it will improve consistency and save time! I have listed some fields below and their recommended type that most of my clients have found success with.

Point Person for the project | Short Answer
Project Type | Dropdown
Goal of the project | Short Answer
Target Audience | Checkboxes or Short Answer
Budget | Dropdown
Deadline | Date

Elizabeth Bissell

We still get plenty of push-back from our sales/am teams, but we strictly enforce that if we do not receive an Intake, they do not get support from the Bid Desk. We are integrated with Salesforce, and we also implemented a 'Deal Deak" where certain approvals have to occur before they are even allowed to submit an Intake. This has really cut down the number of unqualified deals we get. Some still get through (sales can be sneaky, lol) In my experience, you just have to remain consistent -> no Intake = no proposal support. Luckily, we have full support from management on this.

Andrew Mersman

Hello! I agree with Beth...at my company the sales department is responsible for vetting and verifying if we are to pursue a deal. To start the project we did integrate with Salesforce (so no more email requests with varying types of information coming our way). I do find most people requesting the project/intake from salesforce but we do have some people that go to RFPIO and request the intake there (but just have to link the request back to the opportunity in Salesforce). Luckily for us, this process of requesting services from my team is very similar to how the sales department requests a demo from the demo team (all from the opportunity) so for them this wasn't a huge leap in practices so it was easy for them to adopt RFPIO intakes.

BlakeyNorthstar

I have not found the intake process helps filter bad deals, so +1 to the answers above suggesting a filter process pre-intake.

Elaine Crann

We also use Salesforce, we have the RFPIO Intake button in the Opportunity for RFx, most of the data is pre-populated and all they need to do is upload the bid documents and team members. For SQ & DD's we have the Intake button in the Account.

Most bids are vetted before submitting but we still discuss any intel in the KO call which sometimes leads to a No Bid.

We are also strict about submitting an Intake; the AM's are ok with it, they spend a lot of time in Salesforce so it's easy for them to access. However, we were using Salesforce prior to RFPIO so it was just a matter of training on the new way to submit a request.

Nick DeMarco

Our process is pretty much the exact same as Elaine's! Salesforce provides a lot of the info via the integration, but we also have some pretty hard and fast rules about what our team will/will not do (that will be even more crucial as we're growing rapidly and need to keep processes in place to avoid content bloat and overaccommodating extraneous and potentially inefficient needs).

Kim Preston

We just implemented the Intake with a Go-No Go process. We added a few fields to the Intake about Go-No Go, such as:

score
decision
reason for No Go

We are integrated with Salesforce and the AEs (sales) really like that they can access the RFPIO & Create Intake buttons from the opportunity. We are working on adding the Intake to "Account" for existing customers. We're not there yet.

Helene H

If anyone is curious on implementing Intake, the University has a great video I've shared below!

https://university.rfpio.com/student/activity/1314805-enabling-and-managing-intake?sid=1b4ae718-7a89-4f39-8462-7318484d43fc&sid_i=1#/page/639368672f0775090351a175

Andrea Hall Tai

Great feedback. Is it possible to edit the Intake? e.g. after the Intake has been approved, and it is a go,

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