Cvent's Supplier Network fills a comparison table before anyone walks the terrace. The public product page is blunt: Send one RFP to multiple venues, manage bids and award business. By the time you reply, your venue is already a row in that table.
Winning more of those rows is not a race to attach a PDF before lunch. Run a go/no-go the same morning. Answer the buyer's criteria, in their words. Name overtime instead of burying it. Send a first useful message early. The dossier clock is the buyer's printed deadline. Not a house slogan of forty-eight hours.
Corporate desks, agencies, and public notices
Most venue RFPs arrive as a scored document rather than a wedding form.
Corporate procurement teams live on platforms. Cvent presents the Supplier Network as a directory of nearly 340,000 hotels and venues in 18 languages, built so one RFP can go to several properties and the bids sit in one comparison. On the private market, your reply fills a cell in someone else's comparison.
Event agencies sit in the middle. An organizer often looks at several addresses for the same brief. A PCO that belongs to IAPCO has had to show it delivered at least 10 international meetings before membership. That buyer already has a template in their head. The relationship itself is covered in our guide to working with event agencies.
Public bodies are a third channel. In the UK, Contracts Finder lists opportunities worth over £12,000 including VAT with government and its agencies. Higher-value work usually sits on Find a Tender, described as contracts usually above £139,688 including VAT. Those notices look heavy. They also attract fewer venue replies than a Saturday enquiry, because most commercial teams never open the portal.
This channel does not come to you: you get listed with procurement, watch the boards and stay on agency shortlists. It is dull work, and the shortlists are often short.
Go/no-go before you spend the week
A full bid can eat a week, so run four checks before anyone opens the rate card.
| Check | Stay in | Walk away |
|---|---|---|
| Incumbent | The buyer will meet you and the date is actually free | The same venue has held the account for years and you were added late |
| Knock-out specs | Capacity, access, catering rules, certifications: you meet every line | One mandatory line is impossible in this building |
| Budget versus floor | The figure in the brief can carry your published minimums | The number sits clearly under your floor, with no smaller format offered |
| List length | Three to five venues, named contacts, a real decision date | A very long copy list, no visit, no named scorer |
A polite no-bid, with a referral when you can name a better-fit venue, keeps you in the next file. A thin reply written at midnight does not.
Do not invent a target win rate and then chase it. Track your own, by issuer: corporate, agency, public. An RFP is a heavier object than an ordinary enquiry. If almost every bid you send dies, the filter is wrong. Not the brochure.
Write to the grid the buyer already built
A buyer scoring several files gives each one a few minutes. Mirror their order and use their words. If they asked for breakout for 40 theatre, do not answer flexible syndicate rooms.
Open with a single page they can score without a call: the venue, the capacity, the total, the three points that map onto their criteria. Then the line-by-line quote. Extra AV, a late bar, an extra night: priced apart, so they never inflate the base. Building that quote in a dedicated tool, the way Joinways structures event quotes, keeps the arithmetic consistent and stops the silent addition error that kills a scored bid.
If a scorer can finish your file without a phone call, you wrote enough; if they have to guess the total, something is missing.
- Their criteria, in their order, with a yes, a no, or a figure next to each line.
- A total that matches the sum. No rounding tricks.
- Exclusions in plain language, on the same page as the total.
- One named contact who will still be there on the event day.
- A site-visit slot with a date, not a vague invitation.
Cvent tells planners they can attach extra files and compare bids. Assume they will. A twenty-page brand book nobody asked for does not help the row.
Price the scope. Name the extras.
The cheap line on the spreadsheet wins only when the scopes are identical. They rarely are.
Price what they asked. Then show what is included that others invoice later: a single contact, crew on site, headcount flexibility a week out. Costs that usually stay hidden belong on the page: overtime after midnight, deep cleaning, mandatory security. A surprise after signature wrecks the next RFP with that buyer, while the same line written into the offer reads as seriousness.
A deposit at signature is the usual commercial rhythm. Public tenders follow the notice. Payment terms sit in their papers, not in your wedding conditions.
A last-minute cut to look competitive does not rescue a file that missed a knock-out. Cut only after you have met the grid, if at all.
Their clock, then the follow-up
The public teaser of The Short Life of Online Sales Leads still says most companies are not responding nearly fast enough. Oldroyd, McElheran and Elkington wrote it for the March 2011 issue. No stopwatch on that page. The first useful message is an acknowledgement with a delivery date, sent fast.
Clarifying questions go out early. They prove you read the brief. The full file leaves by the buyer's date: if the notice says Friday at noon, that is the deadline, and a separate house standard on top of it only confuses the team.
After the file leaves: three to four contacts over two to three weeks. Then close the file in writing. If you lost, ask why with three courteous questions on price, location and capacity, and write the answers down.
A lost agency RFP does not close the door, because that agency will brief again. Keep the history in an event CRM so the next file does not start from a blank page.
Questions venues actually ask about RFPs
- Should a venue reply to every RFP that lands?
- No. If a knock-out line is impossible, or the date is not free, send a short no-bid the same day. Refer another venue when you can. Buyers keep that name. A midnight brochure that ignores the grid wastes the week and the relationship.
- How fast should the first reply be if the bid pack is due in two weeks?
- The first reply is an acknowledgment rather than the full pack: send it the same business day and name the date you will file. The pack itself follows the buyer's deadline.
- Where do UK public-sector venue tenders actually appear?
- Contracts Finder carries opportunities over £12,000 including VAT with government and its agencies. Find a Tender is the usual home for higher-value work, described as usually above £139,688 including VAT. Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland run their own boards. Read the notice before you open a rate sheet.
