Building a Winning SRM Strategy to Drive Revenue and Accelerate Growth

SRM Leaders Enjoy 16% Better Win Rates, 34% Greater Revenue Than Laggards. Here Are the Keys to Their Success

Enterprises are moving away from legacy manual, ad hoc response management methods to AI-powered Strategic Response Management (SRM), and for good reason.

With the global economy under increased pressure from multiple complex crises – inflation, climate change, supply chain disruptions and multiple wars in Europe and the Middle East – CEOs face what the World Economic Forum describes as a “polycrisis.” In the midst of this constantly changing environment, c-level executives are looking to recalibrate their spend and drive revenue while operating in a more balanced, profitable way.

Top organizations are contending with these challenges and continuing to drive revenue by implementing SRM practices. SRM provides the tools and processes for organizations to go beyond just handling requests for proposals (RFPs); response teams use SRM to respond to RFIs, RFQs, DEI and due diligence, security and ESG questionnaires, and so much more. To understand the state of SRM and the benefits of using the best, most modern tools and processes, Responsive commissioned a global research study identifying companies with different maturity levels in SRM, and profiling their practices and business outcomes.

According to the research, SRM “leaders” – the businesses that display the greatest skills, the most efficient processes and greatest use of SRM platform technologies – enjoy 16% better win rates and 34% more revenue coming through their function than “laggards,” the least mature SRM organizations. The good news? No matter where organizations are in their SRM journey, they can take steps today to improve their SRM maturity and help drive more revenue:

1. Invest in team skills – but most of all instill urgency.

According to the study, SRM leaders said 100% of their response team members are highly knowledgeable about the process of responding to RFPs, compared to 72% of laggards. Leaders’ response teams have a significantly greater set of skills, including producing the highest-quality work, collaborating, content editing, and aligning with business goals and operating with a sense of urgency — this lack of urgency was the largest observed skills gap between leaders and laggards.

Required skills include subject matter expertise in your industry and solutions, as well as more horizontal skills such as collaboration and content development. To become leaders in SRM, executives should support upskilling for their employees. Upskilling not only improves and expands employee skills, but it benefits the company as a whole by improving productivity, innovation and employee retention. For employees, upskilling can help advance their career path, provide new tools and methods to get their work done and thereby reduce job dissatisfaction and deliver hands-on knowledge that will deepen both their job and industry expertise. Possible resources to build on and expand on existing SRM-related skills include certificate programs, professional organizations such as APMP, and online resources such as LinkedIn Learning and webinars.

2. Leverage data for increased accuracy, brand consistency and compliance.

When a business receives a request for information or a request for a proposal, they often lack a streamlined way to complete the response. Teams often work in silos, without access to the content or people they need to communicate with.

First, evaluate the collaboration tools and techniques the stakeholders are using to communicate with SMEs in other departments as well as the processes by which they gather and ensure consistency and accuracy of content. Concentrate your response team to increase expertise within a focused set of individuals. And take a data-driven approach to the end-to-end process. SRM leaders have a much more data-driven culture than laggards, with the new research showing that 100% of leaders say they are very or extremely data-driven in their SRM process, compared to 60% of laggards. Implementing this culture will increase accuracy, brand consistency and compliance, and will further minimize risk.

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3.  Engage the C-level team.

Responding to information requests is no longer limited to response teams. Today, sales, marketing, legal and other company stakeholders are collaborating on a wide range of responses, whether it is a request to demonstrate security or compliance requirements for a multi-million dollar RFP.

According to the research, 96% of SRM leaders say their executives are very or extremely involved in the process and structure of responding to strategic responses, compared with 45% of laggards. C-level executives, from Chief Revenue Officers and Chief Financial Officers to Chief Information Security Officers and Chief People Officers, should play a greater role in helping to inform and shape strategic responses. Organizations must be sure to include them in their SRM lifecycle, from planning to reviewing and finalizing responses. While

they don’t always get involved on a hands-on level (especially if the process is running well), they should be monitoring the response process’s health and output and making sure the team is gaining actionable insights that can be used to refine the SRM process and accelerate win rates.

4. Invest in a modern SRM platform and tools.

Response teams use a variety of tools to support their processes. According to the report, the most-used tools are office applications (such as Microsoft 365 or Google Workspace), followed by SRM tools, sales enablement tools, content management tools, collaboration tools and CRM platforms.

With this swath of tools, it is hard to keep information centralized, up to date and accessible.. SRM software is purpose-built to help response teams manage the process, and act as a central repository for content required to respond to many types of strategic response requests. When powered by generative AI, SRM platforms are a game changer – providing generative AI assistants to help teams rapidly generate drafts of responses that can save response teams significant amounts of time and get them much closer to a perfect draft of a response in minutes instead of hours or days.

What’s Next

As the research showed, organizations today are in various stages of their SRM journey. No matter their current status, the good news is that they  can take steps now to improve their SRM maturity and, in turn,drive more revenue and enhance the user and employee experience. Looking ahead to 2024, we see SRM budgets remaining mostly unchanged while the number of RFPs and other types of information requests increasing. Organizations should assess where they are on their SRM journey and begin to take the steps outlined here so they can scale quickly to better manage this expected growth.

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