How to Write an RFP: Ten Questions That Make Every Quote Comparable

How well your requirements document (RFP) is written directly determines how accurate the quotes you receive will be. We've received one-sentence requirements — "we want a website like Shopee" — and thirty-page decks missing every key piece of information. This article, from the quoting side's perspective, lays out the ten questions a good RFP should answer. It doesn't need to be a thesis — one to three pages that answer these ten questions clearly is enough.

Part One: Business Context (Most Important, Most Often Missing)

1. Who are you, and how do you make money? Two or three sentences about the company, plus how this project relates to revenue. We always ask this before quoting, because "features that make you money" and "features the boss wants" have completely different priorities.
2. What problem is this project solving? "We take orders over LINE and drop a dozen a month" is a hundred times more useful than "we want an order system." State the problem, not your imagined solution.
3. What does success look like? Six months after launch, which number do you want to have moved? Inquiries, orders, labor hours saved — pick one.

Part Two: Scope (The Key to Quote Accuracy)

1. What are the core flows? List them as "user does X → system does Y." Example: "customer picks a slot and pays a deposit → system sends an SMS reminder → another reminder the day before."
2. Who uses the back office, and for what? Roles and permissions are the hidden variable in any quote. One role versus five roles is a different order of engineering.
3. What existing systems or services need integrating? Payments, e-invoicing, POS, LINE, internal ERP — every integration is billable hours. List them up front.
4. Who provides the content? Copy, product data, photos — supplied by you, or produced by the vendor? Leaving this unclear is the number-one cause of schedule slips.

Part Three: Constraints

1. What's the budget range? Many people fear that naming a budget invites a quote that spends all of it. The truth is the opposite: without a budget, vendors can only guess at scope, and the quotes get less accurate. Give a range, and let vendors tell you what that budget can reach.
2. What's the deadline, and why? "Live before the Double 11 sale" is a meaningful deadline; "as soon as possible" is not.
3. Any non-negotiables? Data must stay in Taiwan, must be exportable, source code must be delivered — say it now, not after signing.

The purpose of an RFP isn't to stump the vendors — it's to make sure every vendor is quoting the same project.

Approaches That Backfire

• Prescribing the technical solution: unless you genuinely know the domain, describe the problem and leave the solution to the professionals.
• Copying a competitor's entire feature list: you'll pay for features you never use. Cut down to the minimum "can't live without" set first.
• "We'll discuss details in person": if the scope isn't aligned before the meeting, it won't be aligned after it either.

Once the RFP gets you through the quoting stage, the next document is the specification — a separate craft; see how to write a spec. If you're about to send out requirements and aren't sure yours are complete, book a free 30-minute consultation — bring the draft, and we'll review it through a quoting vendor's eyes.