Many vendors sense that buyers have become more demanding and less patient, and lack understanding of what has shifted and why. Higher education institutions and public agencies increasingly want vendors who behave like strategic partners, not one-time suppliers, and they use RFPs to test whether a vendor understands that role.
Recent analyses of procurement across sectors underscore this shift. High-performing sourcing and procurement functions are expected to align with enterprise strategy, manage supplier relationships, and drive innovation, not merely execute purchases. Education procurement reports, meanwhile, describe dissatisfaction on both sides: buyers who find it difficult to distinguish between vendors on paper and vendors who feel they do not understand the decision-making process. One pattern across recent research reports that the most helpful aspects of vendor contracts include clear expectations, regular communication, and shared understanding of goals, especially in outcomes-based arrangements. In other words, the contract is increasingly treated as a framework for partnership, providing a clear and open channel of communication. Alignment with this concept includes:
- Explaining how the solution will achieve specific, measurable outcomes that matter to the institution or agency.
- Describing governance structures for the relationship, such as standing meetings, escalation paths, and data-sharing agreements.
- Acknowledging constraints—budgetary, regulatory, or operational—and showing how the proposed approach adapts.
Another expectation that has become more explicit is alignment between what a vendor says in proposals and how it behaves in relationships. Strategy research emphasizes that organizations struggle when sales activity and strategic intent are disconnected. In the RFP context, this disconnect appears when a proposal promises a strategic partnership, but the actual account management is reactive or transactional. For growing vendors, this is an internal coordination problem. RFP teams need reliable access to:
- The company’s current strategic priorities and target segments.
- Feedback from sales about which messages resonate with buyers.
- Lessons from implementation and customer success about what it takes to deliver.
Evolving Buyer Expectations
| Buyer Expectation | Source | Practical Response |
|---|---|---|
| Clear, measurable outcomes and performance expectations | Outcomes-based contracting in education and the public sector; emphasis on accountability for results | Propose a limited set of realistic metrics, explain how they will be measured, and show how they connect to the buyer’s mission. |
| Strategic alignment and partnership | Research on high-performance sourcing and strategic procurement functions | Frame your response around the buyer’s long-term goals, not just immediate tasks. Describe governance mechanisms for the relationship. |
| Simplicity and clarity in complex deals | Complex negotiations and bidding dynamics suggest that buyers prefer straightforward, clear offers. Therefore, vendors should use simple explanations of scope, pricing, and responsibilities. They should avoid unnecessary jargon and ensure that each section of their proposal directly answers the question at hand. | Use straightforward explanations of scope, pricing, and responsibilities. Avoid unnecessary jargon and ensure each section answers the question. |
| Evidence of learning from the field | Education procurement reports note that vendors often do not understand local buying processes or context. This highlights the value of learning from the field and adapting your approach based on prior work in similar environments. | Reference relevant policies, initiatives, or local conditions. Show that you have adapted your approach based on prior work in similar environments. |
Cross-Sector RFP practice
Many vendors serve more than one market: K–12, higher education, and government agencies. Rather than maintaining separate, disconnected RFP practices for each, it can be helpful to define a small set of cross-cutting principles that govern all responses. These principles might include:
- A commitment to outcome-oriented narratives rooted in the buyer’s mission.
- A standard for clarity in pricing and scope descriptions.
- An internal process for incorporating lessons from loss reviews and implementation into the content library.
Cross-sector insights can also be an asset when used carefully. For example, experience with outcomes-based contracts in one jurisdiction can inform how you propose performance metrics elsewhere, as long as you respect local regulations and conditions. Likewise, understanding how one institution structured governance for a complex implementation can help you propose similar structures to another buyer, with appropriate adjustments.
The emerging research on procurement and strategic partnerships suggests that the fundamental objective is not simply to win more RFPs, but to win the right RFPs and deliver on them. High-performing sourcing teams contribute to organizational goals and manage supplier relationships to create long-term value.
For vendors, this means that sophisticated buyers will look not only at whether a proposal is compliant and priced competitively, but also at whether the vendor seems prepared to engage in this kind of partnership.
RFP teams can respond by treating every proposal as a careful statement of intent: a description of how the company plans to work with this buyer in particular circumstances, supported by evidence from other engagements and aligned with the organization’s strategy. Over time, this approach strengthens trust with higher education and government buyers and turns RFP work from a reactive task into a deliberate growth component.
