Like you, we get cold RFPs sent to us that ask for our involvement. We just received one from an organization that we think we would love to work with, but we have no research to confirm this. Our lack of a previous relationship is obvious, as the request is for a broad response that includes an overview of our capabilities in these areas among others:

• Sales force effectiveness/improvement
• Sales force benchmarking
• Recruiting/retention
• Employee development/career path building
• Corporate succession planning
• Training curriculum/certification design
• Performance measurement and management
• Employee engagement and motivation
• Developing a talent strategy:
  • Reinforcement tools/methodologies
  • Competency and behavior assessments
  • Blended learning techniques

They would like to hear about "your firm's strengths in these categories with descriptions of capabilities, and reference data or past performance in these particular areas", as well as general information about IMPAX - revenues, employees, organizational chart, standard pricing...

On the surface, it sounds great to have an opportunity to work with these people. In reality, we know almost nothing about them, we have no coaches in place, we don't know how many other companies are involved... We don't know what we don't know, and it would take us more time that it's worth to respond.

Now the question is, can we use a professional "non-response " to change the ground rules?