Response Insiders: The Growth-Focused Community for RFP Professionals

We know that professionals who handle complex documents, like Requests for Proposals (RFPs), Security Questionnaires, and Due Diligence Questionnaires (DDQs), are eager for industry insights.

Bid co-ordinators, proposal managers, and business development folks are a curious bunch, and they’re always looking for best practices to level up their RFP response skills.

In the spirit of sharing, we’re lifting the virtual curtain on something we’ve been working on to help them do just that. Today, we’re excited to announce the public launch of Response Insiders—a growth-focused community for RFP response professionals. 🎉

Read on to learn why this free community was built, the exclusive perks for members, and how it works.

A Place to Build Virtual Connections

Back in August of 2020, the Loopio team welcomed 1,700+ RFP response professionals to our annual conference, Loopicon. With the event going virtual for the first time, there was little in-person networking available to attendees. So, we built a private Slack community to facilitate conversations and connections. It was intended to be a space to share insights, answer questions about the event, and send daily reminders to attendees. But it quickly grew into a highlight of the conference.

After seeing how much attendees enjoyed networking and sharing during Loopicon, we decided to keep the community going after the event as a quiet experiment with just Loopio customers. We re-launched the initiative in November of 2020 as Response Insiders, a growth-focused community for RFP professionals to connect and learn from each other.

Now, we’d like to extend the invitation to the community to anyone in the proposal industry. Any professional who responds to complex documents, such as RFPs, requests for information (RFIs), or security questionnaires, is welcome to join. Proposal managers, solutions engineers, and sales operation leads across North America use the community to share insights with one another, ask for RFP help, or simply circulate a good meme. 😉

The Benefits of Joining a Niche RFP Community

The community is truly brought to life by contributions from its members. Some of the benefits of being part of the group include:

1. Instant Advice on Proposal Best Practices

Community members can quickly tap into proposal experts from organizations and teams across geographies and industries.

You’ll also have access to Loopio’s team of experts, who work with 1,000+ organizations on their proposal process.

There are also dozens of consultants and thought-leaders in the community who know what it takes to write winning proposals, including those from Weber Associates, RFP Advisory Group, and Dragonfly Editorial.

2. Career Advice from a Community of Peers

At smaller companies, setting proposal manager performance goals can be tough. Often, RFP leads function as a team of one, which is why Response Insiders helps fill in the gaps for folks looking for career advice.

Members are also able to share new jobs and open roles in the community. (It’s one of our most active channels.) It’s a great way to keep your ear to the ground for new opportunities or have the chance to personally connect with the hiring manager.

3. Free Events and Interactions With the Best in the ‘Bid-ness’

We host 1:1 conversations, webinars, industry surveys, and promote other events that share insights from experts in proposal management.

One example: Kathryn Bennett, Director of RFP Excellence at Loopio, hosted a webinar series on Mastering RFP Management with experts from in both public and private sector proposals. She’s covered topics from building a proposal team to lessons from procurement.

4. Find Your Tribe (Or, a Safe Place to Share Your Favorite GIFs)

Perhaps the best part about joining a community is finding a group of people that ‘get you.’ In Response Insiders, you’ll have the opportunity to connect with people in the RFP space that relate to your day-to-day life.

It’s a safe place to discuss how to handle (another) last-minute proposal, or simply share your favorite GIFs, like the example below.

How It Works: Exploring Loopio’s Free Community

Joining Response Insiders is easy. All you need to do is sign-up by visiting responseinsiders.com. Then, you’ll receive instructions to create a Slack account, if you don’t already have one.

Once you’re in, be sure to check out our community guidelines. (It also contains tips for how to use Slack if it’s your first time.) Then, fill out your profile so others know who you are. Now, you’re ready to start chatting.

The community contains lots of channels for conversation, so once you’ve joined, you can start networking in a variety of ways, including…

6 Things to Do Once You Join Response Insiders

1. Introduce yourself in the #introductions channel ✓
2. Visit #news-and-events to sign-up for Kathryn Bennett’s latest webinar ✓
3. Read about content management and response tips in #proposal-writing ✓ 
4. Add your favorite RFP meme or GIF to the #random channel ✓
5. Visit #jobs to see the latest career opportunities posted by your peers ✓ 
6. Any questions? Don’t be shy, drop them in #general ✓

All members can browse and join the public channels (including the ones above) in Response Insiders. Here’s instructions to search and join any public channels.

Ready to get started? Join Response Insiders now.