How to Read a RFP response

A good portion of my afternoon has been spend reading some of the RFP responses we have received for a project we are doing at work. What is an RFP? Well friends it is an acronym for Request for Proposal. So we sent out a fifty page RFP. What we get back ranges in size depending on how bored the sales and marketing teams are at each company. From this I have come away with some useful information. No so much on the products but on how to read a RFP response.

1. If within three paragraphs they mention how flexible the product is more than five times, it probably isn't.
2. Gleaming technical information from marketing materials is like reading hieroglyphics, it is doable it just takes a lot of studying and it may not be a true representation
3. A RFP response is like staring at the sun, if you look long enough you will burnout your retina.
4. Brevity is our friend...All of those marketing people out there, repeat after me brevity is our friend.
5. Sending me a RFP response in PDF format is great, but don't expect me to read 200 pages off of the screen, cause, I'm just not going to.
6. Most important of all, the ones that include pictures keep you from getting bored as fast! If their in color it's even better.