Blog
RFP strategy, data, and workflow lessons from Settle.
Articles on how winning teams find the right RFP opportunities, qualify what matters, respond with proof, and build a repeatable contract revenue motion.
How Top-Performing Bidders Actually Win RFPs
Most teams think they lose RFPs because their proposal was not persuasive enough.
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RFP Strategy
How winning teams find the right opportunities, qualify ruthlessly, and turn RFPs into a repeatable revenue channel.
Stop Trying So Hard: What Marty Supreme Taught Us About Winning
Before you knew the plot or read a single review, Marty Supreme had already made an impression. Not through spectacle or noise, but through a quiet sense of confidence. The campaign didn’t feel rushed, overworked, or reactive. Everything arrived with intention.
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5 Red Flags in an RFP That Mean You Should 'No-Bid'
There is an old saying in sales: "The second best answer is 'No'."
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Stop Chasing RFPs. Let Them Come to You.
For most growth-focused companies, the "RFP hustle" is a full-time job that nobody actually has time for.
Read article →Procurement Data
Original research and numbers on the RFP economy: deadlines, market size, and what the procurement record actually shows.
The State of Government RFPs: Federal Procurement by the Numbers
Federal government procurement accounts for 25.0% of all RFPs in Settle's database. Out of 7,569 listings analyzed between October 2025 and February 2026, 1,892 reference federal agencies, procurement regulations, or government-specific processes. This makes the federal government the single largest buyer category in the dataset, larger than any individual industry vertical. For companies that serve the public sector, these numbers confirm what many already suspect: federal contracting is not a niche market. It is the market.
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Nearly Half of All RFPs Give You 3 Weeks or Less to Respond
The conventional wisdom in proposal management is that teams get about a month to respond to an RFP. The data tells a different story. We analyzed 7,569 RFPs posted between October 2025 and February 2026, measuring the gap between the date each opportunity was posted and its submission deadline. The median turnaround is 24 days, but the distribution is heavily skewed toward shorter windows that leave most teams scrambling.
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The $4.2 Trillion Secret: Why the RFP Economy is 4x Bigger Than E-Commerce
There is a $4.2 trillion ATM in this country, and the people standing in line pray you never find the PIN.
Read article →Proposal Workflow
Practical guidance for proposal teams: knowledge management, security questionnaires, readiness, and avoiding burnout.
Solve the Security Questionnaire Trap, Stop Manual Recopying
Every time you land a enterprise prospect, the clock starts. They send a security questionnaire containing 100 to 300 questions. You open the Excel sheet and realize you have answered 90% of these questions last month. Whether it is SOC 2 (System and Organization Controls 2), ISO 27001 (information security management systems), or GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation), the manual work of 'search, copy, and paste' is a significant drain on your productivity.
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The Hidden Cost of Manual RFPs in 2026 (and What You Can Do About It)
It’s January 2026, and every sales and proposals team is setting goals: higher win rates, shorter cycles, more time selling, not answering questions. Yet across industries, one recurrent blocker remains: manual RFP response work.
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The Proposal Manager’s Guide to Working Smarter, Not Longer
Late nights. Last-minute scrambles. Chasing SMEs for the same answers you asked for last quarter.
Read article →AI & Automation
Where AI genuinely helps RFP teams — prompt guides, tool evaluations, and a clear-eyed look at the hype.
Prompt Guide for Finding RFPs in 2026 - ChatGPT, Gemini, and Claude
While the AI tools of 2026 have made it easier than ever to discover new business opportunities, the space is also the most crowded it’s ever been - making it more difficult to sift through the piles of garbage “INFO ONLY” documents to find actual fits for your organization. This guide will help you build a perfectly tailored prompt for your organization and preferred AI assistant to make sure you can delight your revenue team with that next ideal opportunity.
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Are We Living Through the Biggest Bubble in Human History? (Yes — And That’s the Point)
OpenAI just secured a casual $500 billion investment — half a trillion dollars, as if someone accidentally leaned on the zero key and forgot to delete a few. Wall Street banks are sprinting into the AI gold rush with the enthusiasm of a toddler let loose in a ball pit. Data centers are sprouting across the country like mushrooms after a warm rain. Every company, CEO, hedge fund, and half of everyone’s extended family is ready to invest in “the future of intelligence,” even if they can’t quite articulate what that future actually is.
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AI for RFP Automation: 4 Takeaways from McKinsey’s 2025 State of AI Report
You’ve heard the buzz—“AI will change everything.” Yet if your proposal or RFP process still feels manual, scattered, and slow you’re not alone. According to McKinsey & Company’s 2025 “State of AI” report, nearly 90% of organizations say they’re using AI in at least one business function. The gap isn’t adoption anymore—it’s value capture and end-to-end transformation.
Read article →Settle News
Product launches, new automations, and updates from the Settle team.
RFPs Are Broken. Today We’re Opening Settle to the Public.
After hundreds of conversations with teams responsible for responding to RFPs, one thing became clear.
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New Year, New RFP Automations
If you’re like most of us, you walked into the new year with a list of resolutions. Maybe it’s hitting the gym, reading more, or finally organizing your chaotic Desktop files.
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Introducing Proposal Assistant
Let’s be honest about the worst part of proposal management. It isn’t the writing.
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Turn RFP knowledge into a revenue workflow.
Bring the contracts you care about. Settle will show where your team is likely missing signals and how past wins can improve future responses.