The RFP Is Out. Your SMEs Just Went Silent. Now What?
Every proposal team has experienced it: the RFP drops, everyone’s excited, and then… silence. Subject Matter Experts (SMEs) vanish. Input dries up. Deadlines loom. And the writing team is left staring at a blank page. This article explores the real reasons behind SME disengagement and provides practical, immediate strategies to reengage your experts and get the proposal moving again.
The Silence Isn’t About You
First, don’t take it personally.
When SMEs go quiet, it’s rarely because they’re lazy or disengaged. Most of them are overwhelmed. They’re juggling their day jobs with client delivery, internal meetings, staff issues, and now they’re being asked to drop everything and write a narrative for a federal RFP. Put yourself in your SME’s shoes and understand that:
- They’re busy. Billable work comes first.
- They’re intimidated. Proposal writing is high-stakes and unfamiliar.
- They’re confused. The ask is vague, or they don’t understand how their input will be used.
- They’re disillusioned. Maybe their input has been ignored in the past.
Understanding these drivers is the first step toward solving them.
Change the Ask
If your SME request looks like this: “Hey, can you write two pages on your team’s approach to cloud migration by Friday?”
…you’ve already lost.
Make the ask easier:
- Pre-draft a strawman. Give them something to react to.
- Use prompts, not paragraphs. Ask questions like: “What’s the first thing your team does when migrating an app?”
- Conduct SME interviews. Record and transcribe. Then draft on their behalf.
- Extract slides, diagrams, or content from past docs. Turn their artifacts into proposal content.
The easier it is for SMEs to contribute, the faster you’ll get what you need.
Engineer the Interaction
High-functioning proposal teams don’t just make requests, they design interactions.
Practical Tactics:
- Schedule short, structured calls. 20 minutes with a clear agenda beats an open-ended email request every time.
- Co-write live. Screen share a draft and revise together.
- Create a single point of contact. Avoid SME confusion by funneling questions through one lead.
- Follow up like a professional. Friendly, specific, and consistent.
People respond to clarity, structure, and respect for their time. Build your interactions accordingly.
What the Evaluator Sees
Evaluators can spot SME silence on the page: “The proposal lacked detail in the technical approach, and several sections appeared generic or disconnected from our environment.”
That’s what happens when you write around SME input, or without it entirely.
Conversely, when SME voices shine through: “Offeror provided detailed, actionable insights that demonstrated a mature understanding of the agency’s needs and current state.”
That’s gold. And it doesn’t happen by accident.
Build Reengagement into the Process
If SME silence is a recurring problem, it could be a cultural issue, but most often it’s a process issue.
Here’s how to ensure reengagement in your workflow:
- Map SME touchpoints before the RFP is released. Know who you’ll need and when.
- Develop SME-ready templates. Short prompts, clear roles, editable sections.
- Establish a lead integrator. Someone who owns SME relationships.
- Create a pre-RFP library of answers. Record SMEs responding to common challenges.
This turns proposal writing into an SME-supported process, not a last-minute scramble.
Actions to Improve SME Input This Week
If you’re a proposal lead or BD exec, here’s what you can do this week:
- Audit your last 3 proposals. Did SME input lag? Where? Why?
- Update your SME engagement plan. Who owns what? When do they show up?
- Test one new tactic. Try interviews. Try prompts. Try live editing.
- Celebrate SME wins. Recognize great contributions publicly.
Closing Thought
SME silence shouldn’t be the reason you lose. At Red Team, we specialize in interviewing busy experts, extracting what matters, and transforming it into clear, compelling proposal narratives. It’s what we’ve done for 21 years, and we can do it for you.
