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From Spreadsheets to AI: One Critical Step Proposal Teams Must Take · Ground Control: Sponsored by RocketDocs

• Lexi Hotchkin: The future of procurement is moving at Mach Speed 1. Between the complexities of RFPs and the rapid fire evolution of AI, need a steady hand at the helm. Welcome to Ground Control. ⁓ your leads for this mission, Perry Robinson and Christina Godfrey Carter. ⁓ here to bridge the gap between traditional proposal management and the high-tech future. We aren't just talking about the future of tech. We're making sure you're ready to control it. Ground control is officially online. Let's get to work. Perry Robinson: you for today. just start off by saying who each of us are for the record. this is a deposition, but I'm Perry Robinson. and Chris, just go ahead and introduce yourself and and I'll ask you a question about why you started Stargazy We'll start Christina Carter: I am Chris People call me Christina Carter. I get asked this every day, like which one you want to go by? I don't care. ⁓ I just I Perry Robinson: I was gonna ask you what do you wanna do on on the podcast 'cause I call you Chris when I write emails and then, you know, yeah, which one do you like to do? Christina Carter: I just I don't it both both work, just whichever one feels right. ⁓ yeah, so ⁓ my background is completely in proposals. Like I started out at the very beginning, junior bid writer, proposal writer. I didn't even know what an RFP was when I got hired. Like why they hired me is still kind of insane to me. ⁓ but then working up to Perry Robinson: Both work. Christina Carter: Managing teams, international teams, ⁓ you know, working at really fun companies like Instructure, Zendesk, AWS. And then starting Stargazy, it really happened because I was getting a lot of questions like generative AI, LLMs were becoming like the thing everyone was talking about. And of course they looked at proposals and said, Hey, these two things work together, but we don't know best practices for putting them in together. So Come in and consult with us, help us figure that out. So I started out that way. And then I realized there's like no data or like book of best practices. So it's really like working with the industry, seeing, you know, what the new normal is and figuring out like where we are today, like buying best practices, data, everything like that. And it's kind of what I'm obsessed with, I guess. Yeah. Perry Robinson: Mm. We're lucky to have you obsessed with it. So it's ⁓ it's great to have somebody in the space that's really focused in on it. Stargazy, the name, right? So you're you're ground control, right? talking with from Rocket Docs and Stargazy. So it seems like that stuff was planned. ⁓ but yeah, we met after you named Stargey. Why the name Stargey? ⁓ Christina Carter: All works together. ⁓ I mean if you're over here ⁓ in England and it's Stargazy Pie, like everyone's heard of that. Actually I find that may not be something I want to eat. But Stargazy Pie is it was just like a fun ⁓ I I did I did start out with thinking like I do want it to be like kind of looking at the stars like ⁓ almost as a as a joke, like where are we going here? Like how do we navigate this? Where what is the art of the possible? And so it just kind of has that like dreamer type feel to it. So Perry Robinson: Yeah. Mm. Christina Carter: That really is is all it's just trying to be fun. Yeah. Perry Robinson: Yeah, I get it. The graphics actually they're kinda like a navigator. yeah, it thinks about it makes me think about the old times of navigating on a ship. Right? And ⁓ yeah. So cool. Okay, and then you gotta tell us like how'd you end up in the UK, 'cause you're not a UK native. Christina Carter: Yeah. Exactly, yeah. you can tell ⁓ with my voice. Yeah, it's ⁓ so gosh, it was forever ago. My a company that I was at moved me out ⁓ to various different countries. The last one I ended up was here and I just I liked it, so I just stayed and ⁓ just kind of I and like it was fun because it was a full new way of thinking about proposals, like with the frameworks that are on over here, how people buy is a little bit different. So it was just a new challenge. Perry Robinson: Mm-hmm. Yeah, I've I've experienced the same thing. It's I've done a lot of you know, so I I used to do a lot of ⁓ work as a lawyer, in-house for tech companies and so lots and lots of agreements and initially I thought it was just the way people spelled words that changed different in the UK and then I realized that there were different contracting terms, and then I realized there was a whole different Christina Carter: Yeah. Perry Robinson: process to negotiating, right? And so it's just a little bit less legalistic I'd say. inside the RFP space, when I started doing that, there's a whole vocabulary and terminology ⁓ that think is a little bit UK centric on that side. ⁓ so ⁓ did ⁓ did ⁓ end going through that same experience where you learned all the ⁓ UK terms for you know bids, tenders, all the rest of stuff like that? ⁓ Christina Carter: Definitely. Yeah, I still don't know how to speak correctly to anybody. like I always am mixing up like the US, UK terms and it's people get it. People know what you're talking about. I think. Yeah. Perry Robinson: Yeah, I think so. you created your your report. Is it gonna be an annual report? ⁓ And ⁓ what you to take on such a Herculean task? Cause the report you generated is absolutely fantastic. I read it and the first thing I thought was, ⁓ my God, like Gartner tries to put out reports like this. Forrester tries to put out reports like this. And got large teams of researchers that are on it with massive amounts of data. And you know, I don't think they did anywhere near as well as you did on the first one you created. So ⁓ tell us little bit ⁓ about why created the report in the first place, ⁓ and maybe couple things that that you learned as well. ⁓ Christina Carter: the main reason why I created the report is because it it doesn't exist really to that extent. ⁓ And I think right now the biggest challenge that a lot of revenue and sales leaders have when they do go and purchase these tools is there are so, so many ⁓ nowadays and it so it makes it really hard to choose. And you know, maybe they used one in their past company and so they want to bring that in. Very understandable, like they feel as like there's less risk to do that. But means that they're often usually purchasing or shortlisting tools for the wrong reason. the report was focused on, yeah, here here is a huge list of tools and here's the spaces that they're good in. But it's a huge focus of it is, hey, every single proposal team or response team, what deal desk team, whatever you are, has a really specific problem, usually one massive problem that they're all facing, even if they have a high win rate. So what is that issue? ⁓ Now buy software that's gonna help you solve whatever that issue is, whether that's that is a process, whether there is win rate or speed of response or like trust fidelity, like it's gonna be all of those things. And then purchase like then go to that short list of tools to fix the problem that you're having. And I I don't feel like that exists right now. And I'm not saying the report was perfect because it it wasn't like we have a lot to learn from it, but that is where we wanted to come from. And you asked about like what I learned. That is like there's there's a lot of software out there. Like there's about 500 that we had to sift through. And even then we yeah, and we we shortlisted, we we took a bunch out. Like if they're still in beta, if we don't feel fine, they have a customer, we feel like it is just like a chat GPT rapper type situation, then we we don't talk about it. But even then we missed out on quite a few that messaged me after say, Hey, you forgot about us, and they're legitimate companies. So Perry Robinson: Wow. Mm-hmm. Christina Carter: It's I think what I learned isn't ⁓ I missed some. It was that this space is moving and changing so, so rapidly. And so an annual report I don't think is enough. I do think it does need to be updated far more than that. Or it like I think it's gonna be irrelevant in a month from now, which I don't think is just proposal software, revenue software space. I think it's probably all SAS is gonna be like this. Perry Robinson: ⁓ it's a faster moving world today, right? And I think a lot of it comes from AI, which isn't new. ⁓ you know, it's new to a lot of people, but the speed with which AI technology is developing is certainly a newer thing for us to all deal with. when it comes to the report, how and and by the way, we'll we'll post a link to the report for anybody who's watching, right? You can you can find it ⁓ you know from us here. So Christina Carter: Yeah. Yeah. Perry Robinson: So please go and grab a copy and read it. ⁓ how do you want people to use the report? What do you think the best way for them to approach it's gonna be? Because it is detailed, right? And it's it's not a short document. This isn't a you know executive white paper that's just one page, is great because it provides detailed information analysis reporting. ⁓ but how would you say people should should approach the report to make the best use of it? ⁓ Christina Carter: It is, yeah. What do you mean people don't want to read 65 pages of a report? ⁓ I'm so offended. no, ⁓ so my suggestion is use like the the cool tools that are available nowadays. Like what my suggestion to people who like go on the website is use notebook LM. Like literally, like it's already in there. You don't even have to upload it. And it is going to answer questions for you. Perry Robinson: Okay, maybe some of us do, but you know. Christina Carter: Like so you can literally go on and say, hey, here's my industry, here's here's the size of my team, here's the issue I think I'm finding. What do you think I should be looking at? Or even like I don't know my issue is, but here's here's some things I'm thinking about. And it's gonna give you that information. So instead of having to read through it, you can almost like have a conversation with the report instead of reading 65 pages, which like if you wanna do, go ahead. Yeah. Perry Robinson: Yeah. It's interesting you mentioned that. So it's y you know we can use know, AI technology tools today, right, to help us access information on that side. ⁓ know, one of the things that you do is you evaluate, you know, ⁓ types of tools in in inside of the report and different ones using AI. ⁓ but one thing that always comes up as a question for me is like when you're thinking about people who are doing this day in and day out, and by doing this I don't mean you know selecting tools. I mean using, you different tools to help them answer RFPs, DDQs. Who's very qualified, any of the questionnaires. what would what would be the way that you think that they're best able to evaluate what it is that their business is doing and what their requirements are so they can even write the prompt that helps them to understand where to start doing that? Because I feel like I hear so often about how busy a lot of these professionals are. And they're very focused on a niche area of the business, even though they have a tremendous amount of broad knowledge about their company, they oftentimes don't get to like pull up to that thirty thousand foot view and take a look and see everything, you know, from that, you know, high height and say, Okay, this is where our company's going. So with that in mind, you know, and and you know, with that in mind, do you think that ⁓ there's a specific way that that RFP professionals should be approaching, looking at their business to understand what tool they should be looking for in the first place? Christina Carter: Yeah, that's a good question. So I think if you are responding to RFPs or whatever type of questionnaires that you are responding to, you probably don't sit down and think like you're saying, ⁓ here's a problem I keep having. This is what keeps frustrating me. So you're right. Like you are gonna have to sit down and put that in your calendar and say that I'm gonna just like r like think about my last five RFPs or questionnaires. What was what was bad about it? Like what Like not even like what made us lose or win, what what did I dislike about it and what did my team dislike about it? ⁓ and I I don't think you even have to be that introspective or take that long to figure that out. I think it's gonna come to you just thinking about the past five ones you've done. And then when it comes to like that, you know, the the overlook overseeing kind of everything, not just the RFPs, it might even be just having that conversation with your revenue leader. And just saying, hey, like what are what are your thoughts about our RFPs and questionnaire processes? Like what do you hear? And I think that's that might be a scary conversation to have, but I think it can, you know, obviously you're gonna get a lot of information from that conversation and also open doors that revenue leader to have more conversations like that and be even a driver of change in that. So that would be my suggestion. Yes, you're busy. Make time for it anyway. It's important. Yeah. Perry Robinson: Yeah. time for it. I love the idea of speaking to the revenue leader too, right? I think sometimes, ⁓ you know, I found that that we all can have a tendency to, you know, think about the revenue leader as being somebody who's, one, they be really, really high level from your perspective. Maybe they're sitting multiple levels of reporting above you. ⁓ you know, they meet with all the time. Right, that's that's something that they definitely do and and it doesn't matter that the salespeople are four levels away from the CRO or something like that. But it can be a little bit scary to go into those discussions, I think, for folks sometimes, because y you know, there's not always the same level interaction that happens with you know, and and proposal professionals, right? They are, you know, oftentimes just ⁓ deep inside of the work itself. So I love the idea of talking to them. Do you have any ideas or tricks on the best way to approach those folks and and to even kick off a discussion like that? Christina Carter: Yeah, that's that's such a good question. So I have a couple. I think the first one, the second one is gonna be like very specific, but the first one really is have a mindset shift. now of course like they're every once in a while you're gonna have a revenue or sales leader who who isn't nice. They're a bit of a jerk. But for the most part, people are nice and they do want to help you. Cause if you guys are doing well, that means they're doing well. ⁓ because you're impacting the revenue. So what I have found in every single company that I worked with and every single role, I've been able to speak with people far, far, far above my level. sometimes like even within AWS, far, far above my level. ⁓ they were very happy to speak with me. they were able to give me really good ideas and it Like they were able to even mentor me in in what I was able to do, despite them being like at AWS, for example, like L10s, ⁓ and that's that's really quite high up at AWS. So it's people are are usually really happy to speak with you. So if you're afraid, just I'm not gonna say just don't be, but do it anyway. Do that scary thing, and you'll find out it's really not that scary, and that you actually will create good relationships with those revenue leaders, which is what you want. ⁓ and then of course, like when you do go in there. Perry Robinson: Yeah. Christina Carter: Don't just go in there to have like a nice chat as fun as that is. Go in there with data. Go in there with a point of view because you are the expert in winning RFPs or submitting questionnaires. And you probably have a lot of that data. You know what's going on, what's working, what's not working from your perspective. And that will be of interest to them, especially if you like listen to them during sales calls or, you know, whatever it is where they speak. They probably use specific words and you know what they care about. Use their language, talk about what they care about, you know, with RFPs. And I think there'll be a really productive conversation. Perry Robinson: Mm-hmm. Yeah, that's a that's great advice. It's it's interesting because when I am talking to folks like, you know, my you know, I'm just out in the world and you know, the question comes up, you know, what do you do? And I tell people about rocket docs and you know the obviously the name doesn't imply exactly what the company does. ⁓ so the you have to you have to figure out how to to address telling people about, you know, the work itself. Christina Carter: Usually. Perry Robinson: And so for me, you know, what I'll say is like, do you know about RFPs? and if, you know, they say yes, I'm like, okay, well, you know how it's a it's a critical part of the sales process that nobody really likes to do. And it's not really true that nobody likes to do it. There are a lot of folks that are really passionate about it. But when it comes to like a chief revenue officer or sales leaders, like they do see, you know, RFPs oftentimes as being one of the things that just has to get done. ⁓ in order to make the sale go forward, but it is it's a critical part of the sales process as well. ⁓ so so you know when it comes to that and dealing with the scenarios where you're you're you get into that meeting, you're talking with them, you're presenting the data, you have any tricks of the trade that you've learned that help to you know, you know, persuade the CRO or the sales leader to be thinking about it more from the perspective like, hey, this is a critical aspect of the sales process as opposed to the part where it's like, the RFP's just something that we have to get through, you know, and and you know, I hate that we have to do it. Christina Carter: Yeah. I'm I have to admit I've been really lucky. Most of the sales and revenue leaders I've worked with have just gotten it. Like that it was important, even if like they didn't love it. Like I don't love negotiation. I mean, it was all parts of the sales process we don't love, but ⁓ that's why that's why I'm hired. but what I have found it like that does resonate with them. And like I said, I I've never dealt with like a somebody who really like dismissed what I did. So I I don't necessarily have advice for those people, but What did really matter is if I could show the percentage of revenue, ⁓ like closed won opportunities that come from RFPs or questionnaires. And also if I can look at, usually this data is somewhere in a CRM, usually this part is accurate, like how long a sales cycle is, if it's an RFP versus not an RFP, that's gonna be interesting to them. Perry Robinson: Mm-hmm. Christina Carter: the cost of responding to an RFP versus not responding to an RFP. This is data that's pretty easy to put together, especially if you're just doing like the past six months or past year. Super interesting to them. I'm not gonna say it's they're gonna love RFPs, but they are gonna see how important that process is to ⁓ to, you their revenue and their pipeline, which of course is what most of them care about. Perry Robinson: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, it's interesting because I've been in places where I've been at companies that have started out like very on the very much on the small side and grown to very large organizations. ⁓ and so I've gotten to see the evolution inside of the business of understanding about RFPs from the, you know, do we have to do this to having, you know, you know, full teams to respond to it. ⁓ and I've been inside you know, I've been in the place where I'm like I'm I'm early in and writing the responses, you know, ⁓ putting the other responses to our RFPs, right? And doing so without any structure organization. ⁓ and I'm old enough now that I've been doing this that I can remember when like we just didn't know about tools without there. But they were, right? There have been tools, but to your point today, there's like it's hard to not find a tool that Is able to help you to answer RFP today. There are so many out there. And so moving from manual spreadsheets, right, and there's still some companies today that are doing that, by the way. But but when you think about that, that evolution of you know proposal management, strategic response, and moving from spreadsheets to tools to you know that are software-based to AI-powered tools, what Christina Carter: A lot, yeah. Perry Robinson: Would you give as like the the best piece of advice for people to, you know, you know, like what's the launching point? What is the launching point for them to start the process ⁓ of making that move from spreadsheet, if they're still on today? To looking at tools because if you've used one in the past, you maybe come with a different perspective. But if you're still on spreadsheets, right, then it's almost like it's a brave new world of all these companies out there. And again, going back to the you can frame out the prompt and kind of inquire with your report and stuff like that, but that's just it's still a big lift. So going into some advice on that side for people that are newbies, coming out from spreadsheets and going out to an RFP response tool for the first time. Christina Carter: Yeah, there'll be two things, two main things. And I'd I'd be really curious to s hear what you have to say, because I know you've seen this a lot. the first thing is ⁓ of work, obviously not using your company data, go and like use the latest and greatest LLMs. Like I don't care if it's Chat GPT or Claude, and use watch like a YouTube video and just Figure it out if you haven't already. That gives you the art of the possible. Like what can Claude skills automate? You know, like what what do projects do? Things like that are really useful just to know, like, outside of software, like proposal software, like what is out there. And then then of course you have to temper the reality of like, especially if you are in a highly regulated market, what's possible for you. I would go talk to, you know, the the buyer on your side, like whether that's probably your CISO. Or somebody like high up in IT who's who's making those decisions based on security, ⁓ you know, like the barriers that you have there and say, hey, like what is possible? Because yeah, it probably isn't using Claude skills or Claude code, but there is a software out there that is going to be able to match how how secure you needed you need to be, whether that like literally storing it in-house and nothing goes anywhere, like a tool out there exists for you, like an AI powered tool probably. Perry Robinson: Mm-hmm. Christina Carter: even exists for you. So like yeah, it's the two things. Figure out what's even possible out there because it's what would happen six months ago isn't there. The tools that you use two years ago at a different company, not the art of the possible anymore. Then go figure out what's possible within your company and marry those two up. Yeah. Perry Robinson: You mentioned Claude ⁓ and mentioned you know Claude Code. And I think it's in part because there are a lot of folks that ⁓ I'm finding today that are like, we'll just build our own tool. ⁓ Or just saying, hey, look, I'm just gonna brute force ⁓ a response through and I call it brute forcing, because it it's really just taking an RFP and loading it up into ChatGPT or Claude or Microsoft Copilot and saying, answer this for me. I even heard somebody say it tongue in cheek in a in a conference on sales operations where it goes, you know, you get RFPs, he goes, you know, just just toss it into into Chat GPT and and it'll write a response for you. Which is true, right? It will. It will write a response for you. Christina Carter: Yeah, sure. Yeah. Cool. Okay. Perry Robinson: So when it comes to using ⁓ Chat GPT ⁓ or Claude to answer an RFP. Are there any organizations to which that is just perfectly suited as a as a possibility? Or do you recommend that people always look to use a tool purpose built for RFP response? Christina Carter: That's such a hard question. ⁓ and I get I'm getting this question a lot. ⁓ like I probably get an email at least once or twice a day or a LinkedIn DM asking me to build out like a like a some sort of Claude automation for RFPs, which is great that people think that I'm capable of doing that. think there are really specific circumstances that is going to work for you. Perry Robinson: Mm-hmm. Christina Carter: And it's is if you are like a really early startup, you're not in a highly regulated market. ⁓ and the data that you have is is really not important if it goes anywhere. And also if you are able to prompt in such a way that makes it really, really to ⁓ what your is asking, having that customer insight, all that fun stuff. That is a really small subset of people. ⁓ And for the vast majority of people who are listening to this, that's not a good idea. so many reasons, like security reasons, like making sure it's personalized. Yes, it will respond to your RFP. Like you're saying, you're gonna get a proposal out of it. A winning, high trust fidelity proposal? No, absolutely not. Like that's not be auditable. Like when when you have to ⁓ show like why you answered question a certain way and how you like looked at that within your team, you're not gonna be able to do that. Like no matter how you you prompt Claude to do that, it's just not gonna happen. So for the vast majority of teams, no. Like you need to use a purpose built tool. at the same time, like I do think you need to look at what purpose built tools are out there for you to make sure that it is gonna meet your security needs, Perry Robinson: I think it's got great guidance in there. So, you know, I think at the end of the day, right, part of what you're saying as well is that ⁓ you know, no matter what tool you're using, right, you need to really review the output and make sure that it's it's the quality level that's needed to line up with the value of the opportunity that you're pursuing, right? ⁓ Christina Carter: Yeah. Perry Robinson: ⁓ but I guess also what you're saying is that you know, depending on the tool, the amount of work that you need to do to review whether it's gotten the answer right to start, and whether it's traceable back to a piece of information that you can use later on to support your answer is also a critical component. Yeah. Right. Well Christina Carter: Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. I'm glad that you summarized that for me. That's what I wanted to say. Perry Robinson: That makes me think about one that's been on my mind a lot lately, which is, ⁓ you know, we we have a of folks out there that are really concerned about, you know, the idea that AI is gonna take over their work, their job, ⁓ especially in this space, ⁓ because the tooling is becoming so more capable. With that said, part of what you were just talking about as well was that a key component is making sure that you've written a strong proposal that persuasively sells your organization. So you've looked at a lot of the tools out there today. ⁓ do you think that AI is anywhere close to being able to do the persuasive writing portion, regardless of what the tool is, as compared to a person who ⁓ you know does this for working that is a proposal professional or an RFP response professional. Christina Carter: So I think that if you are a proposal professional who is used to kind of gliding along and just copying and pasting from your content library and doing very minimal, tailoring, then yeah, it's going to do just as well or better than you. But ⁓ the majority of, you know, proposal professionals are trying to win. They're trying to do a great job. It's not gonna be as good as you. Yes, it can absolutely use customer insights that you have and then help tailor your response based on that information. But there's always something missing. Like it's never quite like even no matter how well you prompt it to sound like you, it's always not quite right, no matter what you do. And I've I've seen really clever people prompt, you know, their tools to be good. But like I said, they're it might it'll get you to the short list. You're gonna get there. But will it Perry Robinson: Mm-hmm. Christina Carter: persuade or win, that's that to me is questionable. ⁓ I think another problem with it is AI is really good for responding in a way that you want it to, like in a really specific like order, but at the same time A lot of the times our procurement teams are reviewing our like our our responses and they're reviewing it in a very specific way that for some like you think AI would be like writing really well for an AI to review it, but it's not. And so at the same time, like like I just think you need a human in there just to make it really persuasive. But then on top of that, AI is not perfect. It is gonna hallucinate, it is gonna make up, you know, content about you. You need someone in there to make sure that they review it. You should not be just like having it good put it out and then send it over like you absolutely need that review. So a compliance review, an accuracy review, and then just like a persuasiveness, does this sound good review? Yeah. Perry Robinson: Yeah, it's interesting there's two things that you know come to mind when you say that is like ⁓ on the review, legal review, accuracy review across the board, ⁓ right? ⁓ AI create the same thing each time. It's always just a little bit different, right? ⁓ Christina Carter: Yeah Perry Robinson: And and yet, right, we have this conundrum, which is that that generative AI produces what are pretty recognizable writing styles oftentimes, especially if you're using a Claude or a Chat GPT. You can see it in the formatting, you can see it in the the Just the the way that people write. Like, I can tell the way that you know Hemingway writes, you know, you know, and it's different than the way that William Faulkner writes. And so like you get these big differences in styles, but you don't get those differences in styles with generative AI, it seems. So The conundrum is that as more people use these AI tools to write responses, do they start to actually get more and more similar to one another so that it's less competitive, it's less persuasive in terms of differentiating your business from another business, while at the same time you're not getting the benefit of being able to rely on a consistent response that's the same answer to the same question in an RFP that comes through in year one when you're trying to win the business. And then let's say that the vendor asks the same question in year two as a follow-up as part of a vendor qualification questionnaire that they're doing. Right, there's there's the that weird balance of not even balance, it's actually a oppositional situation. So when you think about that, ⁓ that space where on the one hand, AI creates a new answer every time, and on the other hand, even though it's creating a new answer, it's writing it in such a way that everybody starts to sound like the same flavor of vanilla ice cream. Christina Carter: Okay, so yes, if you're in like B2B enterprise SaaS, it it doesn't have to be deterministic. It can kind of sound a little bit wild. Like the worst thing that's gonna happen is like if you review it and as long as it's accurate, that's okay. But you're right, it's it will overinflate things oftentimes. And if you're in a highly regulated industry, that's a problem. If you like overstate what you can do a little bit, that's a problem. If you can't like you're saying it doesn't have the exact same answer, it's not a deterministic answer. Time around, that's a problem. Like it not all industries that matters so much, but yeah, in highly regulated ones, it does. In terms of it sounding the same as everybody else's, I have seen people prompt it so well that it does sound pretty good, then not like Claude or ChatGPT writes. But once again, like there's always something kind of missing from it. you have to be like the top one percent of prompters. And I know everyone thinks that they're good at prompting. I think I'm good at prompting, ⁓ the vast of us, ⁓ we're just good enough to get that level of a really different from everybody else sounding where it sounds like a human wrote it. ⁓ like I'm not there. And ⁓ so you're not there. So it doesn't matter. And then if you aren't, you're right, you're gonna sound just like everybody else. And ⁓ Perry Robinson: Mm-hmm. Christina Carter: you're responding to an RFP, the whole point is to differentiate yourself, not to sound like everybody else. Like as a first draft, yeah, but then you need to go in there and make it you. Perry Robinson: So thinking about know, ⁓ talked a lot about regulated companies and companies that have a lot of compliance obligations. ⁓ we've talked about there being so many different out there today. I'm thinking like ⁓ how do help ⁓ companies to how to separate ⁓ the solutions that best from them. ⁓ from the ones that just do a really good job of marketing. Because let's let's be honest. ⁓ goes and puts up their solution and says we have really low security. ⁓ puts onto their homepage as a feature benefit ⁓ you know our solution answers your RFP quickly, ⁓ we do it by exchanging all the information with a third-party provider. ⁓ know, ⁓ just that's not the part that they say. Everybody says like we have a reliable secure confidential system. And today, right, one of the credentials that oftentimes was the reliable one to say, like, can I use this? The, you know, SOC 2 report. There's a lot of controversy out there because we found that there are a lot of SOC 2 report mills that are operating and some of them are getting in trouble, you know, quite publicly right now. so you're thinking about that, because in in the old days I would have said just check to see 2 report, read it, see what the scope is. ⁓ but now we don't even necessarily have the capability to rely on that. If you're advising somebody on the best way for them to identify a solution that's going to work for them and telling them how they can that one or those three solutions to choose from out of the 50 or 500 that are out there, ⁓ what's your advice how ⁓ they should go the selection process? Christina Carter: I think even if a software has, know, the features that you love and want so much to use, it doesn't matter if are they're not going to meet your security and trust fidelity requirements. Like that has to be the number one. Like what auditability do you need? What verification do you need? Like Where is your data residing? All that stuff. So that is obviously going to be really unique to every single company. So my suggestion is always speak to your ⁓ CISO, your chief risk officer, like whoever that is in your company, to figure out what your regulatory exposure is going to look like. ⁓ you know, if you're in the EU, what does the EU Act say? Like what can you do there? same with the UK. We have like our own little things that we have to be looking at. So have that conversation with the right person in your company to decide what that shortlist looks like. And then and then like you have to straight up ask the people before you, I would say even have a demo with them, like, hey, can you do these things? Because if not, like it doesn't matter how good the demo is or how good their marketing is, you can't go with them. So figure out what that shortlist is first. And I agree with you about the SOC 2 situation. I do know of people who have have not in the AI RFP space who have who have done that. And it's quite upsetting. So I'm with you. You gotta ask these really Perry Robinson: Mm-hmm. Christina Carter: really specific questions and get a really specific answer back. Yeah. Perry Robinson: Yeah. it's interesting. We get it we do get it a lot more often now because I think I think a lot of people are trying to get a better understanding. Christina Carter: Yeah. Yeah, and then like what from your your side, I get worried when the answers come back and they are really they sound like marketing or there's no specifics behind it. Like how specific do you think people need to be in order to feel comfortable? Perry Robinson: Mm-hmm. Yeah. That's a great question. You can flip the table on the on this one. So yeah, I think the I think that the answer that one is it's ⁓ it's you've gotta again business and its its requirements. So ⁓ the more regulated you or the more that you're dealing with higher value contracts, right, the higher the value of the contract, it might as well just be more regulated because you know there's a lot of money at stake ⁓ and people are depending on the accuracy. So ⁓ so when it comes Christina Carter: Yeah y you know, yeah. Perry Robinson: or the confidentiality as well. So when it comes to you know the specific like how do you get past ⁓ the marketing answers to it, ⁓ ask details, ⁓ right? know, like ⁓ please me with each of the contractual provisions that demonstrate that my information's gonna be ⁓ maintained ⁓ Provide me with a data flow diagram, right? We know that there's DPIAs that are done as well. privacy impact analysis. ⁓ it's like, did you do a data privacy impact analysis of your work with this vendor? And can you provide a copy of that to me to see? ⁓ at that point they've created the document for internal purposes for their privacy team or the data protection team to understand ⁓ the data's being used. And there's no way to to you know fluff that one back up. ⁓ And if they refuse to provide it, then I think you've got, you know, a red flag right there. Yeah. Yeah. okay, so I'll flip around to question you again on this part. interestingly think Christina Carter: Yeah, red flag. Definitely. Perry Robinson: There's been a shift inside of even regulated businesses to say, like, let's just get it done. ⁓ like we can use whatever it is, we'll take on a little bit more risk than usual. And I think it's in part because of, you know, this board level directive, go and adopt AI for efficiency's sake. But Inside of you know the proposal response space, it's the same thing that decades ago. People were told, like, don't worry about writing a really high quality answer, right? Or researching this, just get it done. we forgot about it, it's due tomorrow. Just get me a draft in four hours, even though it's three days of work to actually produce this. So is there really a difference that's happening at all? ⁓ Or we seeing the same thing repeated in a different way when it comes to the pressure put on RFP teams just to figure out a fast way to produce a response versus producing a response that has accurate, supportable answers that are written Christina Carter: So I agree with you. Yeah, it is it I mean, of course these people are feeling pressure from the board to put in their AI, you know, transformation. I get it. But the other thing the board really cares about is how much revenue and profit the company is making. And so like if you're they probably care about that more. They're talking about AI because they feel like they should be and their friends are talking about it. But ⁓ they're not gonna care about that as much as they are about the revenue and profit that you're bringing in. So if your proposals or your responses to questionnaires are getting you shortlisted but not helping you win, what's the point of doing it? It doesn't matter how fast it is, you still wasted time. And if you did get shortlisted, you have to go and, you know, depending on what industry in you have to demo, interview, you know, that takes a lot of people, a lot of time, a lot of money and opportunity costs you could be spending on something else. Is that really a good decision? Is that what you really want to be doing? And of course, like it depends what market you're in, but there are other ways to go about it. If like you did get an RFP and you forgot about it and it's due tomorrow, well, if they really wanted you to win, obviously this depends on industry, like ask them if they can extend the deadline and they will if they want you there. Do a proactive proposal, like submit something that's not going to be responsive to the RFP, but will get you shortlisted maybe for next time. There's so many things you could do that can win you the deal for next time. But like a poorly done RFP or response to an RFP isn't going to do that this time around. Like even no matter how lovely of an AI draft that you submit, they can also like present a lot of risk. And ⁓ you know, not gonna be if you're in a highly regulated industry, just it's just a bad idea in general. You're gonna mess up if it's more than a day's. Perry Robinson: Mm-hmm. Christina Carter: You know, worth of work. Perry Robinson: Yeah. Yeah, it's it's hard when you know teams are having actually having to evaluate whether to answer an RFP to participate in a process at all, but those are great pieces of advice to you know, to stay in the game when you know that you should be there anyway. Different question. Once upon a time, privacy wasn't a set of questions on its own, right? But today we'd you know be shocked to find that there's a scenario where there's not a set of questions that are related to privacy. And the same thing with information security. ⁓ if you go back even further, do you think that now that we're starting to see more questions about know either AI governance or how AI tools have been used ⁓ to prepare the ⁓ that that's gonna its own section with the RFP? Christina Carter: Yeah. Yeah, I'm hearing this a lot. ⁓ in in every geography, in every industry. And so it's happening, whether it's just a couple of questions or multiple questions. I think the problem though is it's really ⁓ usually, like what they want from you. Like if you're a part of the EU, the EU AI Act is gonna make it clear what you can do if you're in public sector. But for everybody else, like what does it even mean? Like, what do they want you to answer with? And like everyone is gonna have a little bit of AI somewhere probably in their sales process. So my suggestion is during the QA, ask about it, like get a really clear response of like what kind of like what they want from it, and then try and follow it, like what they actually want you to do about it. And even if they're even evaluating on some sort of scale, because maybe they're not, maybe they just want it for their own. information. So it's just it's so different for every geography and every industry of like why they're doing it. And I think that's the tough part. Perry Robinson: about the questions that are coming up today as well that are saying, you know, you have to confirm that you did not use AI to respond to this RFP. What are your thoughts on that? Christina Carter: I mean we are seeing ⁓ it's yeah, don't use it. If you can't like they can't prove it. If you didn't, did you use AI or not? Tools like don't work at all. Like you can put Jane Austen in and it says AI wrote it. ⁓ it's just They can't prove it, but obviously follow the rules as much as possible. But my suggestion is to always push back. Like why? Why can't we use AI, especially if like someone reviews it and we make sure it's accurate? ⁓ I would always push back. Perry Robinson: A lot of the RFP issuance companies are are themselves using it to analyze ⁓ things. So ⁓ with that in mind, right, people are issuing ⁓ RFPs using AI tools ⁓ and they're using the AI tools to evaluate the responses back. ⁓ And people are using AI tools to answer RFPs to prepare them and and maybe they're going through a detailed review and maybe they're just relying heavily on on the answer that's generated. that's something that didn't happen, you know, a few years ago, right? We didn't we didn't ⁓ have ⁓ both sides the equation heavily relying on AI tools to do a significant portion of the work. I even two years ago we would have said, well that's probably a little bit further ways out. you know a kind of a futuristic looking name. It's thinking about helping people navigate across the area. Where do see ⁓ space going in the two years? ⁓ What do you think is going to be what do you think it's gonna be like in twenty twenty eight for RFP managers when they're sitting down at their desk at the beginning of the day about to start their work? What'll change? What'll be the same? Christina Carter: Be exactly the same. ⁓ no. I think it does depend what industry you're in. I think if you're in a highly regulated market, it will definitely change, but maybe a little bit slower than the not regulated industries, which is totally fine. But I think the cool thing about that is you can look at what less regulated industries are doing. Like let's go look at the SaaS, Enterprise SaaS, B2B space, see what they're doing, and you can watch them mess up. see what they're doing wrong so you can kind of learn from them. So when ⁓ you know it's your time to come around to actually, you know, use maybe a little bit different tools and software and processes. Like you've you've already learned from them. I think the differences though for less regulated markets is gonna be very, very different. We're already seeing it like Instead of you know an RFP necessarily being issued, it's it's more of like, hey, here's a set of questions, but we want you to put like together a a trust center, a trust hub, like these have a bunch of different names. And I want that to automatically respond to my questionnaire or my RFP. And that's that's where a lot of the space is going. So That doesn't mean our jobs are gone, but they are different. Like that means that you need to be like a knowledge curator of all that content where all these RPs and questionnaires get sent to you. That has to be a fantastic database of knowledge that connects you so many things within your company. That's to be persuasive and accurate. That still does need a human. So that I think in a less regulated industry, the really forward ones, that's what a lot of what you're going to do. all the way back to maybe like if you're in a really highly regulated industry. You're still using Excel spreadsheets for everything. Maybe it is just using a tool like RocketDocs, which is forward thinking. But you know, like it has to be a little bit more, you know, careful about what it does. And so like I think it's gonna be using a tool like that, I think an RFP manager will have to be working with their chief risk officer or their CISO to be figuring out what that process looks like. within their team and be the thought leader for what AI and proposal management looks like for them in like from now to two years from now. And think you have a lot of, especially in highly regulated markets, you have a lot of power in what that looks like for you. So you can kind of navigate that change within your company. So that's not like early specific answer for them, but I think that's good because you have the power to decide what it looks like. Perry Robinson: Great answer. There's a part to it, I'd love dig in just a just a little bit more, ⁓ which is you mentioned that a key component is keeping information ⁓ to date and accurate. I think a little bit of a that's maybe the future, ⁓ know, role for people in this space is is really being the folks that are ensuring that the information ⁓ ⁓ up to date, on brand, written in the right way. ⁓ any guidance you have ⁓ For RFP professionals on, you know, who have, you know, historically for some of them, you know, been the folks that are are either ⁓ writers and they're spending more time actually writing each time, ⁓ they're people who have been doing work, you know, copying and pasting things. ⁓ it's a transition to move into a space where your role goes from writing into individual responses or copying and pasting into being somebody who's ⁓ like the librarian for the company of all of their company knowledge. So any guidance or thoughts or wisdom for folks as they look to the future where that might be the most crucial or critical skill set that's required to work inside of the, you know, the future state? Christina Carter: Yeah, I think it If you don't already, I think it's a great reason to go and speak to so many different people within your company to be that connector. Like you're saying, like ⁓ depending on what industry you're building, it's gonna like a product marketing, you know, leader, a product leader, the you know, the IT leader, the sales leader. Like you there's gonna be so much content out there that needs to go into what you're already doing. And if you don't already have connections and like a close relationship with all those people, go and do that. So that 'cause No one's gonna hand you a key and a medal and say, you are now the chief librarian for all the content and knowledge within our company. That is not going to happen. gonna have to go and do that yourself. So if that sounds like fun to you, if you're like have a content management background, you're like, great, sign me up. Go and do that right now. Make that a possibility right now. Yeah. Perry Robinson: We'll do one last question for you. It's the final one we ask all our guests, right? You got 20 seconds to state any opinion that they think people should know about, whether it's about AI, about the response industry, about RFPs, tech, the future, security proposals, you name it. Christina Carter: So I would say my biggest is when you are going to buy proposal management software, questionnaire software, you're probably doing it wrong if you're just looking at what is out there in general. Like first look at the problem that you have. What problem are you trying to solve for? And then go and shortlist the ones that can fit and fix that problem. Perry Robinson: Okay, and then the final, final question is what's best way for people to find Stargazy, to find you, ⁓ and your various different places where you exist on socials how do they reach you? Christina Carter: stargazy.io. Stargazy links to everything. We're on LinkedIn and then myself, LinkedIn, Christina Godfrey Carter. I post way too much, I will annoy you if you ⁓ follow me. Perry Robinson: Awesome. Thank you very much, Christina. It's great to have you