The saying is "Proposals are Chaos!" Is this true for everyone? Does answering RFP's drive you or your organization mad?

Following on from my post about LinkedIn, I posed that question there. Chris Pirillo was certainly right, "the responses started to stream in." You can read all of the responses here but some of the responses:

• If your industry is in a Complex Sales environment, your Consultative Sales approach will not work and you must develop the ability to strategically select and answer RFPs.
  
  The upside to answering RFPs is that the contracts tend to be much larger, which is what drove the customer to the complex sales approach. Customers resort to a complex sales environment for several reasons: Too many people in their organization need to come to consensus in order to get on with the work at hand, the project/contract is too large to risk less than a 360 evaluation.
  
  The winner doesn't find the RFP chaotic, because they've developed enough of a relationship and understanding of the customer's organization to read between the lines of the RFP.
  
• When at IBM, we would not answer most RFPs. The effort was huge, the cost staggering and the outcome very unpredictable. Answering RFPs is not a good way to do business.
  
• Not to be blunt, but if you're answering RFPs you either enjoy getting whipped as a provider of commodities, or you're not marketing yourself very well. Your marketing should lead you to a dialog among decision makers that leads to a tailored proposal and a solid Work Plan, rather than a rigid RFP process. If you're answering RFPs instead of having that dialog, you're heading for a relationship of servitude, not partnership. Not that you can't make a lot of money with that kind of a business, but most people I talk to are constantly trying to work their way up to a more strategic relationship with clients and customers. Answering RFPs won't get you there.
  
• Interesting saying. I have managed many RFPs for my clients and only answered a few from potential clients.
  
  IF the RFPs that you are responding too are poorly organized and require a significant amount of time and resources, then it points to: 1. Customer has poor understanding of needs 2. Customer has too many chiefs running the show.
  
  From the perspective of managing the RFPs, we use them so that the responses to the demand set are uniform and easy to compare. In terms of responding to RFPs, we do have some canned material that we just cut and past into the RFP..:)
  
• I've tried to streamline the proposal process many times, but getting an office of 300 to follow a set procedure is very difficult, especially when the professionals are much higher up than I. It seems like an unfixable situation.
  
• It does drive me mad, but that is necessary sometimes. Currently I'm answering one RFP. The rule of the thumb is - if we were "involved" in creating the need for the customer - then Yes, we answer it, otherwise, skip this process.