Vendor Evaluation and RFP Scoring Matrix AI Prompt
Choosing the right vendor is stressful and slow. Criteria get fuzzy, stakeholders disagree, and evaluations slip into opinion instead of data. You end up with long meetings, inconsistent scoring, and a decision no one can defend.
A strong prompt fixes that. It defines the business goals, scoring criteria, weights, roles, and timelines—before you evaluate vendors. You get a repeatable process and comparable results.
AskSmarter.ai guides you with targeted questions to capture what teams forget: decision drivers, must-have compliance, weighting logic, and review cadence. Then it generates a structured prompt that yields a complete RFP scoring matrix, decision workflow, and communications plan.
Use this example to align stakeholders, speed vendor shortlisting, and make defensible choices you can explain in a single slide.
The transformation
Before — Vague prompt
Create a vendor scoring template for our RFP and help pick a winner.
After — Optimized prompt
You are a Procurement Operations lead. Create an RFP evaluation package for a mid-market B2B SaaS CRM selection.
- Audience: cross-functional panel (Sales Ops, IT, Security, Finance).
- Goals: reduce CRM cost by 15%, cut admin time by 30% in 6 months.
- Deliverables:
- Scoring matrix with 8–10 criteria, definitions, and 0–5 scale.
- Weights totaling 100%, with rationale.
- Compliance checklist (SOC 2, GDPR, SSO, data residency).
- Process: roles, timeline (3 weeks), demo script, Q&A log.
- Tie-break rules and risk register.
- Constraints: budget cap $120k/year, 250 users, Salesforce integration, 99.9% SLA.
- Tone: concise, board-ready. Provide a one-page summary.
Why this works
The improved prompt works because it forces the essentials that drive a consistent, defensible vendor choice.
- Clarity: It names the role (Procurement Operations lead) and the exact context (mid-market B2B SaaS CRM). This removes ambiguity about scope.
- Context: Goals, constraints, and audience align the scoring with business outcomes. This prevents generic criteria and focuses on what matters.
- Structure: Numbered deliverables request a scoring matrix, weights, compliance checks, process steps, and risk/tie-break rules. You get all artifacts needed to run the evaluation end-to-end.
- Tone and format: “Concise, board-ready” ensures outputs are brief and executive-friendly, not a data dump.
AskSmarter.ai gets to this level by asking targeted questions about stakeholders, decision goals, compliance needs, timelines, and constraints. Those answers shape a prompt that produces specific, measurable criteria and a replicable evaluation workflow—saving time and improving decision quality.
When to use this prompt
Marketing Operations
Evaluate email service providers using criteria for deliverability, integration with the CDP, and campaign automation depth.
Product Management
Compare analytics vendors with weighting for event tracking performance, privacy features, and cost per monthly tracked user.
Sales Leadership
Select a sales engagement platform using criteria for dialer quality, sequence analytics, and Salesforce sync reliability.
IT and Security
Assess identity providers with a compliance checklist (SAML, SCIM, MFA), uptime SLAs, and audit reporting depth.
Finance and Procurement
Run a competitive bid for payment processors focused on fees, chargeback tooling, and settlement timing.
Pro tips
- 1
Define hard constraints first to eliminate unqualified vendors early and protect the timeline.
- 2
Weight criteria by business impact to avoid overvaluing nice-to-haves; tie each weight to a goal.
- 3
Specify stakeholder roles and deadlines so scoring happens on time with clear ownership.
- 4
Include tie-break rules and a risk register to handle close scores and surface hidden tradeoffs.
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Build a prompt for your situation
This example shows the pattern. AskSmarter.ai guides you to create prompts tailored to your specific context, audience, and goals.