Writing an RFP Clarification for an Ambiguous Investment Mandate

An RFP with a mandate that reads two different ways puts you in a bad spot. The main section might state one duration range while the appendix describes a different one. Pick the reading that makes your strategy look stronger and you have built the response on a guess, not on what the client actually asked for. The right move is to ask before you draft, get an answer in writing, and build the response on that answer instead of your own assumption.

Why This Conversation Goes Wrong

Most RFP leads default to guessing because a clarification request feels risky. Asking a question about page three of a hundred page document can look like you did not read it closely, or like you are stalling for time you do not have. Procurement teams often push back too. They want fewer exchanges before the deadline, and a question about a conflict in their own document can feel like scrutiny of their process. So the RFP lead caves, drafts around an assumption nobody asked for, and later has to defend a decision that was never theirs to make.

The bigger risk sits downstream. If you respond to the broader range and the client meant the narrow one, your fit description reads as weak or misleading on the exact dimension the mandate cares about most. If you respond to the narrow range and the client meant the wider one, you may have talked yourself out of a mandate you could have won. Either error surfaces during scoring, when it is too late to fix, or during the Planning an Asset Management RFP Award Debrief, when a client explains exactly why your response missed the mark.

Prepare Before You Ask

Get your facts down in one place before you contact the client. Write out both conflicting statements word for word, and note the page or section number for each one. Check the RFP for the deadline on clarification questions, since many mandates set a hard cutoff after which the client will not accept them. Confirm the channel the RFP requires, whether that is a shared questions document, a procurement portal, or a single named contact. Some mandates disqualify a bidder for going around that channel, even when the underlying question is a good one.

Loop in your investment team before you send anything. Ask a portfolio manager or product specialist whether the two ranges represent a real strategic difference or a drafting slip. That tells you how much actually rides on the answer, and it means you are not caught flat footed if the client asks you to explain the practical difference between the two readings.

Draft the question itself in advance and keep it neutral. State the conflict plainly. Ask which section governs, or how the client wants you to handle it if neither one clearly does. Do not suggest an answer inside the question. A note that reads "we assume you mean the wider range, please confirm" is not a clarification, it is a lobbying attempt dressed as one, and an experienced procurement director reads it that way immediately.

What to Say

On the call, a procurement director resists your question directly. She says, "Why can't you just respond to the broader range? Everyone else has moved on." You say, "We want to answer against the mandate you intend to score us on. Section two states a ten to fifteen year duration target, and appendix C describes a seven to twelve year range. Could you tell us which one governs, or would you rather we describe fit against both?" She says she needs to check with the investment committee liaison. You ask for the answer in writing, through the same channel as the original RFP, and you confirm the date you need it by to stay inside your drafting schedule. She agrees to send a written answer by the end of the week.

Two days later, an email arrives. It says the appendix contains an error and the governing range is the one stated in the main section. You reply to confirm you have logged the answer and thank her for the quick turnaround. You then update your evidence file, place the clarification next to the final response, and tell the investment team which range to write fit language against. The strategy description in your submission cites the confirmed range directly, so any reviewer scoring your fit reads language that matches the client's own written answer rather than a guess you made under deadline pressure.

Mistakes to Avoid

A few patterns turn a reasonable clarification into a liability. Guessing silently and hoping the conflict never surfaces is the first one, and it usually does surface, because the evaluator reads the same two sections you did. Phrasing the question so it nudges the client toward the answer you want is the second. That reads as self serving and costs you credibility with a procurement team that reviews dozens of these requests every cycle. Sending the question through a side email or a personal contact because the official channel feels slow is the third mistake. If the RFP names a portal or a shared question log, use it, even when a direct contact would be faster, because going around the process can get a response disqualified regardless of how good the underlying answer is.

Accepting a verbal answer on a call and moving on without asking for it in writing is the fourth mistake. Verbal answers get forgotten, get misquoted, or get contradicted later by someone else at the client who never heard the call. Getting the written answer and failing to pass it to the people actually writing the strategy section is the fifth. The clarification only protects you if everyone drafting the response uses it, so treat the written answer as part of the source material, not as a private note in your inbox.

Practice It Before It Counts

If you manage other RFP writers, turn this into a repeatable check rather than a one time lesson. Give a writer two versions of a mandate statement that differ on one material limit, a duration range, a concentration cap, a benchmark choice. Ask them to draft the clarification question in two sentences without hinting at a preferred answer. Then check three things. Does the note name the exact conflict, with page references. Does it follow the client's stated process for questions. Does it avoid inserting any language that assumes fit before the client responds.

Score the exchange itself the way you would score a live call. Did the writer hold their ground when the procurement contact pushed back, the way the director did in the example above. Did they ask for the answer in writing rather than accepting a verbal one. Did they record the deadline and follow up if the answer did not arrive on time. Running this drill with a tool like DealSpeak lets a writer rehearse the pushback moment, the "why can't you just answer the broader range" line, before it happens on a real call where the mandate itself is on the line. The Asset Management practice conversations cover this kind of exchange alongside other moments in the RFP process, including how to back up a compliance heavy answer such as the one described in Building a Verified Response to an RFP Business Continuity Question.

Once the written answer arrives, file it beside the final response rather than trusting your memory of the call. That single record settles any question later about which mandate interpretation governed the strategy description, and it protects you if the client ever asks why you wrote the response the way you did.