You can't blame a solution consultant for losing an RFP they never had the power to win. Tom Josephson, Director of Solution Consulting at Braze, joins Christina Carter to explain how he runs enterprise RFP responses without a dedicated bid team, and why the way most leaders measure this work falls apart under scrutiny.

Tom has managed solution consulting teams that own RFPs end to end and teams that work alongside proposal specialists. He breaks down how to decide which RFPs deserve effort, how to get SCs to own the work, and how AI changed the job from writing answers to editing them.

✹ Why the SC who fills out the RFP should own the deal it becomes

✹ How relationship depth and influence over the document decide priority

✹ Why win rate is the only fair KPI, and losses can't be pinned on the responder

✹ How evaluators score with a checklist, and how to respond and demo to it

If you lead SCs, sales engineers, or a proposal team that leans on SMEs, this one gives you a sharper way to run and measure RFP work

✨ Links & Resources

✹ Tom Josephson on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tom-josephson/

✹ Braze: https://www.braze.com

✹ 2026 Proposal and Bid Software Report: https://stargazy.io/offers/2026-proposal-and-bid-software-report

✹ Join the Stargazy community: https://stargazy.circle.so/join

✹ Subscribe to The Stargazy Brief for weekly conversations on how teams win RFPs