Sales teams miss RFP deadlines not because they’re disorganized, but because the RFP lands in a shared inbox, someone reads it, means to forward it, and it gets buried. By the time the right person sees it, you have 3 days left to write a proposal that needed 2 weeks.
Built a workflow that processes every RFP the moment it hits Gmail. The sales team knows about it within a minute, with all the key details already extracted.
What it does
RFP email arrives in Gmail → downloads the attachment → extracts all requirements and criteria → calculates deadline urgency → logs to RFP tracker sheet → alerts sales team on Slack
Takes about 15 seconds per document.
What gets extracted
Document details:
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Issuing organization, project title, RFP/RFQ number
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Submission deadline and submission method
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Project scope summary
Requirements list:
Every requirement tagged as Required / Preferred / Optional with its category. The Code node counts each type separately so you know upfront how many mandatory items need addressing.
Evaluation criteria with weights:
Pulls each criterion and its percentage weight. Knowing the evaluation breakdown before you start writing changes how you allocate effort — no point spending 40% of your proposal on something worth 10% of the score.
Budget range:
Min and max budget if specified. Formatted as $50,000 - $150,000 or Up to $200,000.
Questions to answer:
Every specific question the RFP requires you to respond to, numbered and listed.
Qualifications and compliance requirements:
Certifications, licenses, and compliance standards required to even bid.
Deadline urgency calculation
The Code node parses the deadline date and calculates days remaining automatically:
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OVERDUE — already past deadline
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Urgent — 7 days or fewer
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High — 8 to 14 days
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Normal — more than 14 days
This gets logged to the Sheet and shown in the Slack alert so the team knows at a glance which RFPs need immediate attention.
The Slack alert
📋 New RFP Received
Project: IT Infrastructure Modernization
Organization: City of Austin
RFP #: 2025-IT-0042
⏰ Deadline: March 28, 2025
Days Remaining: 11 (High)
💰 Budget: $500,000 - $1,200,000
📝 Requirements:
• Required: 14
• Preferred: 6
• Questions: 8
Evaluation Criteria:
Technical Approach: 40%
Past Experience: 30%
Price: 20%
Team Qualifications: 10%
Sales team sees the evaluation weighting in the alert itself. They know before they open the document that 40% of the score is technical approach.
What lands in Google Sheets
Each row: RFP Number, Project Title, Organization, Deadline, Days Remaining, Urgency, Budget Min, Budget Max, Required Items, Total Requirements, Questions to Answer, Source Email, Received Date, Status
Status defaults to “New” — update it manually as the proposal progresses (In Progress, Submitted, Won, Lost).
Setup
You’ll need:
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Gmail account (where RFPs arrive)
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Google Sheets (free)
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n8n instance (self-hosted — uses PDF Vector community node)
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PDF Vector account (free tier: 100 credits/month, roughly 25-30 RFPs)
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Slack (optional — delete the last node if not needed)
About 15 minutes to configure.
Download
Workflow JSON:
github.com/khanhduyvt0101/workflows
Full workflow collection:
Setup Guide
Step 1: Get your PDF Vector API key
Sign up at https://www.pdfvector.com — free plan works for testing. Go to API Keys and generate a key.
Step 2: Set up your Google Sheet
Create a new spreadsheet with these exact headers in Row 1:
RFP Number | Project Title | Organization | Deadline | Days Remaining | Urgency | Budget Min | Budget Max | Required Items | Total Requirements | Questions to Answer | Source Email | Received Date | Status
Copy the Sheet ID from the URL.
Step 3: Import the workflow
Download the JSON from GitHub and import into n8n via Import from File.
Step 4: Configure the nodes
Gmail Trigger:
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Connect your Gmail account (OAuth2)
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Watches all incoming email — add a label filter if you want to limit to emails labeled “RFP” or from specific domains
Get a message:
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Same Gmail credential
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downloadAttachments: trueis already set
PDF Vector - Extract RFP:
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Add new credential (Bearer Token type)
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Paste your API key
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Note: uses
attachment_0as the binary property name — this is correct for Gmail attachments
Analyze RFP:
- No config needed — deadline parsing and urgency calculation happen automatically
Log to RFP Tracker:
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Connect Google Sheets
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Paste your Sheet ID
Alert Sales Team:
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Connect Slack
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Paste your sales channel ID
Step 5: Test it
Send yourself a test email with an RFP PDF attached. Wait about 30 seconds and check your Sheet and Slack channel.
Accuracy
Tested on government RFPs, corporate RFQs, and consulting proposal requests.
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Project title, organization, RFP number: ~97% on digital PDFs
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Submission deadline: ~94% — handles most date formats including “March 15, 2025 at 5:00 PM EST”
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Requirements extraction: ~91% — occasionally misses requirements embedded in paragraph text vs. bulleted lists
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Evaluation criteria with weights: ~88% — works well when criteria are in a table or list, less reliable when weights are described in prose
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Budget range: ~85% — some RFPs deliberately omit budget or describe it vaguely
Scanned PDFs: drops to ~82% overall. Deadline parsing is most affected.
Cost
Each RFP uses about 3-4 PDF Vector credits. Free tier of 100 credits gets you roughly 25-30 documents per month.
Basic plan is $25/month for 3,000 credits if you’re handling volume.
Customizing it
Add a label filter to Gmail:
In the Gmail Trigger node, add a label filter so it only processes emails tagged “RFP” in your inbox. Prevents the workflow from triggering on every incoming email.
Add urgency-based routing:
Insert an IF node after Analyze RFP to split Urgent vs Normal RFPs into separate Slack channels — one for immediate action, one for regular pipeline.
Track win/loss rate:
Add a column to your Sheet for Outcome (Won/Lost/No Bid) and update it after each RFP resolves. After a few months you’ll have data on which types of RFPs you win most often.
Connect to a CRM:
Replace or supplement the Sheets node with an HTTP Request node to create a deal in HubSpot, Salesforce, or Pipedrive automatically. The extracted fields (organization, budget, deadline) map directly to CRM deal fields.
Limitations
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Requires self-hosted n8n (PDF Vector is a community node)
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Watches all Gmail — add label filtering for production use
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Evaluation criteria weights are only as reliable as how clearly they’re written in the RFP
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Doesn’t generate the actual proposal — that’s still a human job. This handles intake and analysis only
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Multi-attachment emails will only process
attachment_0— if the RFP spans multiple files, you’ll need to modify the binary property handling
Links
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PDF Vector n8n integration: n8n Integration - PDF Vector
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Full workflow collection: GitHub - khanhduyvt0101/workflows: Awesome PDF Automation Workflows - A curated collection of ready-to-use automation workflows for PDF processing and document extraction · GitHub
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n8n docs: https://docs.n8n.io
Questions? Drop a comment if something’s not working or you want to extend it with proposal generation.