What Happens When Your SME Is on PTO?

It always happens the same way.

The AE thinks they’ve got it covered.
The RFP looks straightforward.
The deadline? Manageable.

Then the spreadsheet lands.
300 rows. 48 hours.
And the one person who actually knows the answer to Question 87?
Out of office.

If your process depends on live SME coverage to get responses out the door, PTO isn’t just a scheduling wrinkle—it’s a deal risk.

Let’s talk about what really happens when your subject matter expert isn’t around… and how to make sure it doesn’t stall the sale.

1. You Waste Time Recreating Work That Already Exists

That SOC 2 response?
Answered three times last quarter.
But now it’s buried in a Slack thread or locked in someone’s desktop.

Without a structured, accessible knowledge base, your team ends up rewriting the same content instead of reusing what’s already right.

The cost?
Hours wasted. Inconsistencies introduced.
And the person covering starts guessing—because they don’t want to miss the deadline.

2. Your “Fallback Plan” Is Just a Chain of DMs

Someone always says, “I’ll just ping someone else who might know.”
So begins the Slack relay:
AE → proposal lead → legal → SE #2 → “I think John answered that last time?”

No one’s sure what’s final.
Version control disappears.
And now you’ve pulled three people into a problem one person had already solved—just not in a way the team could use.

3. Last-Minute Fire Drills Burn Credibility

You scramble. You improvise. You send the doc.

But the buyer spots the inconsistencies.
The compliance team follows up with questions your team can’t confidently answer.
And suddenly, your smooth sales process doesn’t feel so enterprise-ready.

The perception shifts:
From buttoned-up and responsive…
To rushed, unclear, and risky.

4. Institutional Knowledge Walks Out the Door (Even Temporarily)

When SMEs go offline, they take a part of your deal velocity with them.

Unless your process captures not just answers—but the context, tone, and ownership behind them—your velocity lives in someone’s head.

And if that person’s on PTO, so is your ability to respond.

Here’s What High-Performing Teams Do Instead

Modern teams don’t scramble when someone’s out. They systematize.

With Iris, your team can:

✅ Use AI to suggest responses from approved past work—no Slack sleuthing needed
✅ Route ownership to whoever’s available without losing context
✅ Protect sensitive answers with granular permissions and approval paths
✅ Auto-tag responses by use case, buyer type, or industry—so anyone can find what they need
✅ Submit inside portals with our Chrome extension—no formatting disasters or last-minute rushes

Because PTO shouldn’t break your process.
It should prove it’s strong enough to scale.

Final Thought: Coverage Is a System, Not a Person

If your RFPs stall every time an SME logs off, it’s not a resource issue.
It’s a workflow issue.

The right platform makes institutional knowledge accessible, approvals trackable, and answers scalable—so your people can rest and your deals can move.

Your subject matter experts have earned their time off.
Let your system handle the rest.

→ Want to see how Iris keeps RFPs moving when your team is offline?