You picked one agency. Ten agencies didn’t get picked. Two of them pitched in person on your day and watched another agency walk away with the contract.
The temptation is to send a one line rejection email and move on. The temptation is wrong. Take the half day. Make the calls.
Why this matters
The agency market that serves UK law firms is small. The ten agencies that lost on your RFP will pitch on someone else’s next quarter. They’ll also pitch on yours, when the next project comes around. How you treat them after losing decides who shows up next time, and how seriously they show up.
A constructive feedback call costs you fifteen minutes per agency. The reputational return is years of better pitches across the market, including yours.
What a good feedback call looks like
Fifteen to twenty minutes. Phone, not email. Structured into three parts.
What scored well. Lead with the genuine strengths. Specific. “Your reference list was the strongest of the eleven we read. The detail on integrations was excellent. The transatlantic team structure was a credible answer to a question most agencies ducked.”
What scored less well. Specific again. Tied to the matrix. “The timeline question wasn’t fully answered. The CMS recommendation came in too late in the proposal to land properly. The pricing range made the proposal hard to compare to fixed price competitors.”
What would have changed the outcome. This is the part agencies remember. “A fixed price quote with line items would have moved you from the bottom of the shortlist into pitch contention. The reference list could have been stronger by including a transatlantic client. The discovery section could have been a third as long and twice as specific.”
That’s it. Don’t apologise for the decision. Don’t soften the feedback to make it easier to hear. Don’t compare them to the agency that won. The feedback that’s useful is the feedback that’s specific.
What you’ll hear back
Most agencies thank you for the call and ask one or two follow up questions. A handful will ask if you’d be open to working with them on the next project. A few will tell you something useful about how they read the brief, which feeds into how you write your next RFP.
Occasionally an agency will push back hard, either on the feedback or on the decision. Take it. Listen. If they make a fair point, acknowledge it. If they don’t, you’ve still given them the call.
The agencies that ask for the matrix
Sometimes a sophisticated agency will ask if they can see the scoring matrix, or at least their own row of it. Two views on this.
Some firms share it. The agency learns specifically where they scored low and what to fix. The market gets better RFP responses over time. That feels like the right outcome.
Some firms don’t, because the matrix includes commentary on other agencies. Anonymise the data, share their own row in writing, and follow up with a call to discuss. That keeps the rest of the field confidential while still giving the agency the feedback they’re asking for.
Either policy is defensible. What isn’t defensible is having the matrix and refusing to use it.
The half day is worth it
The losing agencies will tell colleagues about your call. Some of them will retain their interest in working with you. Some will not. Either way, the next time you run an RFP, the responses you get will be better, because the agencies have data on what works with your firm and what doesn’t.
Take the half day. Make the calls.