By the end of the previous engagement, the firm had a sixteen page RFP with forty one weighted questions, a five persona discovery, fifteen user journeys and a content matrix covering its full seventeen thousand page site. The RFP went to a longlist of eleven agencies on 17 April. Responses came back at 5pm on 13 May.
This is what happened next.
Eight working days. Eleven responses. One matrix.
The scoring matrix had been built before the first response landed. Each question carried a weight set by the original RFP, between 2 and 5. Forty one weighted answers per agency. Cumulative score, sorted descending.
The responses clustered into three tiers. The top tier answered the questions that were asked, on time, within the word limit, with fixed prices and named references. The middle tier was adequate but undifferentiated. The bottom tier missed pieces of the brief, including in two cases the timeline and the budget. One agency, a known incumbent on an adjacent account, scored just below the shortlist because they’d skipped the timeline question entirely. Incumbent advantage isn’t a substitute for answering the RFP.
The shortlist conversation. Two hours, one round.
The marketing lead and the partner team met with the matrix on screen. The disagreement happened on the data rather than on impressions. Three agencies progressed to the pitch day. A fourth went on the reserve list with explicit feedback.
The pitch day. Three agencies, eight hours, three debriefs.
Pitch day in the firm’s regional office on 19 June. Forty five minutes per pitch. Fifteen minutes of questions tied to the lowest scoring sections of each agency’s RFP response. Thirty minute debriefs between pitches.
The decision call the following morning took less than thirty minutes. The agency was appointed by 30 June.
The feedback calls. Half a day. Ten conversations.
Each of the ten unsuccessful agencies got a structured feedback call. What scored well. What scored less well. What would have changed the outcome.
Two agencies got the same message, because the same gap had cost them both. The incumbent that came up just short got a longer call. The agency that quoted a six figure annual licence fee got a conversation about value proposition. None of them were grateful in the moment. All of them will pitch differently the next time the firm runs an RFP.
Where it landed
The build kicked off on 7 July with no scope dispute and no re-quote. The agency was working from a contract with their own RFP response attached as an appendix. The discovery deliverables from the previous engagement carried straight into the build. The variance in pricing across the eleven responses was a factor of four. Discovering that variance during the RFP was the whole point of running the process this way.
The consulting cost outweighs the downstream value of a build that lands on time, on budget and on scope.
The full case study runs through the scoring matrix, the pitch day structure and the feedback calls in more detail. If you’re a marketing lead at a firm about to run a similar process, it’s worth a read.
For a confidential conversation about a similar engagement at your firm, get in touch.