Note on confidentiality
The case below is anonymised and slightly composited. The mechanism is real. No confidential data, names, or internal documents are disclosed.
I recall a competitive tender from my corporate tenure at a large industrial manufacturer. High eight figure annual spend. Mature category. Long incumbent relationship.
The incumbent supplier was comfortable. They believed history, familiarity, and „partnership” language would protect them from commercial gravity.
Months before any RFP was issued, the buyer organisation had already set the evaluation logic. Not maliciously. Systemically. Technical requirements were clarified, service expectations were formalised, and „value” was defined in operational terms that could be measured and compared. Procurement did what Procurement is supposed to do: reduce ambiguity, reduce risk, reduce total cost, and make bids comparable.
When the RFP finally landed, the incumbent team reacted as most teams do. They invested in presentation theatre. They argued indices, terms, and payment levers. They spoke about innovation, relationship, strategic alignment.
They were negotiating in a system that had already priced their differentiation down to almost zero.
They retained the business, but at a margin so thin it barely covered the true cost to serve. They celebrated a „win”. The buyer captured margin.
In competitive tenders, the table is often the last scene, not the decision point. The verdict is usually shaped upstream, inside the architecture of criteria, weights, and stakeholder alignment.
If you engage only when the RFP arrives, you are not shaping a deal. You are participating in an evaluation machine built to compress your margin.
Diagnosis: The Architecture of Capitulation
This is not primarily a negotiation skill problem. Your team does not need another seminar on „win win”, empathy, or objection handling.
The failure is structural. I call it the Architecture of Capitulation.
It happens when a sales organisation accepts the buyer’s procurement process as immutable law rather than a variable to be managed. An RFP is not neutral. It is a constraint system. It defines:
- what is being compared
- how it is scored
- who can be contacted
- when decisions happen
- which outcomes are rewarded
Procurement’s job is to create comparability. In commercial terms, comparability often removes your ability to charge for differentiation, unless your differentiation is embedded in mandatory requirements or heavily weighted criteria.
If you enter only when the RFP is released, you accept: their criteria, their weighting logic, their timeline, and their information controls.
You cannot negotiate margin back into a deal that has been architected to exclude it.
Mechanism: How Margin Leaks Upstream
Margin leakage is rarely a single moment at signature. It is a slow bleed with a consistent sequence.
Before you know the deal exists, the buyer aligns internally (Operations, R&D, Quality, Finance) on what „need” means.
The buyer establishes the scoring matrix.
The buyer collects a low cost reference quote or benchmark.
The buyer releases the document with portal rules, contact restrictions, and standardised templates.
You finally meet. You try to sell value. The buyer points to a scoring model where your value is underweighted.
Surgery: The Interventions
We move from being passive participants to architects of deal structure. That requires controls, not motivation.
Upstream Deal Shaping. Build a hard gate in your CRM. No opportunity progresses to „Proposal” unless the team had upstream visibility before the RFP was written.
If an RFP arrives blind, it is automatically flagged as: No Bid, or Qualified Bid (only if specific conditions are met).
Upstream Deal Shaping. Your pre-RFP objective is not to sell the product. It is to influence the criteria. You must push your differentiators into: mandatory requirements (Must Haves) and heavily weighted criteria.
Wrestling with Procurement. Identify and access two roles early: Technical Buyer (user) and Economic Buyer (P&L owner). Procurement controls information flow. You cannot wait until those rules are enforced. Your stakeholder map must exist months earlier.
Tool to Install: The Shaping Impact Matrix
Do not guess your influence. Measure it.
Rule: If total score is below 0, do not bid without executive override.
| Variable | Victim (-10) | Participant (0) | Architect (+10) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Timing of entry | RFP received blindly | Aware 2 weeks pre RFP | Engaged 3+ months pre RFP |
| Criteria origin | Generic or competitor leaning | Balanced but standard | Helped define 2+ mandatory criteria |
| Stakeholder access | Procurement only | Mid level users only | Direct access to P&L owner |
| Problem definition | Responding to defined solution | Understand problem, did not define | Diagnosed problem, prescribed approach |
| Competitive position | Unknown outsider | One of many invited bidders | Incumbent or trusted advisor |
Scoring guide:
- < 0: Kill zone. Do not bid.
- 0 to 20: Fight. Expect price war. Proceed with caution.
- 30+: Advantage. Focus on protecting margin, not chasing volume.
Discharge Checklist
Execute this within the current fiscal week:
Call to Action
You can train your team to negotiate discounts more elegantly, or you can install controls that make discounts unnecessary.
AdvantEdge GmbH does not sell motivational speeches. We install commercial operating systems.
If you want to stop margin bleeding where it starts, request a diagnostic session. We will analyse your pipeline architecture and locate the upstream control gap.
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