Last week the USA’s J Johnson Executive Search, Inc and the UK’s Totum published their combined ‘RFP Survey Responses: U.S. and U.K. Data 2016‘.

A fairly evenly distributed demographic of large (defined as being 600+ lawyers), mid-sized (defined as being 100-600 lawyers) and small (up to 100 lawyers, for the U.S. only) law firm respondents, insights from the survey include time spent responding to RFPs, persons within firms charged with project managing responses, as well as tools and expertise made available to responding teams, in both the U.S. and the U.K.

As with most surveys of this nature however, it is the role that pricing plays that typically grabs my attention and given this survey’s combined U.S. and U.K. perspective even more so in this case.

Given ongoing market pressures, it should surprise no one that responses of “strong” from the U.S. (58%) and the U.K. (64%) to the question of what current “price pressure” for proposal & RFPs were fairly similar.

 

A little more surprising to me was the difference in responses between the U.S. (40%) and the U.K. (60%) to the question “when developing proposals and RFPs, I have easy access to” the answer was “pricing guides/professionals“.

 

 

Now don’t get me wrong, even these days I think it is particularly progressive and somewhat comforting to know that 60% of my colleagues in the U.K. have access to some sort of “pricing guide/professional”.

Until, that is, you get to see who actually gets to sign-off (i.e., the “decision maker”) on the all important issue of pricing in RFPs in the U.K.. Here, and I kid you not, the response in the U.K. of “pricing specialist” (that same person who 60% claim to have some form of access to – either via guides or in person) was 5%.

I think that is worth repeating – 5%.

Put into context, that means in the U.K. pricing in your RFP is more likely to be signed off by Marketing & BD (9%) or Finance (14%). Indeed, in the U.K., “It varies” is likely to have more of a say on final pricing in the RFP response than the so-called pricing specialist.

I’m not so sure why the results of this particular survey so surprise me. After all, time and time again survey results show that we typically say one thing about pricing, but do quite another.

What I will say though is this: if you have access to a pricing specialist, and pricing by your pricing specialist is being determined in 5% or less of your RFP responses, my guess is going to be one of two things: (a) you have no idea if you are making money from your RFP “wins”, or (b) more likely, you are leaving money on the table big time!

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* images should be enlargeable, apologies if they appear a little blurred.