Five Questions That Should Not be Asked on an RFP for Legal Services
- Whom do you regard as your major competitors?
- How do you compare your firm or company against your major competitors?
- What are your key strengths relative to theirs?
- What is the contact information for one client that has ceased to do business with you within the last two years?
- What are the attrition rates over the past two years among your employees who would be working on our matters?
If you put yourself in the shoes of the respondents, you may feel these questions in an RFP are over-reaching and unfair (see my post of March 30, 2008: RFP with 22 references). But what's more relevant is that you will most likely receive responses (if any at all) that are evasive, platitudinous and will not help you.
While questions such as these are rude and invasive, they're not irrelevant -- they even transcend the Legal market and could be useful to know of all suppliers. The focus here should not be on the questions per se but rather the information desired. And this is where the relationship factor is paramount -- Jason Busch juxtaposed supplier and personal relationships in a post last Friday about "trust". We can probe this sort of information once a relationship is established, just not in the context of an RFP.
- Rees Morrison
Over my years in the field, I've come to recognize at least one truism about RFP's: you can never make every supplier happy.
Suppliers who get asked to differentiate themselves from competitors in the context of an RFP will complain that such questions are rude and invasive. Then there are suppliers who scoff at RFP response forms and eSourcing events, complaining that the RFP didn't give them the opportunity to "sell their differences." Those suppliers would love to be asked those rude and invasive questions.
Some suppliers would rather have those questions asked in person within the context of a relationship. Others would appreciate the time to carefully craft a written response rather than being suckerpunched by the questions in a high profile meeting in front of many members of both the buying and selling team.
Some suppliers want transparency and a level playing field. Others want relationships to matter more than anything else.
Procurement's job is not necessarily to make all suppliers comfortable - it is to deliver the best results for the organization. If asking those questions in the RFP leads to better results, those questions should be asked. If withholding those questions until later leads to better results, those questions should be withheld.
Service industries - particularly ones in which the individuals negotiating are the individuals performing the contract - can be a little tricky in this regard. They cannot be handled exactly like a widely sold commodity.
I think that these types of posts from you can help procurement professionals new to legal service sourcing understand these little subtleties and know where the legal supply base requires a little more kid-glove care than other categories.
Keep up the great work.
- "What are your strengths relative to your competitors?" gives the services vendor the opportunity to establish what capabilities they have that deliver more value to their clients, and which specific areas they focus on.
- "What are your attrition rates?" is also a key determinant of services value, as worker re-training or dissatisfaction can directly affect the value of services. We're getting asked more often now to enable worker tracking in our services procurement solution even for offshore services and milestone-based services, as turnover is a key metric of the resulting service quality.
Best regards - John Martin, IQNavigator
As someone who has written many RFP responses, I would not take offence at these questions. To be honest, I welcome many of them as an opportunity to describle my sources of added-value and differentiation. Far too many RFPs actually deny the supplier such an opportunity.
Opinion: in most cases an RFP is the buyers way of mitigating the risk that comes from virtually all buying organizations - no one person wants to be responsible for a bad decision. So if you ask Q's like these and others, and the deal goes south, the group of people who selected the supplier can point back to the "documentation" (RFP) and thus relieve any personal/career risk.