6 Reasons Why So Many Consulting Projects Fail

A few weeks ago, after almost four years since the last one, I received another RFP from a local engineering consulting firm for a marketing project.

While 10 years ago I still had the temptation to respond to some RFPs, fortunately, this illness has already passed me.

Mind you, I once almost managed to get a gig through an RFP.

It was an architecture firm and the partners wanted to hire me to help them to covert from hourly billing to value pricing. And they wanted to hire me at a competitive hourly rate. They insisted that I broke down the work into small tasks, so they could micromanage me as I was performing those tasks.

Then I looked at the payment terms. Net 180 days. Hm.

I tried to be clever to bypass the RFP process, but all I achieved was that I received an email form them...

“We have our tried and tested RFP process, and you have to adhere to it in order to compete for this project.”

Then I responded...

“Well, the RFP process is also called a cattle call. Bovine-calibre buyers call upon bovine-calibre sellers, so they can get together and moo together without achieving anything worthwhile. See most government projects. But since I rate my intellectual capabilities a tiny bit higher than that of a bovine, I avoid cattle calls like the plague. So, please count me out and good luck.”

And then I got an email from one of the (many) buyers asking me what I thought was wrong with the RFP process.

So, I explained where I stood and still stand on RFPs.

Continue reading...