When I joined the firm, I knew I’d be stepping into a world that operated differently than my previous ‘do things the way I see fit’ as an entrepreneur’. Most of the work I’ve seen so far has been pretty standard fare. I had experience bidding on contracts, structuring deals, and managing procurement cycles as a small business. This past few months was my first project on behalf of a fairly large client at our company, and I wanted to do things by the book, their book.
I’m in his office thinking we’ll draft a withdrawal letter and call it a day, maybe thank the client for the opportunity, and save their resources for something they could realistically compete on. No point wasting energy on a fight they can’t win, right?
Instead, my client looked away from his screen, directly at me, leaned back in his chair, and gave me a series of very specific steps to follow. Not aggressive. Not flashy. Just a subtle series of moves buried in the procurement process. I didn’t immediately pick up what he was putting down. Ok. I was trying to process wondering if he just wanted to win it for the sake of just getting work or ego. Changing the bid the way he suggested would definitely cause a massive financial loss and dry up cash reserves.
We finished and submitted the bid. Two months later, we were told the vendor awarded us the bid. My boss tells us to bow out of the bid as “non competitive”, now I’m even more confused. Why do all that work? Upon closing up our project and before exiting their company I asked: why did we do all that just to walk?
This wasn’t the kind of tactic you read about in textbooks or fiction novel. It wasn’t dirty, but it wasn’t clean either. I still don’t know the big picture behind why they had to sabotage the bigger competitor. What else were they after?
For me, it was the first real lesson that this is the type of clients the firm had who didn’t just play the game. They played their game with a kind of subtle clever ruthlessness.