Law firms with corporate clients sometimes receive an RFP from a client without knowing how many other firms are being considered.
Were two firms invited to submit a proposal? Three firms? 10 firms?
As one firm partner told us on a call not long ago:
“If we’re going to spend the time to create a proposal, I want to know I have a real chance of winning the work.”
So how many firms participate in each RFP?
The answer?
Usually it’s between three and four firms.
In-house teams invite between 3 and 4 firms for each RFP, on average
PERSUIT’s data set includes over $9 billion in firm proposals for legal work with some of the largest companies in the world.
Looking at our data, we can see that the average firm usually competes with two to three other firms every time they’re invited to participate in an RFP process.
There’s also not much difference between large firms and smaller firms.
Firms in the Global 10 are invited to matters that have an average of 3.5 firms per RFP.
Firms outside the Global 200, by comparison, face only slightly less competition as they are invited to matters with an average of 3.3 firms per RFP.
If you found the data in this article helpful, check out our data benchmarking report for more: 5 Data Benchmarks to Use When Firms Ask: “How Can We Win More of Your Business?”
