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One of the questions we get most often after walking through co-creation as a pre-RFP move: "How is this different from ...
06/18/2026

One of the questions we get most often after walking through co-creation as a pre-RFP move: "How is this different from just giving away our thinking for free?"

It's a fair question.

The honest answer is: it depends on what's underneath the conversation.

Free consulting happens when you deliver solutions before there's a relationship — before the client trusts you enough to share real constraints, real uncertainty, real internal politics. You do the diagnostic work, propose the approach, and hope the generosity converts. Sometimes it does. More often, it provides a roadmap someone else follows.

Co-creation is different in character. It happens within a relationship where there's enough trust that the conversation is genuinely mutual. You're not pitching — you're thinking together. Asking the questions that surface what they haven't said out loud yet. Contributing a framework that shifts how they see the problem. Being present in the room where the question is still forming.

That presence, over time, is how your language ends up in the eventual scope document.

The starting point isn't the working session. It's the relationship that made the working session possible.

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Here's an honest question worth sitting with today.If someone asked you right now which accounts in your pipeline are ap...
06/17/2026

Here's an honest question worth sitting with today.

If someone asked you right now which accounts in your pipeline are approaching their pre-RFP window — the quiet thirty to sixty days before a formal process begins — could you answer it confidently?

Most leaders we talk to can give a partial answer. One or two accounts they're watching. A client who mentioned something in passing last month. A sector where they sense movement.

But "partial" is the gap.

Because the full picture — which accounts are genuinely close to a decision, who on your team already has a relationship with someone on the buying committee, what warm paths exist that nobody has thought to activate — that picture rarely lives anywhere it can be seen clearly.

The firms that operationalize their network don't just have good relationships. They've built the habit of making those relationships visible and pointing them deliberately at the right moments.

You can't leverage what you can't see.

What does your firm's view of its own network actually look like right now?

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We talk to a lot of consulting firm founders who will honestly tell you their BD feels reactive.The deal surfaces. The t...
06/16/2026

We talk to a lot of consulting firm founders who will honestly tell you their BD feels reactive.

The deal surfaces. The team mobilizes. The proposal gets written. They compete hard. Sometimes they win; often they don't — and the post-mortem circles back to the proposal, the pricing, the presentation.

What's less often said out loud: the mode itself might be the problem.

Reactive BD isn't a failure of ex*****on. It's a structural choice — usually made by default rather than intention — to enter the opportunity at the stage where most of the real decisions have already been made.

Relationship-first BD looks different from the outside. It's quieter, less urgent, harder to put on a dashboard. The partner forwarding an article to a future client. The introduction made between two people who should know each other. The off-the-record call where someone asks "what would you actually do here?" — before any formal process exists.

That quieter work is where the deal gets shaped. And the firms that have built the habit of doing it consistently find that by the time the RFP drops, the conversation has been ongoing for months.

What does the intentional side of your BD calendar look like right now?

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Here's something worth sitting with at the start of the week.The next time an RFP arrives, read it slowly — not just for...
06/15/2026

Here's something worth sitting with at the start of the week.

The next time an RFP arrives, read it slowly — not just for what's being asked, but for how it's being asked. The specific framing of the problem. The language used to describe the engagement model. The criteria that feel precise in a way that seems almost too convenient for one competitor.

Someone wrote those. And that language came from somewhere.

It came from conversations that happened weeks before procurement was involved — with advisors who were already in the client's orbit, helping shape the question before anyone thought to run a formal process.

This isn't a complaint about unfairness. It's a description of how scope formation actually works. Problems get framed by whoever is in the room early. And the firms that consistently make it to the shortlist and still lose have almost always been arriving to those conversations too late.

The RFP isn't a starting gun. It's a record of conversations you either were or weren't part of.

What's your honest read — where does your firm typically enter the timeline?

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A Sunday thought to close out the week.We've been unpacking the four pre-RFP moves all week — Co-Creation, Early Access,...
06/14/2026

A Sunday thought to close out the week.

We've been unpacking the four pre-RFP moves all week — Co-Creation, Early Access, Committee Coverage, and Pre-Trust. But underneath all four of them is a single arc that explains why the firms that win consistently do what they do.

Five stages. Relationship. Problem surfaces. Early conversations. Co-creation. Proposal — optional.

That last word is the one that changes everything.

When you've invested in the relationship, been present while the problem formed, helped shape the thinking, and built a shared diagnosis — the proposal becomes paperwork. The committee isn't choosing between vendors. They're looking for a reason to choose the firm that's already inside the problem with them.

The firms that treat the proposal as the starting line are entering a race that's already been run.

The proposal is the last stage. Not the first.

Thank you for spending this week with us. The session replay is still live — share it with someone at your firm who needs to hear it.

https://avnirinsights.com/the-deals-decided-before-the-rfp

See you tomorrow as we go deeper.

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A Saturday thought on how buying actually works now.Think about the last time your firm submitted a proposal for a compe...
06/13/2026

A Saturday thought on how buying actually works now.

Think about the last time your firm submitted a proposal for a competitive engagement. How many people were in the room when that decision was made?

If the honest answer is "we only really know one of them" — that's worth sitting with.

The structural shift in enterprise buying over the past several years is real and underappreciated. Decisions that used to run through a single senior buyer now run through committees of six, eight, ten people — each with their own concerns, their own risk calculus, their own silent vote.

Your champion inside that account — however warm and committed they are — is one voice in a room full of voices you've never spoken to.

One champion is a hope. Five is a deal.

Committee Coverage is the third of the four pre-RFP moves we've been unpacking this week. The session replay is live and goes deep on all four:

https://avnirinsights.com/the-deals-decided-before-the-rfp

Happy weekend.

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Here's something we think about a lot heading into a weekend.Most of the deals your firm will win this fall are being sh...
06/12/2026

Here's something we think about a lot heading into a weekend.

Most of the deals your firm will win this fall are being shaped right now — in conversations that haven't been formally labeled as "business development" yet. A client thinking out loud over lunch. A senior leader working through a problem at a strategy offsite. An informal call that nobody put on a pipeline report.

The firms that get invited into those moments didn't earn access by being great at pitch meetings. They earned it months earlier — through the article they sent because it was genuinely useful, the introduction they made with no string attached, the honest opinion they offered when the easy thing was to stay neutral.

Small investments. Unscored. Compounded over time.

The first call — the one where the real conversation begins — is earned long before the deal is visible.

Credibility built before the meeting, not in it.

That's the foundation of Early Access. Have a great weekend — and if you missed Tuesday's session, the replay is worth your time before Monday.

https://avnirinsights.com/the-deals-decided-before-the-rfp

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Here's a question worth sitting with this morning.Think about your most important accounts right now — the ones where yo...
06/11/2026

Here's a question worth sitting with this morning.

Think about your most important accounts right now — the ones where you'd love to be the first call when a real opportunity opens up. What stage are you at with each of them?

There are four stages to being the firm that wins before the RFP drops: Trusted Advisor, Early Access, Problem Shaping, and Co-Creation.

Trusted Advisor is where most firms live. The client knows your work, respects your thinking, would take your call. That's the foundation — but it's not enough to win in a competitive process where someone else has been shaping the problem from the inside.

The firms that consistently win the deals that matter have climbed to Stage 3 or 4. They're in the room while the question is still being formed. They're helping articulate the problem before anyone writes a scope.

That's not luck. It's a deliberate climb — earned through the right conversations, at the right moments, with the right posture.

Whiteboard, not pitch.

We're unpacking this all week. Replay from Tuesday's session is live at the link below if you missed it.

https://avnirinsights.com/the-deals-decided-before-the-rfp

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Here's what stayed with us after yesterday.We asked the room to do a simple exercise: take your last three shortlist los...
06/10/2026

Here's what stayed with us after yesterday.

We asked the room to do a simple exercise: take your last three shortlist losses and mark on a timeline when you first heard about each one. Then honestly estimate when the firm that won probably first heard.

Most people went quiet.

Not because they didn't know the answer — but because they did.

Almost universally, the winning firm had been in the conversation earlier. Not because they were sharper. Not because their proposal was better. Because they were having informal conversations while everyone else was waiting for an RFP.

That's the whole shift. Five things the room discovered — and one of them lands hardest: the proposal is paperwork. The decision was made weeks before it was written.

If you were in the room yesterday — thank you. If you missed it, the replay is live and worth your hour.

https://avnirinsights.com/the-deals-decided-before-the-rfp

This week we start unpacking the four moves that change the timing.

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It's happening today.1:00 PM ET — we go live with "The Deals Decided Before the RFP."If you've been with us all month, t...
06/09/2026

It's happening today.

1:00 PM ET — we go live with "The Deals Decided Before the RFP."

If you've been with us all month, today is the payoff. We're taking the Hidden Deal Timeline from an idea to a playbook — four moves, real context, and a framework you can start applying to actual accounts this week.

And if you're joining for the first time: you don't need any background. Just come with an honest question about a deal you're watching — or one you lost and still don't fully understand why.

The deals you'll win next quarter are being decided right now, in informal conversations most firms aren't in yet. Today we talk about how to change that.

Join us: https://avnirinsights.com/the-deals-decided-before-the-rfp

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