The best deals aren't won. They're co-created — quietly, deliberately, in the sixty days before procurement is ever in the room.
You went in strong. You just went in late.
There's a sentence we keep hearing — usually quietly, usually a few drinks in — from partners and principals whose firms are doing well by every measurable standard. The shape is the same every time: "We made the shortlist. We made the final round. We had the better team and the sharper pitch. And we still didn't win."
For most consulting and search firms, that pattern repeats two, three, four times a year. The post-mortems all conclude the same thing — we should have presented differently, priced differently, known the buying committee better. Almost none of those post-mortems land on the actual answer. By the time you saw the RFP, the deal was already over. Someone else had been in the room for sixty days, helping the client shape the very document you were now responding to. You didn't lose in the proposal. You lost the September before procurement called you in March.
Here's how a deal actually gets decided — and where most firms enter:
- Day −90 (3 months out): The problem becomes visible inside the client. Senior leadership starts naming it. Informal advisors get pulled in over coffee, on calls, in the hallway after the board meeting. This is where the firm that wins gets invited.
- Day −60 (2 months out): The scope gets quietly shaped. The "ideal partner" profile gets drafted using language from those early conversations. The advisor in the room is now influencing the document you'll eventually respond to.
- Day −30 (1 month out): The RFP gets drafted, procurement gets briefed, the doc takes its final shape. The buying committee has mostly converged on one or two preferred firms. The remaining shortlist exists to satisfy procurement — not to choose the firm.
- Day 0 (RFP drops): Most firms enter here. You can write a better proposal than anyone in the field. It won't change the outcome. The decision is already three months old.
The best deals aren't won. They're co-created — quietly, deliberately, before procurement is in the room.
Decision-by-committee buying is eating your win rate — and almost nobody is naming it.
Five years ago, a senior buyer could call you in, decide the engagement was a fit, and move it forward themselves. That buyer doesn't exist anymore. They've been replaced by a buying committee of seven to twelve people — finance, ops, legal, the line-of-business owner, in-house counsel, procurement, and sometimes a board observer.
By the time that committee writes the RFP, the conversation has already happened. The shape of the scope, the budget framing, the "ideal partner" profile — all of it has been quietly influenced by whoever was talking to two or three of those people sixty days earlier. The RFP isn't a neutral document. It's a record of conversations you weren't in. Which is why firms still trying to win at the response stage feel like they're working harder for the same shortlist and worse outcomes. They are. The structural fix isn't a better proposal. It's being a different kind of firm sixty days earlier.
What most firms do is respond harder to the RFP — write a better proposal for a deal already decided, then wonder why the win rate is dropping. What wins is being in the conversation that shapes the RFP. By the time the document is drafted, the answer is you. The proposal is paperwork.
What relationship-rich firms do in the sixty days before anyone calls it a deal.
These aren't four tactics. They're four interlocking moves — each one earning the right to make the next. We'll go deep on every one of them on June 9.
01 — Co-Creation. Help the client shape the problem before the scope is locked. Whiteboard, not pitch. The firms that get pulled into the framing get the deal. By the time procurement writes the doc, the scope is already in your language.
02 — Early Access. Be in the informal conversations sixty to ninety days before any formal process. Strategy offsites. Operating-plan reviews. The hallway after the board meeting. Where the question is still being formed — not where the answer is being solicited.
03 — Committee Coverage. Single-threaded relationships die in committee buying. Map the seven to twelve people who will actually vote, and build legitimate relationships across the spread. One champion is a hope. Five is a deal.
04 — Pre-Trust. Credibility built before the meeting, not in it. The article you sent two months ago. The intro you made without keeping score. The honest dissent you offered when nobody else would. By the time the formal process begins, the trust question is already answered.
Tuesday. 1pm Eastern. The whole moat — live.
On June 9 we're running the full session for consulting and search principals who are tired of going in cold while their competitors go in warm. David Nour will walk through each of the four moves above with the receipts — what relationship-rich firms actually do in those sixty days, what it costs to skip the work, and what changes about your pipeline when you don't. If you've been losing the deals you should have won, this is the session. Come with a deal in mind. Leave with a plan for the next one.
Sit With This
A ten-minute exercise that will make June 9 land twice as hard. Pick the last three competitive deals you lost — the ones where you made the shortlist but didn't win. For each: write the date you first heard about the opportunity; write the date the winning firm first heard (the honest one, not the polite one); then compare the dates. That gap is the diagnosis. Bring it to June 9. If you can't find a single deal where you heard first, that's the topic of the session.
Featured Session — LinkedIn Live
The Deals Decided Before the RFP · Tuesday, June 9 · 1:00 PM EST · LinkedIn Live
A live session for consulting and search principals tired of losing deals they should have won. Bring a deal. Leave with a plan for the next one. Inside the session: why decision-by-committee buying is structurally eating your win rate and the move that beats trying harder on the proposal; the four pre-RFP moves — co-creation, early access, committee coverage, pre-trust — in working detail with real receipts; and how to operationalize the sixty-day window across your firm, not just inside one rainmaker's head.
From the Archive
The Value You're Not Seeing · LinkedIn Live with David Nour
June's session assumes you can already read your relationship ledger. If May didn't reach you, this is the foundation — forty minutes on deposits, withdrawals, multipliers, and what relationship-rich actually means. Watch it before Tuesday.
See What We're Building
AVNIR · Relationship Intelligence Layer
The four moves above aren't hard to understand. They're hard to operationalize across a firm where the relationships live in twelve people's heads. AVNIR surfaces which accounts are quietly approaching their pre-RFP window, who on your team already knows the buying committee, and which warm paths are sitting in your own inboxes and calendars unused. Not another CRM. Not another contact list. The system that makes early-access work survive a busy quarter.
Save the Date: Relationship Economics® Summit 2026
October 12–14, 2026 · Pursell Farms, AL · 5th Anniversary
Five years in, RES remains the room where the most intentional leaders choose to invest their time — not a conference, not a networking event. The centerpiece this year is Lead NXT, an immersive leadership development journey for the high-potential leaders your firm is preparing to promote, and for the senior executives ready to invest in the next generation.
Register or Nominate → · Sponsor Inquiry →
The deals you'll win next quarter are being decided right now. Somewhere in your market today, a buying committee is having the first informal conversation about a problem that will become an RFP in September. Someone is going to be in that conversation. The question is whether it's you. Bring the three dates. We'll see you Tuesday.
— Nour + the AVNIR Team
See your network. Win your market.