Why price wins when you let it
Price arrives as a single number, in the same unit, from every supplier. Everything else arrives as prose. Faced with four quotes and four differently structured proposals, most buyers do the only comparison the data supports, then justify it afterwards. The fix is not to ignore price — it is to make the other criteria as comparable as price already is.
Pick five to seven criteria, no more
A comparison with fifteen criteria is a comparison with no criteria: the weights get so thin that nothing moves the total. Choose the handful that would genuinely change your decision.
| Criterion | What you are judging | Weight |
|---|---|---|
| Fit to specification | How completely the offer meets the must-haves, and how it handles the would-likes. | 25% |
| Total cost of ownership | Lifetime cost, not the quoted unit price. See the next guide. | 25% |
| Support and service | Response times, spares availability, where the engineers actually are. | 15% |
| Delivery and lead time | Realistic dates, stock position, what happens if they slip. | 15% |
| Track record | Comparable installations, references you can call, years in the category. | 10% |
| Commercial terms | Warranty, payment terms, contract length, exit conditions. | 10% |
Discipline that makes it work
Set the weights before you see the quotes, and write them down. Weights chosen after the fact are not a decision framework; they are a justification for a decision already made.
Score honestly, in a defined range
Score each criterion 1 to 5, with the meaning of each point written out before you start: 5 exceeds the requirement, 4 meets it comfortably, 3 meets it, 2 partially meets it, 1 does not. Multiply by the weight, total the column. The arithmetic is trivial; the definitions are what stop the exercise drifting.
Two habits keep the scores useful. Score each criterion across all suppliers before moving to the next one, so you are comparing like with like rather than forming an overall impression of each vendor in turn. And have a second person score independently — where you disagree by two points or more, one of you has information the other does not, and that conversation is often where the decision is actually made.
Turning price into a score
Do not let price sit outside the model as a tie-breaker. Convert it: give the lowest lifetime cost a 5, and score the others proportionally against it. A quote 15% above the lowest scores around 4.25. This keeps price influential without letting it dominate, and it prevents the common failure where a scorecard is built, ignored, and the cheapest option bought anyway.
References: ask better questions
Every supplier will give you three delighted customers. The value is not in whether the reference is positive — it will be — but in the specifics you can extract:
- “What went wrong, and how did they handle it?” Every deployment has a problem. A reference who cannot name one has not used the product much.
- “How long from order to working?” Compare it against the lead time you were quoted.
- “What do you wish you had specified differently?” This frequently improves your own specification for free.
- “Who do you call when it breaks, and how long until someone useful answers?”
- “Would you buy from them again at the same price?” The qualifier is the part that produces an honest answer.
Ask for a reference in your own sector and at roughly your own size. A supplier excellent at serving national accounts may have no mechanism at all for a twelve-unit customer.
Four things that skew the result
- The incumbent's discount. A supplier who suddenly finds 20% when challenged has been overcharging you. Score the new price, but note what it tells you about the relationship.
- The impressive demonstration. Demos are run on curated data by the person who built the product. Insist on seeing your own scenario, or discount what you saw.
- The unpriced extra. One supplier includes installation and training; another quotes them separately. Normalise before scoring, or you are comparing two different purchases.
- Whoever answered fastest. Responsiveness during a sale is weak evidence of responsiveness after one. Ask the references instead.
On shortlist size
Three to five quotes is the useful range. Two gives you no market picture; eight wastes suppliers' time, and the good ones learn to deprioritise buyers who habitually invite the whole market to compete for nothing.
Tell the losers why
A short, honest note to the unsuccessful suppliers costs you five minutes and buys real goodwill for the next round. Say where they placed and on which criterion they fell short. You will get sharper responses next time, and occasionally a supplier will come back with something that changes the picture entirely.
Next
Your comparison is only as good as the cost figure inside it, which is why total cost of ownership is the next guide. If the spec behind the comparison still feels loose, go back to writing a requirements spec before you request quotes. And when the scores are close, a pilot settles it better than another meeting.