Getting a Second Opinion on a Quote

Why you want one

A proposal for something you buy once every four years is difficult to evaluate, because you have no basis for comparison and the language is unfamiliar.

You can tell whether you like the supplier. You cannot easily tell whether the approach is sound, whether anything important is missing, or whether the price reflects the work.

Somebody who does this regularly can tell you those things in half an hour.

That is a genuinely good idea, and the way it is usually done makes it unfair to at least one of the parties.

Do not ask a competitor to review it

The common approach and the one that produces bad information.

Sending a rival's proposal to another supplier and asking what they think puts them in an impossible position: an honest positive assessment costs them work, and criticism wins it.

Even a scrupulous person cannot separate their judgement from their interest, and most will find something concerning because something concerning can always be found.

It is also unfair to the supplier who produced the proposal, whose thinking and structure are being shown to a competitor without their knowledge.

If you want another price, ask openly for another quote. That is a normal thing to do and it does not involve showing anybody else's work.

Who to ask instead

• A consultant who advises rather than builds.
• A supplier in a related field who will not bid for this.
• Somebody in your own network who has bought similar work.
• An industry association or peer group.
• A technical person you already pay, such as an IT supplier.

The third is underused and frequently the best. Somebody who commissioned a comparable project two years ago knows what was missing from theirs, which is exactly the question you have.

Pay for the hour

The change that makes the answer honest and the request reasonable.

Asking a professional to review a proposal for free puts them in the position of doing unpaid work with an implied hope of winning something, which distorts the advice.

Paying for an hour removes that entirely. They are being engaged to give an opinion, they can be candid, and they can say the proposal looks sound without it costing them anything.

An hour of a competent person's time is a small fraction of the project and is the cheapest risk reduction available.

Say up front that you are paying and that you are not looking for an alternative quote, which frees them to answer the question you actually asked.

Ask about gaps, not price

The most useful reframing.

Whether a price is reasonable is a weak question, since it depends on the market, the supplier's costs, and what is included, none of which a reviewer knows.

Better questions have specific answers.

What is not in this proposal that you would expect to see. What would you want clarified before signing. What is the most likely way this goes wrong. Is anything here unusual, and if so why might that be. What would you ask them that I have not.

Those produce a list you can take back to the supplier, which is a productive outcome for everybody rather than a verdict.

A worked example

A firm was minded to accept a proposal and asked their IT supplier, who did not do web work, to spend an hour reviewing it for a fee.

He raised four things.

The proposal did not say who would hold the domain and hosting accounts.

There was no mention of what happened to existing page addresses on a rebuild.

The content responsibility was ambiguous, saying content migration without stating whether anything would be rewritten.

And there was no handover or training item.

None of that was a criticism of the supplier, who answered all four willingly and revised the proposal to include two of them at no cost.

The hour cost a modest fee and removed the two most likely sources of dispute from the project.

Tell the supplier

A point of straightforwardness that improves the outcome.

There is no reason to hide that you are having a proposal reviewed. It is ordinary practice for anything substantial and most suppliers expect it.

Saying so also lets them prepare, and a supplier who knows a technical person will read it tends to write it more carefully, which is to your benefit.

What matters is how you bring the findings back: as questions rather than as accusations, and in one consolidated list rather than as a series of challenges.

A supplier who responds well to four reasonable questions is telling you something useful about how the project will go, and one who becomes defensive is telling you something too.

What a review cannot tell you

Worth knowing so it is not overweighted.

Whether the supplier will deliver, which is a matter of references and track record rather than of the document.

Whether you will work well together, which is the largest factor in most small projects and cannot be assessed from a proposal.

And whether the price is right for your market, which a reviewer outside that market genuinely does not know.

A review checks the thinking and finds the gaps. It does not replace calling two of the supplier's previous clients, which remains the single most informative thing you can do and which almost nobody does.

The counter-case

Second opinions can be overused.

For a small engagement, the review costs a meaningful proportion of the project and delays it, which is not proportionate.

There is also a pattern where a buyer seeks opinions until somebody validates a decision they had already made, which wastes several people's time and produces nothing.

And an unlimited number of reviewers will produce an unlimited number of suggestions, since any proposal can be improved and nobody is short of ideas about somebody else's work.

One reviewer, one hour, one consolidated list of questions, and then a decision.

How to do it

1. Do not send it to anybody who might bid.
2. Choose somebody adjacent or somebody who has bought similar work.
3. Pay for an hour and say you are not seeking a quote.
4. Ask about gaps and risks, not price.
5. Tell the supplier you are having it reviewed.
6. Return one consolidated list of questions.
7. Call two references as well, which matters more.

Step seven is the item people skip in favour of the document review, and it is the one that predicts delivery.

Choosing the type of supplier is covered in hiring a freelancer instead of an agency.

Frequently asked questions

West Coast Media Solutions Inc. provides web design, web development, hosting, digital marketing, and business consulting to organisations across Canada, drawing on more than twenty-five years in the field.