What's the deal with Large Deals?

My company is one of the "hungriest" companies in the Industry and as part of company of Integrated Service Delivery strategy, we end up participating in vendor selection process for very large outsourcing deals. RFP response is one of my job responsibilities too and I have been in few large deals in the Media & Entertainment domain myself (apart from the normal small RFPs). In my opinion, responding to a large RFP (>$25 Million) is one experience every Pre-Sales/BD guy must have, especially deals managed by outsourcing advisories like TPI & Everest.

The importance of these outsourcing advisories is more in case of companies going for outsourcing for the first time and in case of outsourcing of entire "Application, Development & Maintenance" work. An advisory, when contracted by companies intending to outsource analyze the client requirements and invite a selected list of vendors to take part in the bidding process. Therefore, it becomes really important to be in "Approved" vendors list of these advisories, particularly for the Indian Big Five (and even some of the mid-sized players) - because none of them really has a "real" differentiated offering. How to map these advisories? I found the following interesting answer posted by a gentleman called "Mark Wiggins" on LinkedIn answers:

If were an IT Services firm trying to capture influence, then I'd be looking at:

1. Whether the parent companies of these firms publish related syndicated research - if so, you can bet that the subsidiary draws upon this as a knowledge resource when advising clients;
2. Balanced scoreboard, Vendor Evaluation criteria, TCO and ROI analysis white papers etc - whether there is an opportunity for vendor neutral analysis from the consultants with IT Services companies to place this material on Orbys, TPI etc websites?;
3. Conferences/Events - are these firms interested in showcasing their credentials at a vendor user conference or forum that that the IT Services companies are sponsoring? Conversely, what are the principal events where Orbys, TPI speak - network direct and engage with them at these events;
4. Engage them as a client (if possible) on Win/Loss analysis, RFI/RFP rsponse preparation or bid situations where they are not involved on the client side?;
5. Track down former employees of these firms via LinkedIn and put this question to them?;
6. Find out what Industry Associations and neutral online networking educational forums their principals participate in and engage with them there?;
7. Examine the next level of association of such firms - analyst firms (as mentioned above), journalists, freelance consultants, alumni, industry associations, business associations, Big 4 firms, vendors etc for common links.

Really interesting stuff, great job Mr. Wiggins.

Cheers!

Anurag