Sharing pricing information

[LSpark]

The company I work for used to provide engineering services to other companies as well as our own sites. For various reasons we are retracting back to supporting our own sites only, so the sites we used to support are looking for new providers.

A company I have dealings with are looking to fill a small part of the void left and have asked if I can give them any idea how to price their services. It relates to my speciality so obviously I have full breakdowns at my fingertips.

How much information would be ethical? None? Overall cost? An idea of mandays required? Full breakdown?

 

[loki3000]

<<we wouldn't be able to re-enter the market in our current form as no one would touch us with a barge pole!

what went wrong?

 

[LSpark]

Simply that we wouldn't be taken seriously, we've withdrawn our services once and would be seen at risk of doing it again. Our main purpose in life is to support our own sites so I guess it was a bit odd that we provided engineering support to our direct competitors.

I've avoided giving an answer and they haven't asked again. In fact I think they're trying to avoid me because I'm starting to loose patience waiting for some final drawings from them for some work completted in Sept!

 

[loki3000]

dont give anything to them (unless they offer you a job, then perhaps, but not actual data)

 

[casseopeia]

It's probably someone who has been put into the position of estimating fees and has no to little experience. Give the guy a blank spreadsheet and tell him your methodology, maybe even a few key tasks to include in the estimate. Then let him guess the hours for the tasks and multiply by their own billing rates. That way you respond to the request without really giving up proprietary information.

Sometimes you just have to jump in.

"Gorgeous hair is the best revenge." Ivana Trump

 

[zelgar]

Probably the only information that would be safe to give them is an itemized list of things you used to calculate your bid, but not the actual amt of units, unit costs, etc.