The president of a certain company sent us a request for a quote on building a new website via the inquiry form on our site.
It was a new company we had never done business with before.
That part was fine, but here's what the email from the form said.

We are considering having a new website built (including smartphone support). We have requested quotes from several web production companies in the city.
(The client included the URL of a competitor's website.) Roughly how much would it cost to build a site about the same as this one?

In short, a very typical request for a quote.
So, as always, we:

※Reviewed the competitor's website the client had pointed us to
※Inferred what the client's (likely) purpose for the website was
※Identified the requirements needed to achieve that purpose
※Prepared materials that would make the necessary specifications easy to understand
※Prepared the quote needed for all of the above

Following that process, we put together our presentation and quote, made an appointment, and paid them a visit.

To be honest, I thought the chances of winning this job were low. The site we were told to use as a reference had few pages and was a simple one made up of only static pages (with no smartphone support), and on top of that, since it was a competitive bid, I figured it would be hard to match their budget.
That said, we never put together sloppy materials just because our chances are low, nor do we quote a lower-than-usual price just because it's a competitive bid.
We simply do what we always do.

And then, when we actually arrived at the client's office to give our presentation...

President: "Well, actually, I asked several companies for quotes, but yours was the only one that gave me one. I was at a loss!"

...Seriously?!

From what I heard, here's what happened.
"One company turned me down, saying 'We don't submit quotes for competitive bids.' The others didn't respond at all. You're the only one who came."
As a result, ours ended up being the only quote—leaving nothing more to be said.

Two things I realized from this experience

You might hear this story and think, "Is he bragging about his luck, or about how hard he works?" That's not what I'm getting at.
I felt there were two lessons here that we ourselves need to be careful about going forward.

The insight came when I asked myself: why were we the only ones who submitted a quote? Or rather, why couldn't the others submit one?

The mail form wasn't working. Or did they simply not notice the email from the form?

Not just for web production companies—what is the goal of a website in a B2B business? It's to receive a request for a quote through the inquiry form.
As an aside, the goal of an e-commerce site is orders, which tie directly to sales; that's a different matter. B2B sites are called lead generation sites (sites for acquiring prospects).
Most of the sites we build are lead generation sites, but whether the inquiry form is actually working properly is surprisingly easy to overlook.
Or perhaps the email did arrive and they simply missed it. After all, the emails that come through an inquiry form aren't just inquiries from prospects—if anything, there are (tiresomely) far more sales pitches.
There's no way for me to know why the other web production companies didn't respond, but it reminded me all over again that, at the very least, emails must never fail to arrive on our clients' websites.

"We turn down competitive bids"—is that really the way to go?

The other point is this: what to make of "We don't submit quotes for competitive bids"?
To avoid any misunderstanding, let me say up front that I have no intention of denying the stance of fellow companies that don't quote on competitive bids.
For a company that differentiates itself, some may feel that being lined up alongside others in a competitive bid lowers their branding and value, and I won't argue with that.

But if that isn't the reason—if they simply thought, "We're busy; we don't have time to bother with a competitive bid we may not even win"—then that's unfortunate.
At the very least, I believe we need to make improvements so that we never end up like that.

Right now, web production companies everywhere are busy. They may have their hands full just handling the jobs in front of them, and I can understand thinking that you can't spare time—wasted time—on a project you may not even win.
Because, to be honest, it's not as if I've never thought that way myself...
That's exactly why I realized I need to reflect on it.

Still, the fact is we're busy. I have no intention of preaching sheer willpower—"Face every prospect with grit and determination!"
What I realized is that we need to systematize our presentations and quotes.

This is probably true of the company that refused the competitive bid as well, but we create our presentation materials one project at a time.
There's nothing wrong with that in itself, but it takes far too much time.
However, when we took a close look, we found that presentations and quotes follow a handful of patterns, and that just by combining them we can produce 80% or more of the work.
On top of that, we figured it would make sense to focus our time on the remaining 20%.

We're always telling clients things like "Building a system for attracting customers is essential!"—rather high and mighty of us—so it made me reflect that this too is an important part of building a system...