The thing with business is that you try to make your client comfortable with you as a vendor and to get them on board with your plan.
Now if most clients would make rational decisions (based on cost, time, experience etc.) bribes and corruption would not exist but most clients make decisions based on feelings and emotions.
No one is going to read and compare all the specifications as the people deciding probably have no idea what it all means. The decisions are based on gut feelings about the company or person they're dealing with.
Not to mention most business comes from people that have been told by other people that you are doing a good job one way or another.
So when you sell a car or insurance packages or whatever, you give your client a free coffee, a bag of swag from the manufacturer and perhaps some flowers for the misses when the car is collected.
In other cases you might organize a fancy dinner to get your client comfortable to sign with you. I also know of a fancy space tech company that takes all their potential clients out to the golf course.
Now here we have companies with deals worth billions, that we know are not going to be closed based on rational decisions.
So yes, you find middle men who have the time to waste to talk to all the parties that have a say in this and get them on board.
And in some cases your middle men might go the extra mile to get a deal signed but on a multi-billion plane contract the $5 coffee becomes equally more expensive.
A guy in the oil and gas business told me that most deals were signed after visits to strip clubs and brothels.
I know a company in The Hague that has the perfect strategy to get the government pencil pushers over the finish line when a decision needs to be made.
What they do is simple. They write a very basic quote and when they're selected as a party of interest they send a Tesla to city hall or a department to pick them up as a 'service'.
The driver of course is sure to take the scenic route to the offices of the company.
He always plans these meetings at 4 in the afternoon because the working day for the pencil pushers ends at 5 and they don't do overtime.
It just puts him in a "Wow, these guys are really service oriented and nice" column that is hard to compete against and because they leave at 4 and tour the city with the Tesla for 30 minutes the pencil pusher feels kind of guilty he's late.
Of course the people at the company say that is absolutely no problem and that the driver will give them a lift home at 5.
After all this, how can the autisty pencil pusher not sign with these nice people?
And they do, about 90% of them, within 15 minutes. Even if they have lists of objections and questions with them. After all, dinner's getting cold
