For many enterprise organizations, there comes a moment of reckoning with seemingly unsuccessful vendors. Perhaps you're facing stagnant performance, ballooning license costs, or lackluster support. Maybe roadmap misalignment or frustrating delays have eroded confidence. At some point, your business stakeholders will seek solutions to these challenges, and in many cases, the idea of initiating the formal process of submitting RFPs will come up.

It's a strategic crossroads that can feel both empowering and precarious. The prospect of putting your vendor on notice can stir up visions of better pricing, faster support, and innovation gains. But the reality is often more nuanced.

It's worth considering what's really at stake before you disrupt your comp team, executive leadership, sales team, internal stakeholders, and vendor relationships with a formal Request for Proposal (RFP). Moreover, it's important to determine the most financially viable, cost-effective, and efficient solution to existing software vendor challenges.  

We've compiled field-tested insights from real enterprise clients and internal conversations with sales teams and service leaders. Here's what you need to know.

The Pros of Going to RFP

Leverage for Negotiation

The mere suggestion of submitting requests for proposals can be a wake-up call to your vendor. When a client signals they're going through the formal process of evaluating alternatives, it can suddenly unlock access to benefits that previously felt out of reach:

• Improved pricing structures or contractual terms
• Faster response times from customer service
• Dedicated bug resolution efforts
• Greater transparency into the product roadmap
• Executive-level attention from the vendor's leadership team

For instance, with sales performance management software in particular, some clients are surprised by how quickly things move once the threat of switching becomes real. Vendors understand that retaining a customer is cheaper than going head to head with other potential bidders to win a new one, and a credible RFP threat changes the math.

Even if you don't intend to follow through, an RFP conversation can serve as a forcing function. Just be aware of the potential long-term relationship consequences (more on that below).

Market Exploration

Sometimes the biggest benefit of an RFP isn't switching platforms—it's learning what's out there.

RFPs provide:

• Exposure to modern platforms with updated tech stacks
• New UI/UX paradigms that may ease adoption
• Access to niche capabilities or vertical-specific features to handle complex requirements

Even if you stay put, going through the RFP process can reframe your thinking, expose blind spots, and give your internal stakeholders vocabulary for evaluating your current solution. At a minimum, it sharpens your ability to challenge vendors to better meet your organizational goals.

Benchmarking Opportunity

An RFP can serve as an invaluable benchmarking tool.

It helps you:

• Evaluate if your current cost savings potential is in line with the market to maximize your financial health
• Compare capabilities and gaps against newer offerings from potential bidders
• Identify whether pain points are truly tech-related or due to poor configuration or weak governance

This process brings clarity. Maybe the platform isn't broken, maybe the way you're using it is. Or maybe your needs have evolved and your tech stack hasn't kept up. Seeking a new sales performance management software vendor may not be the best solution to your real tech challenges. In fact, it might not be a solution at all. If your poor vendor experience is a result of misconfigurations in your system, onboarding a new software solution might not solve these issues.

That said, the process of developing project requirements for submitting requests for proposals can shine a light on what's truly not working and what simply needs tuning.

The Cons of Going to RFP

High Switching Costs

Switching vendors in enterprise incentive compensation is not like switching email platforms. The complexity and institutional memory embedded in your current setup is massive.

What makes it painful?

• Custom rules, logic, and shadow systems developed over the years
• Historic payout data and transaction logs that need to be migrated
• Staff retraining and change management across comp admins, sales ops, and finance teams

This is not a lift-and-shift. It's a wholesale transformation of how your organization thinks about processes.

Implementation Risk

New vendors love to talk a good game. However, implementations are almost always more complex projects than the sales cycles or subject matter experts suggest.

It's not unusual for new platform rollouts to take 6–18 months. During that time, your team will be juggling old and new systems, battling unforeseen bugs, juggling dual payment terms, and managing stakeholder expectations.

And if your real problem is internal dysfunction—poor governance, disjointed workflows, or inconsistent data hygiene—then switching systems will only resurface those issues in new packaging. Consequently, the entire project may simply amount to added costs, with no realized gains.

Opportunity Cost

Even with competitive prices, going to RFP isn't free.

The process itself consumes:

• Executive and key stakeholder bandwidth
• Sales ops, IT, legal, and HR time evaluating unsuccessful vendor responses
• Strategic focus that internal stakeholders could spend elsewhere

Every hour you spend writing RFPs, evaluating demos, overseeing proposal revisions, and building migration plans is an hour not spent optimizing what you already own. Why spend two years jumping platforms when you could spend six months fixing the one you've got and still come out ahead?

Loss of Institutional Knowledge

Your current software system likely has:

• Internal Subject Matter Experts (SMEs) who understand its quirks
• Partner consultants with years of familiarity
• In-house automation and processes built around its data models

Switching platforms means starting over. Even if some team members stay, the user experience will shift, requiring retraining, rework, and re-trust-building with the new system.

Vendor Relationship Fallout

If you bluff your way through an RFP, only to stay put, be prepared for consequences. Vendors don't forget.

The goodwill, flexibility, and informal favors that came with a trusting relationship may dry up. Escalations may be met with a colder response. Future asks may come with stricter contractual terms.

If you're going to play the RFP card, make sure you're ready to back it up. It's all too easy to damage the working relationship with your service provider, just to get hit with overly costly or uncompetitive alternative vendor proposals.

Total Cost of Ownership May Be Higher

New vendors may look cheaper on your cost estimate, especially if you have multiple competitive proposals, but beware of hidden costs:

• Parallel operations during rollout
• Consulting fees for reimplementation
• Lost productivity as teams retrain
• Feature trade-offs if the new system lacks specific capabilities

Yes, upgrades sting, but they're still probably cheaper than switching preferred vendors.

Why Reevaluating Prospective Vendors Can Cost You

Strategic Advice: What to Do Instead of Going Straight to RFP

If you're frustrated with your vendor, there are smarter first steps to explore. These approaches can help you achieve better outcomes without the disruption, cost, and complexity of an RFP.

1. Executive Escalation

Don't underestimate the power of pressure from the top.

Before writing an RFP, elevate your concerns to your software vendor's executive leadership. Frame the conversation around strategic misalignment, unmet expectations, or declining customer service levels. When a senior stakeholder initiates the discussion, it signals urgency and can accelerate action.

An executive escalation can result in:

• Faster turnaround on open tickets or enhancement requests
• Reprioritization of your account on the vendor's roadmap
• Executive sponsorship that keeps a detailed description of your issues top of mind internally

If your relationship with your account team is strained, a reset at the executive level can reestablish trust and unlock new momentum.

2. Health Check Audit

Sometimes what feels like a platform problem is actually a configuration or process issue. That's where a health check can make all the difference.

Engage a trusted third-party partner, like a software implementation partner, to conduct a comprehensive audit of your current environment. Their job is to:

• Evaluate system health and performance
• Diagnose whether issues stem from platform limitations or poor implementation
• Provide an actionable roadmap to optimize your setup

This process gives you a neutral, expert perspective—and often, a prioritized list of low-hanging fruit that can deliver quick wins.

3. Hybrid Optimization

What if the answer isn't rip-and-replace, but refine and relaunch?

Hybrid optimization means staying with your current sales performance management software solution, but working with an expert team to refine your system based on more nuanced project requirements:

• Rebuild outdated comp logic
• Improve reporting and dashboard visibility
• Enhance performance through smart configuration changes
• Align workflows with your current business goals

These changes can feel like a new system, without the business challenge of migration. Better yet, they can be phased in with far less disruption.

A strategic partner can often uncover massive value hiding in plain sight. Clients who've done this are often surprised at how modern and performant their current system can be when tuned correctly to accommodate business goals.

4. Exhaust Internal Fixes First

Finally, take a hard look in the mirror.

Some of the most frustrating compensation problems don't originate with the platform—they start with internal misalignment.

Ask yourself:

• Are we clear on ownership and governance?
• Do we have well-defined processes and documentation?
• Are KPIs aligned across Sales Teams, Ops, and Finance?
• Is our data reliable and timely?

Switching systems won't fix a broken process. If your house is messy, a new vendor won't clean it for you. Invest in internal clarity before investing in external change.

Should You Initiate The Request For Proposal Process?

Going to RFP may feel like a bold leadership move—but it can also be a distraction. Following through on requests for quotation can be high risk. The evaluation process, encompassing your technical requirements, project budget, contract terms, project scope, as well as substantive investigation of qualified vendors, is time-consuming and costly, often with no guaranteed payoff.

If your goal is modernization, accuracy, and business impact, you may get there faster by optimizing what you already own, especially if you've underinvested in your current platform. While key stakeholders often opt to initiate requests for proposals rather than fixing what's broken, this may not yield the best project outcomes. Instead, the most effective and efficient time investment is often rooted in getting more value from existing tools. Rather than overhauling your entire process, you are doubling down on the progress you have already made with your existing digital tools. As a result, many organizations are able to get results faster and with less disruption, maximizing their long-term return on investment for their original purchasing decision.

The bottom line is you should explore your options. But don't ignore the potential already at your fingertips.

You might be sitting on more value than you think.