Every large company has a Purchase Department through which all orders it places must pass. If managed well, this is a good thing for the large company. It has a bunch of people who, in theory, are always on the lookout for efficiencies in purchases - leveraging purchases across departments, finding products or services of lower cost and ensuring that someone in the Materials Dept is not favoring his brother-in-law against a lower-cost supplier. For the vendor to the large company, this translates to the grim fact that the purchase guy exists for the sole purpose of driving your quote down. He will point out deficiencies in your offering. He will compare you against larger vendors who have efficiencies of scale. He will inform you of competing quotes that are much lower than yours. He will hint at a continuous stream of orders in the future if you manage to sell this one at a discount. And so on. I am not trying to say that the Purchase Guy is Evil. On the contrary, I know of instances...