Anecdotally, from the inside of some larger organizations I've never seen a request for such leeway from a smaller company used legitimately.
It has either been simple ego or a sort of test to gauge just how far the small company is willing to compromise itself.
>"The small company marshals all its resources to create a detailed proposal (requirements, SWOT, etc.) which, when completed, ends up as an RFP that goes out to a dozen vendors, or maybe just to threaten their existing vendor with some fake competition."
Yep, this is Procurement 101. I've seen folks who are too lazy to bother doing a cursory search and replace to clean up the vendor name and logos.
I wonder if there is a way to create standard documents like PDFs and Powerpoints that phone home quietly so you know when the document has been altered for reuse as an RFP.
There should be some technological way to determine if your copyrighted work is being used honestly.
I think the point made above was that you shouldn't care if they use your proposal/design as an RFP because you ALREADY billed them for just the proposal/design.
When I worked as a consultant doing software customisations, they were always done in (at least) two statges. Proposal and design work was a separate contract from implementation. It was made clear to the client they could go elsewhere for implementation. They rarely did.
It has either been simple ego or a sort of test to gauge just how far the small company is willing to compromise itself.
>"The small company marshals all its resources to create a detailed proposal (requirements, SWOT, etc.) which, when completed, ends up as an RFP that goes out to a dozen vendors, or maybe just to threaten their existing vendor with some fake competition."
Yep, this is Procurement 101. I've seen folks who are too lazy to bother doing a cursory search and replace to clean up the vendor name and logos.