Bids
If you are going to ask for a business to provide you a price based upon specific requirements within a limited time and with a skeletal information structure, then provide them with action. When something is bid and the deadline comes and goes, award. Do not string people along on your intentions.
If you are shopping, make sure your intentions are know. Cash flow is more relevant during a period of slow activity. Businesses cannot afford to waste their cash and effort on unfunded intent. People are not relying on your money to make it day to day. People are relying on forecasting to spend money. If your information is bad, then their information is bad, and so on.
Marketplaces work on purchases, and not promises. If you have not secured your monies, then do not offer them up to others as work. All of the leveraged intent and promises of growth and return have provided a mentality that operates on just-in-time actions with the cost of services inflated to make up for poor planning and execution. Make an effort not to contribute to the problem in your own practices.
