You Probably Picked Your Relocation Company Before The RFP Was Written.
Most HR teams run a formal tender process to choose a relocation partner. The evidence suggests the real decision usually gets made before that document is even sent.
Every relocation company hands out an RFP template. Nobody in this industry likes to ask the obvious follow up question: is that tender genuinely comparing providers, or just putting a formal shape around a decision you had already made.
The share of B2B buyers who say a peer’s experience shaped their choice of provider more than the formal evaluation did.
G2 B2B Buyer Behaviour Research, 2025
Nobody Checks If The Old Choice Still Fits
Mobility managers change jobs. When they do, they usually bring their trusted provider with them, and run a tender that quietly confirms a choice they had already made. This is not a bad habit unique to this industry. It is simply how most people buy.
- 90 percent of buyers say the relationship with a provider matters more to their final choice than the service offer or the price on the table.
- Most mobility programmes have no fixed point at which someone asks “is this still the right provider for us”, so the relationship just continues by default, good or not.
- More mobility teams are starting to lean on hard performance data instead of gut feel and familiarity, because familiarity has quietly run the show until now.
- The average global relocation costs around $78,500 per employee. That is a lot of money to keep spending on a provider nobody has properly checked in years.
Put A Date In The Diary To Check
Trusting your provider is not the problem. Never testing that trust against the alternatives is.
- Pick a fixed point, at least once every three years, to properly compare your provider against others, whether or not you think you need to.
- Hand that comparison to someone who does not hold the relationship, so old loyalty cannot quietly tip the scales.
- Ask your current provider straight out how they think they would fare in a genuine head to head. If they hesitate, that tells you something.
Trusting your provider is fine. Never once testing that trust is the real risk, and most mobility teams have nothing in place that forces the question to be asked.
Pinewood is happy to be put up against your current provider and let the comparison speak for itself, rather than relying on how long a relationship has run. Get in touch to put us head to head with who you use now.
