"What's the difference between a $15,000 quote and an $8,000 quote?"
I was eleven years old when my dad asked me that question. We were getting the roof redone on our house and he had spent the better part of two weeks calling just about every local roofer in the area. I didn't have an answer.
He smiled. "Seven thousand dollars."
Same job. Same scope. Wildly different prices. And my dad knew exactly what the difference was because he had done the work before making his decision. He didn't call one roofer. He called ten. He more fully vetted three. He hired one.
By the end of the process he knew the market rate for the job, knew what questions to ask, knew where the pricing was inflated and where it was fair, and knew exactly what he was paying for and why. He didn't overpay because he didn't guess. He was a savvy buyer.
That lesson stuck with me. I have carried it into my coaching practice and shared it with every leader I work with who is about to make a significant purchasing decision. The process has a name: the 10>3>1 Rule.
What Is the 10>3>1 Rule
The 10>3>1 Rule is simple: talk to ten providers, more fully vet three, hire one.
It applies across purchasing decisions: service providers, vendors, consultants, fractional executives, software tools, coaches, agencies. Anywhere you are spending meaningful money on an outside resource, the 10>3>1 Rule applies.
The goal is not to create busywork or drag out a decision. The goal is to become a savvy buyer. A savvy buyer understands the market, knows what great looks like, and makes decisions with confidence rather than guesswork. They negotiate from a position of knowledge, not assumption. They don't overpay because they don't guess.
What the process teaches you goes well beyond price comparison. You learn what market pricing actually looks like and where the ranges are. You learn what is typically in and out of scope for a given type of engagement, and where providers can be flexible. You learn what separates a good provider from a great one. And you learn what questions you didn't know to ask before you started because by conversation five, you are already a sharper buyer than you were in conversation one.
The Three Stages
Stage 1: Talk to Ten
Cast a wide net. The goal at this stage is information, not selection.
Reach out to ten providers and ask consistent questions across all of them: pricing, timeline, scope, approach, and relevant experience. You are building a market map, not making a decision. Keep these conversations efficient at about twenty to thirty minutes each to gather what you need.
As you go, pay attention to more than the answers. Notice who asks good questions back. Notice who listens before they pitch. Notice who brings up considerations you hadn't thought of. The best providers are curious about your problem before they start talking about their solution.
By the time you finish Stage 1, you will have a clearer picture of the market than most buyers ever develop and a strong sense of who deserves a closer look.
Stage 2: Vet Three
Narrow your list to the three providers who stood out in Stage 1 and go significantly deeper.
Ask for references and case studies from clients similar to you. Ask how they handle it when a project goes off track. Get specific about what is in and out of scope. Pressure-test their relevant industry experience. Ask the questions that a surface-level conversation wouldn't surface.
This is where you find out who can actually deliver and who is selling something they can't back up. By the end of Stage 2 you should have a strong instinct about who the right choice is and the data to back that instinct up.
Stage 3: Hire One
Make the decision with full information and full confidence.
You know the market. You know the options. You know what you are paying for and why. You are not guessing, not hoping, and not overpaying because you didn't know what else was available. Negotiate from the position of someone who has done the work (because you have).
Ten Questions to Ask Every Provider You Vet
The questions below are a starting point. Every engagement will require contextualized questions specific to the work, but these ten apply broadly and will reveal more than most buyers think to ask.
- Have you worked with anyone similar to us in our industry before? Can you share specific examples?
- Can you share a list of testimonials or references from happy clients similar to us? Can I call them?
- Walk me through your typical scope of work for an engagement like this. What is included and what is not?
- What does your onboarding process look like and how long does it take before we see results?
- How do you handle it when a project goes off track or the work isn't meeting expectations?
- Who specifically will be doing the work? You or members of your team? If it's a team, can I meet them?
- What does success look like at 30, 60, and 90 days into our engagement?
- How do you price your work and where, if anywhere, is there flexibility in scope or cost?
- What do you need from us to do your best work? What does a great client look like to you?
- Why should we choose you over the other providers we are considering?
Two questions on this list deserve special attention.
Question 6 is one of the most commonly skipped and most important questions a buyer can ask - especially when working with agencies and consulting firms. The person selling the work is rarely the person doing it. Know who you are actually hiring before you sign anything.
Question 10 is intentionally direct. It puts mild pressure on the provider and reveals a great deal about how they think, how they communicate, and how confident they are in what they are offering. A provider who stumbles on this question is telling you something worth paying attention to.
What Happens When You Skip It
A few years ago I was brought in as an advisor to a startup founder. By the time I arrived, the founder was days away from signing a contract with a fractional CMO who had reached out to them cold via LinkedIn.
That was the first red flag. Experts who drive results typically grow through referrals and doing great work. Someone with genuine expertise rarely needs to cold pitch on LinkedIn. The founder had a gut feeling that something was off and was overriding it.
I asked if it would be helpful for me to do a quick vetting call before the contract was signed and the first payment went out. The founder said yes.
I opened the call by asking the fractional CMO what their marketing strategy was for my client's company.
Their response: "Who?"
They didn't know the company's name. The scope of work was blank. There was no relevant industry experience, no preparation, and no plan. What there was, was someone trying to hustle a startup founder who was too busy and too trusting to catch it before signing.
I professionally but directly told them we would not be moving forward. They folded immediately. The vetting call was the firing call.
The founder was embarrassed but relieved. They had felt something was wrong, but hadn't trusted their feelings enough to act. We aligned on the mistake we had avoided and how to avoid others like it moving forward. Thankfully, no contract was signed, no money was lost, and no time was wasted cleaning up a bad engagement. They left the conversation thankful rather than burned.
The 10>3>1 process would have surfaced these red flags before it ever got close to signing. The cold pitch, the blank scope, the inability to name the client they were supposedly ready to serve - all of it shows up when you do the work. None of it shows up when you don't.
Common Objections and Honest Responses
These are the three objections I hear most often when I introduce the 10>3>1 Rule to leaders and what I tell them.
"I don't have time." You don't have the time, budget, or energy to make a bad hire or a costly purchasing mistake. The prep work now prevents the headache or crisis later. My client's founder almost signed a contract with someone who didn't even know their company's name. Twenty minutes of vetting per conversation across ten providers is a small investment against that risk.
"I don't know enough about this category to evaluate ten providers." That's exactly why you should talk to ten. The process itself is how you learn what good looks like. You cannot evaluate what you don't understand and the only way to build that understanding quickly is to have the conversations. You will be a sharper buyer by conversation five than you were in conversation one.
"I don't want to waste vendors' time if I'm not serious about all ten." Vendors expect competition. A professional provider will not be offended by a discovery call as it is a normal and expected part of their business development process. The ones who push back on being evaluated alongside others may be telling you something worth hearing before you hire them.
How to Run the Process Well
The 10>3>1 Rule is simple in structure. A few habits make it more effective in practice.
Define what you are looking for before you start. Not in exhaustive detail, but enough to ask consistent questions and recognize a strong answer when you hear one. Use the same core questions with every provider in Stage 1 so you can compare responses across the same baseline. Take notes after every conversation while the details are fresh, not the night before you make the decision.
Don't let a strong first impression short-circuit the process. The best choice rarely comes from the first conversation, and a provider who wows you early may look different when you have nine other conversations to compare against. Trust the pattern that emerges across ten conversations more than the instinct from any single one.
Watch for red flags as signals, not noise. A cold pitch from someone claiming deep expertise. A vague scope of work. An inability to name references or relevant clients. A provider who can't clearly answer who will actually be doing the work. These are not minor details. They are the process doing exactly what it is designed to do: surfacing information you need before you commit.
And trust your gut, but verify it with the process. The founder in the fractional CMO story had a gut feeling and overrode it. The process would have confirmed what the gut already knew.
The $7,000 Question
My dad didn't overpay for that roof because he did the work before the decision. He spent two weeks making calls, asking questions, and building a picture of the market that most buyers never bother to develop. And at the end of it, he turned to his eleven-year-old son and asked a question that has stuck with me for decades.
The $7,000 question wasn't really about roofing. It was about what it costs to skip the process.
The 10>3>1 Rule will not make every purchasing decision easy. It will make every purchasing decision informed. And informed decisions made by leaders who understand the market are almost always better than the alternative.
The leaders who buy smart are not lucky. They are prepared.