Why 'Could Be Sent to Up to 80 Companies' Is a Warning, Not a Feature

ESSA’s own tender form tells exhibitors upfront that their brief “could be sent to up to 80 companies matching your criteria.” Most exhibitors read that as reassurance, a wide net catching every possible fit. Most builders read it as a reason to skip the pitch entirely.

The real shortlist number isn’t 80

ESSA’s own members set the real rule, and it isn’t 80. The organisation states plainly that the majority of its members will not enter a final pitch process once more than five companies have been asked to compete for the same job. Builders will only commit design time to a pitch once they know exactly how many others are in it, and a shortlist in the double digits tells them the odds of winning don’t justify the hours.

What actually happens when a brief goes wide

An exhibitor who sends a brief to 80 companies isn’t getting 80 serious responses. They’re getting a handful of replies from builders willing to gamble on long odds, plus silence from everyone who does the maths and walks away. The exhibitor loses exactly the builders most likely to do strong work, because those are the ones with enough of a pipeline to be selective about which pitches they’ll actually resource.

This is why ESSA points exhibitors toward its members directory instead: browse profiles, pick five companies that genuinely fit the brief on size, budget and location, and approach them directly. A tighter list gets taken seriously by builders precisely because it signals the exhibitor has already done some filtering rather than outsourcing that work to whoever bothers to reply.

Where the introduction model fits

Stand Between exists in that same gap, working from the exhibitor side to put a shortlist in front of builders before a brief ever needs to go wide. An exhibitor gets matched with contractors who fit the job on size and budget, rather than being told to pick blind from a directory or accept whatever comes back from a mass tender. A builder gets a brief worth pitching for, from someone who has already been filtered rather than a name on a list of eighty.

If a stand is coming up and the brief hasn’t gone out yet, get in touch with Stand Between before it turns into a numbers game nobody wins. If you’re a builder tired of pitching into shortlists you can’t see the size of, the same applies: get in touch about joining the panel.