The number nobody spends enough time on
Price weighting is usually set by habit. Someone suggests 40% because that is what the last RFP used, nobody objects, and the evaluation criteria are signed off in the last five minutes of a kickoff call.
That number decides the award. Shift price weighting by fifteen points and a meaningful share of competitive evaluations change winner. Same bids, same scores, different supplier. If a single input is that sensitive, it deserves a real conversation rather than a default.
Start at 20-30%, then justify moving
For most competitive categories, price belongs somewhere between a fifth and a third of the total. Below that and you have stopped being accountable for cost. Above it and you have run an auction while telling everyone you ran an evaluation.
The guide sets out where to sit for five different category types. A commodity with a fixed specification and easy switching genuinely is a price decision, and weighting it at 50% is honest. A transformational engagement where you are buying a capability you do not have is the opposite case: cheap failure is the expensive option.
Weight cost, not price
These are not the same thing. Price is what appears on the bid. Cost is price plus implementation, transition, administration, risk and exit, and the gap between them routinely reverses the ranking.
Normalize the bids first, then score the normalized number. The bid comparison sheet in this kit does that work, and pairs with the evaluation scorecard.