Signed on 8 March, three weeks before the insurance deadline, at $196,800 in year one against a competitor quoting roughly 18% lower per seat. The larger competing MSP lost on two things: they never spoke to Dave, and their proposal had no exclusions section at all — which Kestrel's lawyer flagged as the riskier document.

Three lessons worth more than the deal

• The number that won it came from a throwaway question. $51,500 of billable leakage wasn't in any budget, wasn't in the RFP‑style brief, and wasn't something Meredith knew. It came from asking an engineer who he calls when his laptop breaks. Discovery is not a form.
• The blocker became the champion, and that was the whole deal. Dave could not approve anything and could have killed everything. The hour spent understanding what he was actually afraid of was worth more than every hour of solution design.
• Being more expensive is survivable; being vague is not. They won at 18% above the competing quote because every line traced to something the client had said, the arithmetic was shown rather than asserted, and the exclusions were written down. Precision beat price.