 In adopting the term to Industrial Marketing it means those bids being submitted that have no chance of winning but are involved to make up the numbers (you can't have only one bid in a "competitive" tender process; that wouldn't satisfy the requirements of probity) (for example in government tenders, or for private enterprise the requirement to "truly test the market" and to "keep them honest").The reader might be wondering why anybody would go to all of the work of submitting a tender when they had no chance of winning; for the same reason that troops were sent into battle to die; they thought they had a real chance.In industrial marketing personal selling is still very effective because many products must be customized to suit the requirements of the individual customer.