Exercises in Wasting Time and Money, Part 1: Writing Proposals

We hate writing proposals as much as people hate reading them (subjective opinion here). But, even worse, we think anything more than a 1-page proposal is a waste; a waste of time, energy and trees. And we hate wasting time; both ours and our clients. So that got us to thinking...

What really matters in a proposal? What does a client need to know? And as a vendor, how do we protect ourselves so we don't end up working for pennies per hour? We concluded all these questions could be answered in a simple 1-page proposal which address the following points:

Project Timeline

When is is due? (And is it realistic?)

Scope of Work

How many pages? How many rounds of revisions?

Budget

One price based on value, not hours. Forget negotiating, it sends a message that the value of your work is open to debate. And forget about price ranges for services, this creates a relationship of distrust with the client.

Protection from Scope Creep*

What happens if the timeline grows or the project changes in scope? For example, the project goes from 1 month to 3 months, or from 10 pages to 30 pages, or mercy help us, both...We ask that the project can be reassessed should these changes occur. Its that simple. (And let's be honest, everyone knows when a project changes).

When you simplify your proposals, many problems just disappear. And this translates into big savings of time and money for everyone, most notably:

• Long proposal can cost thousands of dollars in time (which you then have to build into the proposal somehow in order to recoup the cost)

• No time-tracking means huge savings in employee and manager time (see our post on the Hourly Billing Paradox)

• Monitoring everyone's activity to make sure both client and the team complies with every detail of a long detailed proposal takes energy

All this adds up to critical time you can put toward doing the work you do best. For us, that means more time for creativity, learning or just going home at a normal time.

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* A critical point in this model is that we never agree to more work than we can handle (and we know pretty well what we can handle). And we advise clients as soon as we suspect the project is changing/growing so they can decide the best course of action.