[webproducers] Re: questions about proposals

Before you ask what to put in a proposal the first question you need to
ask is "what is the client looking for?"Of course it also depends on
your relationship with the client and how you draw a line between your
proposal and specification. 

The type of work you do should also determine the content of a proposal
- so a marketing driven e-mail campaign proposal would have very
different content (and selling points) from a database migration
project. 

I'm amazed by the wide range of RFPs that I have seen - from the very
well thought out to ones that had the wrong information. It's also
interesting to see the gap between the RFP and when you ask questions
of the client. I've seen very tight projects that start with a verbal
conversation and very poor projects that have a  detailed RFP.

When we don't get a job after doing a proposal I always make it my
business to find out why. In some cases I've been shocked to find the
answer was "we decided that we aren't doing the job." In some cases
it's a "magic word" (i.e. "the most important thing was experience with
this database which is just a small part of the project" or "we wanted
this industry buzz word"). Of course one could write a book on the
psychology of price. In fact sometimes it's not even the number of the
price, but how it's represented in the proposal. 

Another sad trend I've noticed is that many people just don't read! In
the end you may get the project based on your number or how pretty your
cover was. We kill ourselves to spell out what a project is in a
detailed specification and make wireframes only to find out later that
clients couldn't be bothered to take the time to read or click through
a few HTML pages. 

So I don't think there can be a "general rule" about what to put in a
proposal because clients don't follow a set mold. I often find that
different people within an organization can drive an RFP so a CTO may
care about the technology, a marketing person may care about what the
website is communicating while the CFO wants to know "what will it cost
and isn't it cheaper to do this in India or New Jersey?"

Michael

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