To Propose or Not to Propose? Tips for Handling the RFP Process

credit: timparkinson on Flickr

Sorry if you’re a lovestruck freelancer, but this isn’t an article about proposing marriage.

Instead, it’s about handling requests for bids, proposals, quotes, or whatever you’d like to call them. Specifically, the ones that come your way by chance.

Handling the “Name Your Price” Callers

If you’re like most freelancers, you get phone calls from people wanting a quote for the type of work that you do. Quite often, these people are looking for prices over the phone. Do you give them out?

There’s a lot of freelancing business advice that goes like this: You shouldn’t give prices over the phone because you may be giving a price that doesn’t begin to cover what the job actually turns out to be. This advice makes a lot of sense because you need to spend time discussing what the prospective client hopes to achieve by hiring you.

So, it’s helpful to have a client questionnaire on your computer or by your phone so that you’ll be ready for the price-callers. For tips on how to construct one, read my FreelanceSwitch article on using a client questionnaire for your web design clients.

After you’ve gone through the questionnaire with your caller, you’ll have quite a bit of useful information. Tell the caller that you’ll use that information to create a proposal that’s customized for her project. Then get busy writing it.

Now, you may be dealing with people who don’t have time to go through a telephonic question-and-answer session. And they don’t want to wait for your proposal. They just want a price, and they want it now!

When this happens to me, I offer a range, say, between X and Y for a website development project, and the fee is based on the size and complexity of the project.

Quite often, the caller will say that my fee is way more than what he can afford. And that’s perfectly all right!

As Susan Johnston said in her previous article on how to handle clients, “Someone suggested using this statement: ‘I understand if professional freelance rates aren’t in your budget now, but please let me know if that changes.’”

Gee, I wish I knew who that Someone was, because he or she makes a lot of sense.

Got a Fee Schedule?

You might also hear from people wanting to know your fees, and not just for one project. While some freelancers post this information on their websites, others prefers to keep it offline and out of the hands of competitors.

Even if you don’t post fees on your site, you should still have a fee schedule that you can e-mail to prospective clients. Here’s how to put one together:

1. Identify the services that you offer – and what you would like to charge for them. To get an idea of the projects you’ve worked on, just take a look at your billings for the past year or so. Then ask yourself if you charged enough. I’ll bet that the answer is hearty “No!” If it is, I hereby grant you permission to raise your fees.
2. Create the document. In your word processing program, make a two-column layout. Put the services that you offer in the left column. If you’re a freelance editor, say something like this:WEBSITE COPYEDITING – Reviewing client-submitted copy, and checking punctuation, capitalization, hyphenation, margins, word spacing, etc. Making needed changes.And then in the right column, list a fee range. Keep doing this for all of the services you’d like to continue offering, and voila, you have a fee schedule.

The RFP Derby

RFP is business-speak for “Request for Proposal.” If you’ve been freelancing for more than five minutes, you’re going to have unsolicited RFPs coming to you via phone or e-mail.

Should you participate in RFP derbies? Only you can decide, but let’s take a quick look at the pros and cons.

Pros:

1. RFP projects, if you land them, can be quite lucrative.
2. If you’re the winning bidder, you may just get your foot in the door with a long-term client who pays quite well

Cons:

1. RFP projects may be too big to be handled by a single freelancer. So, unless you can form a project team quickly, you may be out of the running.
2. Proposals of this sort can be quite time-consuming to write. And, unless you have another source of income, you’re not getting paid for this writing adventure.
3. If there’s more than one bidder, the odds are against your getting the job. That’s why many freelancers don’t participate in RFP derbies, preferring to save their proposal-writing efforts for clients with whom they have a firm commitment to do business.

Which brings me to final point of this article: There is nothing wrong with writing a project proposal for a properly qualified sales prospect. And, true confession: I’ve found that when my proposal doesn’t win the job, it’s because I didn’t find out if my fee fit the prospect’s budget before I went into writing mode.

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