Tips for Client Proposals
By Mitchell Harper
Introduction
In this article I'm going to provide you with some tips to ensure that your client proposals are streamlined and heavily stress the benefits that you can provide to your clients by offering Interspire products private labeled as your own.
The Proposal Wars -- What's Your USP?
Picture this: You're the owner of a small business. You've received 5 development proposals for your new web site. Each with the same spiel. Same price. Same timeframe. They all look and read the same. Ugh.
Because web development is such a highly competitive (although still fairly niche) market, you can't just slap together a proposal in 5 minutes and send it over to your potential client hoping to win the job. You need to differentiate your proposal from the 3, 10 or 53 others that your potential client will skim over when making their decision. You need a unique selling point, or USP for short.
What is a unique selling point, I hear you ask? Good question. Put simply, it's one reason why you do what you do better than your competitors. Read the previous line 5 times before you continue.
I was at a seminar last week and one of the speakers was Jack Cohen, the founder of Hungry Jacks (the Australian franchise of Burger King). When asked why Hungry Jacks was so successful, he proudly stated something along the lines of "it's because we flame grill our meat and don't fry it". That was his USP. The one thing that Hungry Jacks does to differentiate itself in the already over-crowded fast food industry.
Why flame grill meat instead of frying it? Taste, of course. We eat what tastes good, and flame grilled meat naturally tastes better than fried meat. When you think about it, most (if not all) of the worlds biggest companies have a USP -- that one reason for you to choose them over anyone else.
How can you make your proposal different? You could deliver a complete solution to your potential client in 24 hours instead of 3 weeks. That's different. There's your USP right there: time. Why, then, would the potential client choose you instead of the next guy? Because you can give them a solution quicker than anyone else in the game. Simple.
Time is one of the few commodities that you can't stop by a 7-11 to buy more of. And if you can save your potential client time, then you can also save yourself time. Ultimately that means you have more hours to get more jobs and make more money, which puts the dream of retiring at 40 just a little bit closer. Cool.
Now that we've established what your USP is going to be, let's see how you can communicate it in your proposals. But first, how can we help? Read on to find out...
Stop Re-Inventing the Wheel
Long before Interspire was born, we all either worked for a web development company or freelanced. As we went from job to job, it started to get frustrating building the same type of site, CMS or email solution over and over again. It was a case of re-inventing the wheel every time you took on a new client. Not the most productive way to spend a day.
To cut a long story short, we knew there had to be a better way. So we got busy. Busy coding for months on end. After 6 months our first product -- WebEdit Professional -- was born. It was private label, meaning that you could quickly change the product name, color and logo in the editor. Heck, if you wanted, you could even remove the link to our home page and link to yours instead.
What this meant is that we had a solution for most of our clients -- an online web site editor that we could private label with their corporate image in a very short period of time. We could also charge mega bucks for it because it appeared as if we'd labored for weeks with a team of programmers to build it just for them; when really, we built it for them and dozens of our other clients.
Today, we don't do web development any more. But as you probably know, we do have a range of fully private label solutions that we've developed to help web developers like you get more clients and reduce the amount of time it takes to implement, train and support those clients.
Pick Me, Pick Me!
Now. What to include in your proposal. Firstly, you want to get your client interested in actually reading your proposal. The trick is to answer one simple question for your client: "What's in it for me?". Well, here's a quick list of the benefits that you can offer your client by choosing Interspire products:
- Implementation in under 24 hours
- Product design identical to company image
- Detailed documentation
- Flexible "per user" licensing
- Extremely competitive pricing
Let me expand on each of these points.
- Implementation in under 24 hours
When you order one of our products, you receive it immediately. Put simply, that means you can get to work quicker. Installing our products on your clients web server is a simple process. First, you upload the files. Second, you run the installation wizard that takes care of building the database, private label options, etc. Thirdly, you present the user with documentation on how to use the program.
If you're familiar with the basics of uploading files via FTP and you already have your clients database details, then you can quite literally have them up and running -- complete with a private labeled interface -- in about an hour. Alternatively, we can even do the install for you free of charge.
- Product design identical to company image
All of our products are private label, meaning that you can easily change the product name, logo, colors and even layout quickly and easily. Most of our applications include a control panel where you can upload your own logo or stylesheet. Because of this, you can have any of our products match the look of your clients site within minutes.
- Detailed documentation
For those who are new to computers, even logging in can be a challenge. That's why all of our products include detailed end-user documentation that explains everything, including how to work with the product, etc. The documentation also includes screenshots.
- Flexible "per user" licensing
You have 3 clients now, but you may have 10, 50 or 500 in the next 6 months. For most of our products, you can upgrade your licenses as you go. For example, with SendStudio you can buy a base license, which includes 3 user accounts. Then, when you get more clients you can buy another 5 user licenses for just $49 (a once-off payment) and resell them for as much as you like.
- Extremely competitive pricing
All of our products take anywhere from 6 months to 18 months to develop. If you did the math on this at the typical rate of $40 per hour for development, then it would cost many, many thousands of dollars to develop similar products. However, because we offer competitive pricing, you can offer a completely personalized solution to your clients for a fraction of the cost of what it would cost any of your competitors to produce. In a much shorter time frame too.
Conclusion
Hopefully these tips have given you enough information to start writing your next client proposal. Combined with your existing client base and referrals, you should be able to generate a significant amount of new business and new revenue without too much work!
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8 Responses to "Tips for Client Proposals"
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said this on 12 Dec 2005 11:49:08 PM CST
Great info as always Mitch!
What do you say down there in Australia: "Good on ya mate!" Cheers |
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said this on 13 Dec 2005 11:25:54 PM CST
Very useful article. Thanks!
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said this on 15 Dec 2005 9:19:19 AM CST
Thanks, Mitch. This was a God-send. I've been putting together a bid for a site design with numerous CMS's involved, including many of your own, and this truly was a wake-up call. They've already signed on 100 to having me design it, and I'm already hosting them, but I'm just nervous as to the price they may have in mind.
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said this on 15 Dec 2005 12:10:42 PM CST
Great stuff as always guys, love your products and will continue to use them more each day. May I suggest that you guys get site center and web edit running better on Mac OSX browsers I am sure you are working on it, but that will surely make me a believer!! Thanks again!
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said this on 15 Dec 2005 12:43:41 PM CST
This is very informative.I'll apply this technique to my resume in marketing myself as i have just completed my degree, after all...a resume is like a proposal, they are marketing tools. Thank you.
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said this on 21 Dec 2005 9:14:49 AM CST
Hi Guys
I really like your products and articles but would love to be able to use them on Mac OSX platforms. This would mean I could offer a whole suite of extra solutions to my clients. [Editors note: ArticleLive, ActiveKB, SendStudio and TrackPoint all work on Mac OSX platforms using the FireFox browser. DevEdit NX, SiteCenter NX and WebEdit NX will also be FireFox compatible, due out early next year meaning our entire product suite will be Mac OSX compatible] |
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said this on 06 Feb 2006 7:00:42 PM CST
Great article. Keep writing mate!
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said this on 07 Mar 2006 10:12:23 AM CST
Great article- I'm just now spreading my wings with my own design firm and I now have a YES when clients want to maintain their own updates with ease.
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