 is that we're not in the business of making proposals. We're not getting paid to make proposals. And so often within the creative world, we just sit there and make a bunch of proposals that maybe things don't happen. What's up everyone? So last night we had a live group call and we had a special guest speaker for our call. Her name is Lauren. She just came in and dropped some gems in this call. So I wanted to go ahead and show you our call. This is a call that we have for our Facebook group Building Businesses with Elementor. And Lauren, she is an extremely talented designer and she has built and runs a very successful design agency. She's somebody that I've learned a lot from. She really helped me out in the beginning of my web design career. And I still learn a lot from. In fact, this call last night, I learned quite a bit from this. I hope you do too. I'm sure you're gonna find a lot of value in this. So let's go check it out. Yeah, I've been doing web design and development for 12, 13 years. Done everything that you could possibly do wrong. I've done it and really it was the past couple of years that I started figuring some things out. And I wanted to share today with all y'all here, just kind of some of the things that I've learned in landing bigger and better clients. And one of those pieces for winning the client is the proposal. And something that I was gonna say something about the clients. Oh, I did a business boot camp when about two years ago. And one of the things that I had a limiting belief on was sales. I did not believe that I could sell. I started an agency and I was not sure how I was going to connect with clients to actually make them feel good and make them feel like they could trust me and basically give me money. And so this is my journey through learning how to land some of my dream clients in the past six months or so. So to start, if you haven't read it, read it. If you wanna upgrade your business for a solopreneur or as an agency owner, this book is one that will, I believe change your life and change your business. It's called The Win Without Pitching Manifesto by Blair Ends. And it's basically looking at how we can win projects by being consultants instead of just being expert salespeople. One thing that he does talk a lot about is that we're not in the business of making proposals. We're not getting paid to make proposals. And so often within the creative world, we just sit there and make a bunch of proposals that maybe things don't happen. So there are a lot of aspects within this book. He has 12 statements. Honestly, go out, find the ebook version, whatever it is, I highly recommend getting this book. And what I'm actually gonna be doing is I'm going to be looking at a couple of his principles before we even get into talking about proposals. And this was a nice quote that I try to focus my everything around the way that I talk with clients as well as the proposal that I send that selling is done properly has nothing to do with persuading. We're not, sorry, I'll read it correctly. It is not our job to talk people into things. We're just here, you know, depending on how you run your business, the way I like to run my business is I'm just here to be of service. If it's not a good fit, it's not a good fit. And, you know, I'm not gonna try to talk anyone into that. So my process for getting that first check, you know, it always starts with marketing, starts with some kind of word of mouth, some networking, content marketing, whatever that might be. And that will lead to that contact. Usually it's through an email. I have flip-flopped on this one. Sometimes I do it, sometimes I don't. Sometimes people discover, you know, if it's a good fit just through a contact form, but I have started again sending a capability stack. And what this is is it's just a PDF where it has kind of what we do and it has some pricing involved in it. The reason for that is you don't wanna spend all this time to jump on a phone call with someone who only has $100. It's a waste of time. So, you know, weeding those people out early will help save you more time in the long run. So then I'll go through an introduction and we will have a phone call to discuss their challenges and their goals. And only after that, then I will send proposal. I know Jeff was talking earlier and we talked through it a little bit about RFPs. I avoid RFPs as much as possible because a lot of times it's just you responding to that request without actually going through any of these contacts, these phone calls, these introductions to see if it's a good fit to begin with. And then once I send that proposal, I'll check in. If they told me a date, I will usually ask, you know, when are you making a decision? And then I'll check in around that time. And then if they haven't made a decision, I'll keep checking in. But what I wanna focus on today, like I mentioned is really that first introduction phone call as well as the proposal itself. And it all starts with a conversation. So these are some rules from the win without pitching manifesto. And this is, you know, I call it the diagnostics call, it could be introduction call, it doesn't really matter. Basically, before I accept any project period, I have to get on the phone with them preferably with the Zoom video to see them kind of face to face and talk to them for 30 minutes. One reason for this is that you can usually tell you can start picking up if they're gonna be a good client. Likewise, it creates a lot of trust. It builds your reputation a little bit more and it's just much more professional. The second reason is kind of, Seline O'Dell one, but it's also, there's a lot of scammers out there and I've had scammers pretend to schedule calls and then they have some kind of excuse and they never follow through with it. So it's a good way to protect yourself and to become a better salesperson as time goes on. So the first rule, there's 12 rules in win without pitching. And it's all usually like we will or we will not statements. The first one that he has is, we will replace presentations with conversations. And I know that this totally negates my whole proposal chat of creating proposals that win you clients. That is true and the proposal is really the cherry on top, but really the meat of landing the client will come through the phone call. This is where you will see if you're a good fit. This is where you will build trust and it's where you will actually save yourself a lot of time when it comes to the proposal phase. We will do with words, what we used to do on paper. He makes a good point of closing the deal does not just happen on paper, which I think is why RFPs are so hit and miss. It happens during that conversation. So it's really, if you get nothing from this call today, I hope you remember again and again and again, the relationship with the client is what wins you the projects. It's the proposal again is just that little bonus. We will be selective. So I've been seeing a lot of this within the group of trying to learn kind of who is a good client and who is not. And I'm still trying to work on myself with this as well because you get presented with money and you own money and you kind of, and at least for me, I chase it. I think sometimes I chase it when it's not a good client. There are clients that will cost us our time, our energy, our mental health. And sometimes if it's a really bad project it will cost us money in the long run. We will actually be making no money or we will be losing money. So not every project is something that you should chase. There are clients that you have to say no to. In the book, he makes a good point is that we don't lose clients by saying no. We gain the opportunity to be closer to the right ones. It's very difficult. It's very a good way to evolve your business which this could be a whole chat within itself by knowing what your MLE is, by knowing what kind of clients you do and don't like to work with and allowing them as well to not wanna work with you then that's okay too. We will diagnose before we prescribe. Now if you read anything from Blair Ends or even Chris Doe this is a huge, huge thing that they stand by. And this is basically, I'm guilty of using WebMD and going to the doctor and saying, I think it's this but typically we go to the doctor for the doctor to listen with what all of our symptoms are and then they will prescribe to us the medicine if they're a good doctor. Likewise, when the client comes to us a better way to take the relationship, the call is to not necessarily let them come with the solution. If they come and say, I need a three-page website and I need it to do this. You can just build that but you are an order taker at that point. Typically the way that I shift it within these kind of conversations is okay, you could be right. You could need a three-page website but let's talk about your challenges first. Let's talk about your goals. What are you actually trying to accomplish? What business problems are you having that you think this website will solve? I have had a client in the past where we did, this was eight years ago, I did exactly what their bullet points were. It was X, Y and Z, done, here's your website and then they came back and they were really upset because they're like, this isn't solving our problem. I said, well, what's the problem? And what happened was I delivered exactly what they needed but what they needed was not actually what their business needed to succeed. So being able to spend that 30 minutes together to actually diagnose what their problem is and figure out if a website or maybe an Instagram store or maybe it's not WordPress, maybe it's shopping. There's so many different ways that we can support the client without just jumping in and doing that solution for them. We will address issues of money early. This one I had to actually role play with friends and family of I had to practicing money. This project is gonna cost this much money and then the people role playing with me would have to get angry or be like, what? Cause that was my fear. I did not like talking about money early on in the discussion. It's so much more comfortable just to put the money in the proposal and send it to them and not have that conversation. It's also a waste of time. If the project is gonna take $10,000 and the client only has 1,000, you gotta figure that out in that first 20 minutes of that phone call because each proposal can take hours. And if it just comes down to that then that's hours lost. Another thing that is important to talk about money early on is talking about the scope. So once you understand, okay, so you have these problems, I think this might be a good solution. A solution like this could cost from this to this price is the something you can do. When the client says like, no, that budget is too high. Oh my gosh, I can't afford that. Okay, so maybe you don't need a full custom e-commerce. Maybe we just put it on like Facebook's marketplace or something and that will make the budget half. Is that something you can do? Oh yes, that's much closer to my budget. So there are a lot of ways that you can talk through the scope of work and how much that's gonna cost before ever getting to the proposal. Blarance has one quote where there's a rule of money. Those who cannot talk about it do not make it, which is brutal. Finally, we will get a verbal commitment. And basically you can just say after this call, I can make a proposal. Is that something you wanna move forward with? It's very, very easy for people to say no when they're not on the phone with you. Like no, I don't wanna do this project. So it's important to take that time and just be like, hey, do you wanna move forward? Because if no, then I can put you in contact with other people or I know freelancers or whatever that is and you don't have to waste your time going through and making that proposal. If they say yes though, then that's when you can get started. Another quote from Blarance is we will see ourselves as professional practitioners who bring real solutions to our clients' business problems. We will seek respect above money for only when we are respected as experts, we will get paid the money we seek. And I thought that was a very mature way of looking at it that we are a business partner with our clients. They're hiring us as experts in our field and we are coming in where we respect them for them knowing their industry, their product, their own clients, their own customers, but also that we are respected as well. And respect does end up being more important than money most often. So now that you've established that relationship, you've built that trust and you've presented yourself as an expert and you talked about money, you made sure that they have a budget and you have a good idea of what you're trying to accomplish then you can actually take the time and make that proposal. So that's what we feel like I'm blasting through this but that usually happens. So making the proposal. My basic tips is create a template you can reuse, just period, don't waste time redoing something when you can make it once. Oh my goodness, always, always, always, always, always spell check and proofread. You are proving to them in a written form that you are professional. If you misspell their name, if you misspell their brand's name, if you have typos in the proposal, it comes off as unprofessional. So just always make sure to run a spell check before you send anything and to triple check that their name and their company name is correct. Another great tip is designing your proposal to match your brand. And this is where you can start to show off, your competency, your skills, your attention to detail, because they are trusting you with their money. The proposal is the way that you show them, I heard you and here's what I can do for you. Check out this thing that I spent time for you and it's complete that it's spelled correctly and it's beautiful and I will do that for you as well. And then the last one, I used to do this, I used to treat the proposal as the contract, it is not the contract. It is not the contract, it is just a proposal just to get them in the door. Once they have decided to go with you, then you'll put together the contract and typically the contract will have those legal terms and it will also have, it should have a good scope of work. But for the sake of the proposal, we're just creating a conversation, right? What tools to use when creating your proposals? Really, just whatever you feel comfortable with. I recommend visual tools, more like Figma sketch, XD. If you have InDesign, that's great as well. If you don't, at least keynote or PowerPoint, I've seen proposals in Word and it just feels very cheap and unprofessional. So I really recommend taking time to make it feel a little bit designed. I personally love Figma. So that's kind of an overview of how I set up my proposal and how I try to tell the story throughout. I try to keep it very minimal, it's very clean and I actually do a horizontal, the landscape view because they are viewing this on their computer. So I want it to be a little bit more of a presentation than just a document. So my format, the way that I build my proposals, I'll always start with that front cover, then it will go into a thank you letter. I'll cover who we are as an agency, what we offer. I'll give some proof that we are good at our jobs, that we have some kind of external validation of what we do. Then I'll start to talk about their project, including the scope, including the goals, look at the timeline for accomplishing that and then giving them a pricing options. What's another nice thing to do is include add-ons. This is stuff that they have not thought about yet and maybe stuff that you do so that it's kind of that extra up the ante of do you want fries with that kind of a thing. I'll showcase studies that are similar to them and then I will have that final thank you back cover. So to start, I'm gonna go through it one by one. So if you're taking screenshots, you can take them now. I will upload this later to the group as well. So people can review it later. Front cover, very basic. It has their name. It has an overview of what we're trying to accomplish here. So web design and development proposal. It has my contact info and most important above all health, 100% have an expiration date. I did not do this until recently when I heard someone else did that. I was like, oh, that's freaking genius because what happens and it has happened to me is that you will make a proposal, you'll say it's gonna take this long and you'll say it will cost this much. They will disappear. Might be six months, it might be one year, it might be longer. And then they come back and they say, hey, can you do the same project for me with the same scope in the proposal? In one year, you might be so busy with clients, you can't get it done in the timeline presented. You might have raised your prices and now you have to honor one-year-old prices. So now I always include expiration dates on every proposal. It could be 30 days, it could be 60 days, maybe 90 days. It depends on what you feel comfortable with. Kind of what kind of times that you wanna give to them but it is a good way to protect yourself and a good way to just be kind of transparent about, hey, things are gonna change if you don't make a decision in 30 days. My thank you letter. So I really like to write a thank you letter after the phone call. I'll usually repeat back kind of like what they said, what we talked about, what I'm excited about, depending on the project, I might spend more time with it. I think this one is my generic one. So if maybe I'll change a couple of details and send it out for the client. But I like to include that signature, the photo, it just makes it feel a little bit more personal. Who we are, this is where you start talking about your skills, start talking about what makes you unique. You can show bios if you want to. If you have a big team, you can show it. If you have a small team, you can show it. The whole point of it is that they understand who you are, that you are humans behind this company. Even if you're a solopreneur, show your bio so that they get to know you a little bit better and they build that trust with you. And then you can also show your capabilities. So listing out more things that you do. I see people chatting. I will check it out later. We can answer questions later as well. The praise and proof. This is an important part in Storybrand. If you have not read that book, having some kind of authoritative, here's an external source that proves that I do what I say I do. It could be awards, it could be certifications, it could be testimonials. Really just showing that there are actual people that like you, that there are companies that verify you are real, whatever that might be. If you win an awards, you should show that off for sure. Okay, now this one is where it starts to take more time. All of that other one is templated. So that takes zero time, right? The project scope. This, I will actually have a little snippet of like this is what we're gonna change together. We're gonna evolve your brand together or something along those lines. And then I will always bullet point out the scope of work. This could be technical skills like ADA compliance. It could be more goals like updating the brand to feel better, improving user experience. That's very loose goals. But the main goal is, you know, as I take notes in that phone call, I always usually try to take notes of the words that they say to me so that I can repeat it back to them. I think Tony Robbins talks a lot about that concept of mirroring. I know Christo does as well. And that's worth looking up if you want to improve your mirroring skills. Basically, we trust people who kind of act like us. And so if someone will jump on the phone with me and just have a lot of energy, I'm just gonna come right back and have a lot of energy. If they're very soft-spoken and kind of quiet, then I will reflect that back to them. Likewise, using similar language that they use, saying it back and makes them feel heard and it actually increases their trust of you. It sounds a little manipulative, but it is actually a really nice way to like easily connect with people just by kind of mirroring back their energy and their language. So I'll try to do that in the project scope and then as they read through that, hopefully they see, you know, oh, she listened to me. Oh, she understands what my problems are. I also like to include a scope of revisions. This is always a question that will come up as the relationship progresses and it should be discussed before the contract. This is an answer to their question of if I don't like something, what happens next? So I want to help reassure them of, hey, you get this many revisions or you get this much time or you get this many days, whatever it is, I usually include it there so that they have a good understanding before even going into the project, the timeline. So nailing the right timeline will speak to your experience level. If it's too short, you risk over promising. If it's too long, it kind of looks like, why is that gonna take that long? This other guy does it for half the time. So you really have to make sure that it's a reasonable timeframe that works for them and that it works for you. What I started doing is putting on that little stipulation in that red where it says it depends on the speed of the feedback and the approvals. So the thing I kind of understand, this is on them too, right? Like it could take really short, depending on your feedback and it could take longer. But basically that we're allowing for that delay in case it does. I like to break it down into milestones, but you can also break it down into weeks. If you prefer to do that, it all just depends on how you like to show your information with the client. The one everyone cares about, pricing. I feel like there are a thousand ways to do pricing. What I've done recently are just two options. What I used to do in the past was one and that did not work at all. When you give only one option, you need a three-page website. Here's the price for a three-page website. They have no reference to the costs. Like, oh, well, if I need more, what is that? If I need less, what is that? They start to nitpick, like, oh, can you just lower the price? Like, it doesn't help them to really understand unless they shop around. Giving the three options is kind of the mama bear, papa bear, baby bear approach of like small, medium, large. And then they can start to see, okay, if I want an e-commerce that's gonna cost $10,000 more. But if I don't want that, it's gonna be less. So they can visually compare kind of what the difference is. I started going down to two options just because after the phone calls, it was very direct of kind of what path we need to take. So I give them two options. This allows them to, again, compare and it allows them to see the value of, okay, this is this many more pages. This is this many more resources. This is this much more time. And it allows them to decide, you know, what do I need? I feel like giving price and options helps you with your competition because if everybody else just gives one option, now they have two options with you, right? Or three options with you. Or it's not just this or that, it's, yeah, it's this, but, you know, there's a lot of different ways we can accomplish that and a lot of different pricing models. Sometimes we will renegotiate pricing after this and then it is just one option. The most recent one was they wanted some stuff from option one. They wanted some stuff from option two. And so we found a good happy medium of mixing it together and creating an option, a custom option three. And they were very happy with that. One detail is don't give too much detail. Like don't break down the pricing per item. Then they'll start to nitpick and decide what they want. Even in the contract, I do break down the pricing per milestone. So when I send contracts, it will look more like this where it's like discovery cost this much and it includes this list of things. Then they can understand the big pieces and how it got to this price. You can do that here where you don't necessarily just give a lump sum that you can show them how you got to that. It's up to you on what you want to do. This has been the most, I feel direct for my clients. And then one thing that I do in the contracts especially is I use more realistic numbers. It looks very suspicious if you just say $20,000. It's like, okay, you know, are you just picking a pretty number? Or does it really cost that much? If you say like $19,840, that feels very precise. And it feels more calculated like you took time to actually calculate the price. Does it actually mean anything? Not necessarily, but it does give a little bit more validity to you, I believe. Then I usually like to do add-ons depending on the client, depending on what we discussed. This could be email templates. It could be brand guidelines. It could be logo redesign. It depends on what you do. It could even be like WordPress maintenance on going monthly contracts. I like to give a range so that if they come back and say we want brand guidelines but we want it to be a hundred page document and you only priced it in your add-on as 10 page, it's gonna be more than the price obviously in the add-on sheet. So give a good range. Let them kind of know what other things you can do. What? Participants can now see your screen. Can you guys not see my screen before, Jeff? Can you jump on? Yeah, I can see everything, okay. Okay. Panic mode, man. I was like, did I do that whole thing? Like you that one time, right? Oh, man. Okay, well, thank you. All right. Or they think, oh, just giving a good range. After that, I like to showcase studies and what I'll typically do is I'll just tell the problem that the client had and I'll explain the solution. You can get really detailed with your case studies if you want or you can keep a kind of high level like this. What I really like to do is show that I worked with clients similar to you. So for example, I literally landed one client in the foster youth community. They were like, oh, we do foster youth. Do you know what that is? And I said like, yeah, I worked on this, this and this brand that all do foster youth. And they're like, oh, okay, you're hired. Like literally no discussion. They're like, oh, okay, you get it, you're hired. So within the case studies, it's really nice if you do, if it's a fitness company that you're trying to land, show the fitness work that you've done so that they can see similar projects and they can see that you can do that work. And then finally, it is that final page. This is that final little thank you, wrapping it up. We put the contact details in there. And if it's a really big client, it's a nice thing to offer a printable version of the proposal. Sometimes they like to have meetings. Sometimes they have to present this to board members. They don't wanna print out, obviously this whole blue page that's gonna murder their printers. So having a printable version, that's just kind of a simple word document is really professional as well. After you finish it all, after you double check it, after you spell check it and make sure that their name is right and their brand is right, compress the PDF. You don't wanna be sending 100 megabyte PDFs to people through email, compress it down and then email it to them, thanking them for their time and then set up, if you can, set up a time to review it together or just set up a time for working through any questions together. You're an open book and you can share how we get to the proposal and state. And really at the end of the day, again, harping on this again, your proposal is a representation of the deal you want to make. No matter how sexy your proposal might be, if the client does not fit your style, if the client doesn't fit your budget, if the client has a scope too big or scope too small or whatever it is, if the sale is not gonna happen, the proposal is not gonna make it happen. It's really just that final little confirmation of, it's kind of like a final sweet talk, I think, of a sale that is already on the way to being complete. As you send out more and more proposals, you can really start to keep track of which ones lead to sales. What I've heard is that you'll wanna stick for, stick around a 50% close rate, meaning that you're going to lose half of the projects that you try to get. And that's actually a good sign. If you are hitting under 50%, it might be the way that you're presenting yourself. It could be just not good timing. It could be a good opportunity to listen to clients differently. And it could also, you could ask the client if they choose, if they don't choose you, you can ask them why and start to gain feedback on why that might be, oh, you're too expensive or I don't think you're a professionalist, whatever that is, that it's a step towards becoming better in our businesses. If you're closing higher than 50%, especially if all of your clients are choosing the most expensive option out of the options that you give them, then it's time to raise your prices. It definitely echoes on it being you're too reasonable. It's really fast and easy to pick you. And that's one way to know when it's time to raise your rates. Overall, you've got it. And now I will open it up. I would love for Jeff to help answer questions too, but if anybody has any questions, yeah, by all means. Well, that's it. I hope you guys enjoyed this and learned a lot from this call. And I thank everyone that stuck around all the way to the end. I hope this gave you a lot of value and helped you out with running your web design business. And there's a link inside the description. If you're interested in joining our Facebook group, Building Businesses with Elementor, we're focused on the business side of web design. It's a safe place for anyone to learn and also help out other people. Well, I hope you enjoy this and we'll be back soon again with more web design and Elementor related content. Thank you.