Marketing Your Business

This article covers a secret weapon that can double, triple or quadruple your success rate.  If you become a successful freelancer without using this secret weapon, you’re working too hard.

The best way to protect yourself against rejection of your proposal is to ask the client for guidance before completing the final draft of the proposal.  This technique is so powerful that it can double, triple or quadruple your success rate.  After all, if the client helps you put your proposal together, it can’t be too far off target, can it?

In order to assure that your final draft is truly on target, you are going to have to call the client at some point during the preparation of your proposal.  Fortunately, you have to call anyway, in order to confirm the meeting at which you expect to present the proposal.  Ostensibly, you’ll call to set up or to confirm the specific time at which the presentation will take place.  But as long as you have the client on the phone, you’ll reveal how you’re coming on your proposal and ask for a reaction to your preliminary thinking.

At this point, if you sound thoughtful rather than stupid or cunning, the client will be impressed that you are taking so much time to finish the proposal.  It sounds like you can’t sleep at night because you are so worried about the client’s problems.  You really want to get it right.

Your credibility with the client is going up as you describe your quandary.  At the same time, the client’s defenses are coming down.  It doesn’t occur to the client that giving you a reaction is tantamount to saying “Here’s what you have to do in order to get your proposal accepted.”

You offer a clue to your thinking.  You indicate in a broad sense what direction your proposal is taking.  You say, “Decision Maker, I’m pretty solid on a lot of this, as you know, but I’m kind of torn between two things in one area.  One possibility is to go with a large-scale, in-depth approach where we come in and talk to everybody.  Another possibility is to just talk to the department managers.  Which do you think is going to be best, given your current situation?  Give me some sense of what you think is most appropriate in this case.  Am I forgetting anything from our meeting?  Help me out.”

As soon as you say, “What do you think? . . . Help me out,” you are asking a question on a personal level.  Clients usually don’t realize, or else don’t care, that giving you a reaction will tip their hand.  Usually, they will give you a direct answer.  They may offer some general remarks of guidance, too.

Next, you’re going to alter your proposal or continue putting your proposal together in a manner that is consistent with what you’ve learned during the phone call.

If you still have questions after your first phone call, don’t be afraid to call the client back again.  If you need to do so, however, you should probably wait until just before the meeting and make it sound like a last-minute question popped up.  Otherwise your clients may think that you’re “shopping” over the phone, trying to find out what they’re willing to buy.