Have you ever submitted a proposal for a prospect… but didn’t want to get the job?
I have.
It may surprise some, but sometimes you just don’t have a good feeling about somebody, know what I mean?
Choices, Choices
When this happens, you have two options:
1. Lie and say you’re not available, or you don’t do the specific assignment they want.
2. Submit a losing proposal.
I’m not a good liar. And besides, that sort of thing just leads to bigger problems later on down the road.
Which leaves us with… writing a proposal we purposely don’t want to get approved.
How NOT To Write A Winning Proposal
This isn’t as easy as simply doing the opposite of writing a winning proposal.
For example, you wouldn’t want to intentionally put a lot of typos, grammatical errors, or misspellings in your proposal. You still have a reputation to protect, after all.
There are more insidious ways of sabotaging your own proposal, without making you look like a bad freelancer.
For example:
- Quote an unreasonably high price. If you publish fixed rates for your services, then you won’t be able to do this. I publish a starting fee, so I quote a fee for every project. This allows me some flexibility to quote high when necessary.
- Request a very relaxed time table. Another way you could sabotage your proposal is by requesting to work on a timetable that would probably not work with your prospect’s schedule. For example, three months is usually way too much time for a copywriter to put together a sales page.
- Make the project sound more complicated than it actually is. Don’t make anything up, but do get into minute details and hope that this gives your prospect a feeling of overwhelm.
Of course, you could always take the high road and go for…
Option Number 3
Go straight out and say you’re not interested in the project. The way I see it, you don’t need to even give a reason for this. Just be clear and straight to the point. I’m thinking, something like:
“Thank you for your interest in working with me. However, I am unable to send you a proposal for this project.”
It would be nice if you could then refer the prospect to a couple of other freelancers who may want to make a pitch for the assignment. That makes the prospect feel that you have their interests in mind, even if you can’t support them yourself.
What Do You Think?
Did I miss any other options for handling a situation like this? Can you think of better ways of responding to a prospect whom you’re not interested in working with? Do share!
I usually just take option number three and tell them straight up that I can’t work with them right now. And you’re right, at that point no other explanation is needed. They usually just say “okay” and move on.
Sometimes I provide a list of service providers I would recommend or alternative methods for getting their project done so I don’t feel like I’m leaving them hanging in any way.
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I’ve also recently stuck with option three with the addition of a few links to other local firms. The client responded with a request for me to send him the physical address of those designers since he didn’t do the “internet thing” and he wanted to just pop in on them. I knew then that I made the right choice!
HA HA, this is such a great topic.
A while ago I googled’ anti-SEO’ because I had a page on my blog which I didn’t want to rank well in search engines… I wanted it to be primarily available to regular readers who followed an internal link, and not turn up in search results out of context. Turned out it was very hard to find serious tips about anti-SEO online:-)
I imagine ‘how to write a loosing proposal’ is a similarly rare topic:-) and those who really want to write a loosing proposal will be very happy to find your post.