The Pitch Slap

When a new prospect asks you for a proposal, how long does it take you to write it up? (used to take me forever).

Writing proposals is a drag for lots of reasons. I hated writing them, so when I quit doing them, I freed myself from stressing over them altogether. Bliss.

Sure, I lost business, but only at first and only because the transition was clumsy and without a path forward. But now I've perfected it and havent written a proposal in years.

I'll tell you how I did it. But first, here's why you'll want to, too:

You Hate Selling

Sending a proposal involves selling that anyone might find uncomfortable. And it makes sense; you're skilled in your area of expertise but never had the attention span to read a sales book or learn proposal writing.

You Hate Rejection

The traditional proposal process exposes you rejection, anxiety and uncertainty. After investing all that time and effort into creating a flashy detailed proposal, you still might get passed on without learning any reason why.

You Hate Pressure to Price Low

How many proposals is the client considering? Proposals can make you feel like you have to underbid to increase your chances of winning the project, which is an unsustainable business model over time.

You Hate Working for Free

You invest time and expertise in research, analysis, and strategic thinking into every proposal without knowing who you're up against or guarantee your time will be compensated. WTF?

You Hate FOMO

Proposals are soul-sucking and can take forever to write. What else could be doing? Let's see... billable stuff, finishing a course, reading a book, nothing at all? The opportunity cost is so high, especially if you end up ghosted on the deal.

You Hate a Power Imbalance

Power Balance in Favor of the Client. Prospects are probably getting multiple proposals from different people, each trying to convince the client and land the project. It gets frustrating when you have to prove your worth and convince the client to choose you. Bad clients will exploit this imbalance before you realize they're doing it to you.

You Hate Giving Away the Sauce

How much of your intellectual property are you giving away in your proposals? There is always the risk that potential clients could take the ideas and strategies you've presented in your proposal and implement them with someone cheaper or who they can boss around.

You Hate the Custom Project Resource-Suck

Another reason the proposal process is problematic for people like us is that, while potentially lucrative, custom projects often require you to spread efforts and task-pivot more often. You've got varied outputs, inconsistent processes and new learning curves on each new client. You're not able to focus on and refine a single system that yields better and more consistent results.

All of this is draining. I much prefer this approach: