Signature Branding Proposal Template Made Easy

Esign project proposal template

hey guys what's up I'm back with Rebecca this is episode three of an ongoing series Rebecca what are we going to talk about today we are going to talk about I have a question regarding proposals and estimates and structuring fees so I want to get a little bit deeper into some of those business questions today okay so if you want to know how to structure your proposal and estimates and we're gonna be bidding on a web project right yeah we were going to be bidding on a web project there will be some branding done upfront creating an identity maybe doing a little workshop group and and then the website we're gonna be going over how to structure a proposal an estimate for web and branding projects if that's something you want to know stick around [Music] all right so we're back Rebecca what kind of project you set it up for me and then we'll dive deep into this I was contacted by a client recently and they'd like to do a website and then a little branding upfront and you know I know how to do the timelines and obviously the work and but when I'm what I am struggling with is the estimate because you know I don't know all the business requirements that are that will be needed the functional specs that will be needed so how do you create an estimate for a website when you don't know all the little details but I want to make them comfortable that we can do it within their budget what is it about it we asked we are we're supposed to get the budget this week but we don't want to just sit around and wait so we are gonna try and just get something start and then once we see the budget work from there okay did they send you an RFP they did not send us a you know in the RFP I do once you talk to people well it's a request for a proposal and you know I normally have never worked deeply with the request for proposals normally it comes to my team and we start concept ding and creating the campaign so that whole business side of now how do we how do we answer that RFP from a business aspect is a little bit tricky for me yeah because I usually just do the creative part you know but now you're on your own you've watched your business and you're deep into it you you're gonna get an RFP and those guys don't know what it is it's a request for proposal and they're going to send you project requirements they're gonna ask for capabilities they're going to describe things to you so you know something about the project itself and that's the first thing I have to ask is on our P because what you're gonna do is you're gonna give them a response and then to follow up with a scope of work document at s o W or statement of work so right now you're asked to bid on something that you have no idea what you're bidding on now for a lot of you guys that do branding work unless there's some giant unforeseen thing you kind of know what you're getting yourself - you know that you're gonna require some research you're going to do some initial exploration and there's going to be a couple of rounds of refinement with the client then ultimately you deliver that with a style guide maybe messaging examples applications like letterhead envelope business card signage any kind of marketing materials that have that's somewhat contained we not a bid that right it's the website and the thing that you need to know about the website is that a website it's kind of like building a house or a product no no two are the same and you can say we'll give me a quote on a house well how many bedrooms where is it located what kind of features and amenities do we need and so you have to get into that with them so personally I feel like it's impossible to bid a project that you don't know the scope of work you're only then making just a crazy guess now there are phases and parts to the project that you can bid for or outline but then you need to do this thing's so this is why most of times when I'm working with a client I'll say we're gonna charge you for strategy and that's going to be between this dollar amount and this dollar amount once we're done with that then we'll know what features the functions need to be built into the site who the users are etc or if we even need to build a website in the first place right I never make that assumption that they need a new website because their goals aren't transactional on the website or it's not about building a campaign or some kind of email capture thing then there's really no point to update the site so you're saying do some strategy work upfront charge them for that strategy work get to know what they're trying to do and then we can go that's right deeper into it it's called strategy it's called discovery something you have to go in then you have to figure out what you're doing so what one way to do this without having to do discovery in strategy because some clients are very set against doing that because they just need to know are we right are we talking to the right partners there right so then you can say okay what's the site that's kind of like what we're doing is it just me skinning your site today is it adding some kind of e-commerce part of it is it a portal what are we doing is it more like software or we about a couple of pages then you kind of get a sense of what it is so then we can put them into different buckets if you do a lot of web assignments or projects then you kind of know it's like it's between this and this and it sounds like it's going to be this kind of home it's a 2-bedroom with through really nice modern kitchen we know what its gonna be like what's your experience with building web projects pretty extensive I think and I've done a lot from from the very beginning from my hair point we're just mostly from a design point doing the user journey the experience map starting at that point I mean each project is so different you know sometimes we do a workshop for branding to understand what their vision and values are and what a personal personality of the brand is because the client doesn't even know who their brand is yet so I think so with this with this client and many clients sometimes they don't even know what it is they want we have to do that workshop up front like you said that's what that make sense about right yes so would the proposal that I send to them the first proposal just say you know we need to really we need to do a strategy workshop or we need to do a branding workshop let's take that first step you could also make some assumptions by looking at their current site and you can build them a budget based on their current site maybe one or two new features that you think they might have talked about or hinted at wanting to do mm-hmm it's like you have to get to know the customer before you can actually give any kind of real advice right that thing keeps coming up and I think you get so nervous that you just want to get the job and so you wait so you well you don't you want to you know you you want to make a good impression right away I don't know you know we spoke for a while on the phone and then you know then you think of all these questions after the phone call and I guess there's just needs to be a follow-up call to get more information but then that's the other question too is how much time do you spend on a client preparing all these proposals and estimates before you actually get paid anything I mean a lot of time times you could spend a good amount of time like a week's worth of time I know you know when we would pitch to a big agency you know the agency would I don't know how they do it but you know the whole team is just doing a lot of stuff for free we're doing a whole campaign for free right so as a individual business yeah they're pitching new business but as an individual that's a lot of time I feel like but I should just be do you do that do you put in a lot of free time up front with this proposal you've asked like five right I need a new pen because sorry this is gonna be a media episode I can already feel it because you're asking all these questions that I'm sure a lot of people in our community and our audience are feeling right now so first is you want to make a good impression right let's talk about you and I we just met what is going to leave you with the most impactful impression of me as a human being as we're talking about doing business together what is that what do you think I think it is being comfortable with the with each other you want to be working with someone that you feel is sure you kind of comfortable is knowledgeable and I hope all right that's comfortable knowledgeable what else may you have a good relationship with them so we're talking rapport and ease of that the projects I want to work the other one that I know is easy to work with yeah okay those are excellent great observations okay how do I make you feel comfortable well I'm not in a rush hey we got to wrap up this episode I mean I have another session I got to know two more calls let's just does that make you feel comfortable no yeah guy got time to sit down and talk to you I want to learn about your problem the challenges that you're facing I want to get to know who you are and I demonstrate my knowledge by being a good listener and when I hear a problem and I might I may be able to advise you but I can't advise you until I hear what the problems may be next thing is I'm trying to build rapport to make sure we share values and beliefs that we see the world in the same way that if you're a really slow smooth talking person I want to be slow and smooth talk and if you're talking really fast I need to talk really fast with you so that it doesn't feel like you're leaving behind in a doesn't order making you wait because your patients gonna be really thin yeah so I'm gonna change my tempo my tone my language my body language everything to match and mirror how you're behaving to make the client feel comfortable yeah I just want to sync up to you I want you to feel comfortable mm-hmm does it make sense it does okay so so far so good and I want to make it an easy process because I want them to envision working with me and that this is how it's gonna be the entire engagement if I feel like you're in a rush if I feel like you don't respect my time all those kinds of things are gonna send these little subliminal signals to me that we're probably not a good fit we we know this in real life because you get that gut feeling I'm not connecting to you you're not my kind of person sometimes we don't listen to that we then take on the worst client and then we're like I should listen I should listen to my gut thank God is very intelligent you need to pay attention to what's going on okay I mean I think we talked about this last time that I try to go a bit quickly through my meetings like a prior conversation that I had had with another client we only had a half an hour and again you know I felt like I want to get it all in so I guess I need to slow down it so do you think having us follow up conversation and asking him you know when do you how do you have another hour for us to just go over some questions that I have about the project yes so here's what we're gonna do we're in we're in this position already we've had a meeting now we thought oh my god I should have asked XY and Z and it didn't that's totally okay to send them an email and say you know I I realized I didn't ask you XY and Z can you just take a moment to answer's no give me a lot more clarity on what is that we need to build and by the way I thought about this and have you thought about that you can send in an email and if it's too much they're like a super busy executive say like let's just jump on the phone I don't need you to type I want to make it easy for you mm-hm that way and that's totally okay in the future what you want to do is to know what the questions you need answered before you leave a meeting and don't spend your time dealing with all that small talk that doesn't add up to anything that's actionable for you mm-hmm so I'm gonna give you guys some tips here so when you go to the meeting we lay out an agenda what would you like to get from this meeting what would I like to get from this meeting and I like to be very upfront about that this is not a meet and greet this is not hey how you don't talk about our kids and what's go right right this is a lot of business thing so you're gonna say as the client well will decline say what do you let's let's just roleplay really quickly if you're the client I'm Rebecca and I'm meeting you and or I'm just gonna say Rebecca it's a pleasure to get together and I know there's this project that we're talking about I just want to make sure this meeting is super productive what do you want to get away what do you want to take away from this meeting what would you say well I have a project that's coming up and I know that we need to launch a website fairly soon and we've done some market research on this site but we're not quite sure how we want to brand it and we need the website built fairly quickly what do you think is that what your clients say well some of them okay most of my clients don't say that most of my clients say what they want from me I need to know if you're a good partner for me I need to know if you can do in the time in the budget I need to know you that you have the right experience well sometimes I do encounter clients that you know they don't fully know what they want okay and that's fine and they would say that that's why I'm just saying my clients are a little different so when I say what would you like to get from this meeting they tell me yeah I'm considering three other people Chris you know I want to make sure you're on the right budget I heard good things about you but we've never seen you work I just don't know and I would say the same you know I would reflect back to them I need to know what the project scope is what the timeline is how much money you have and whatever you're gonna make a decision right those are the clients I've definitely worked with those clients you definitely also get those clients that they're not quite sure and you really you need to handhold them a little bit more so let's just stay in that state if that's truly because I want to make sure that that is exactly what they're saying to you so I can respond I typically have clients who are much more like I know what that want right yes I mean I know what I want from you right go to you with a brief or create a brief in it yeah they don't have to waste either right so sounds to me like your client is in a very early preliminary stage of looking at stuff this is good news for you because you might be able to prevent them from talking to another person just because they have such a great connection with you but be mindful that most people don't just shop one time and by the comparison shop so if your first middle or last you need to make sure you stand out from the competition okay so let's go back into that it sounds to me like you're all like wish you wash it like you mean no okay so I'll address that oh okay Rebecca sounds like you're pretty early in the stage of considering a firm and you don't know what you want yet so why don't you just let me take control this dialogue for a half second here's what I think if I'm I'm being an advisor to you here's what you want to know because you're gonna probably talk to a handful of people you're gonna need to make a decision so you're probably looking for fit like do we believe the same kinds of things you're looking at schedule you're looking at scope you want to know that we have the expertise and a dev team who's working on your project how accessible and responsive am i mm-hmm this has sound about right Rebecca yes okay great day so if you don't mind I would just go through this okay now just answer them for you okay okay I want to make this really easy for you Rebecca as I feel that would be great because I okay I need a partner right you need a partner and maybe you're gonna step back and look whoa I I didn't and then Chris Rebecca knows and she's gonna take me through this process and it's gonna be like holding my hand ever talks down to me it's just a really straight shooter and I respect that so one of the things that just to break the fourth wall here the meta layer here is to kind of strip this away and I'm gonna explain to our audience what it is I'm doing first of all I'm just saying what I think have the courage to say what's on your mind you seem confused I say you seem confused you seem early on in the stage can I help you can I take this a little bit is this what you need to know and I know that you're gonna talk to other people so let's not even pretend like you're not going to mm-hm and I know budgets a concern it doesn't matter if you're Warren Buffett or you're like mom-and-pop shop down the street budgets always a concern because you never want to overpay for services right and you need to feel comfortable with who you're gonna work with so let me do my best and walk you through this process and even asking that question what did I do that made you feel comfortable I showed you I was knowledgeable because I know what you're concerned about I'm building rapport and making it easy I'm doing the four things that you said we need to do wait wait so the thing is I imagine for a lot of you guys that are watching this and maybe even for you Rebecca is that fear sets in there's this game that we think we have to play that we have to impress them by not saying anything that it's a game of one-upsmanship that we can't be fully transparent and honest and correct and that's a game that I used to play mm-hmm I used to believe it or not go into conference calls for six-figure jobs and not ask the client what do you want us to build and why would you not ask them that because it was the game that I thought we had to play yeah that we have to intuit like what it is like through yes socially and and a sixth sense that we go where I think I know what you want without me ask you feel like you think you should know and then you want them to think that you know that you know but then you don't know and then they're gonna walk away thinking if they're smarter than their experience they're gonna walk away thinking I don't think Rebecca or Chris knows what they're talking about did even ask me what I wanted they just beat around the bush this is something I learned from my business coach Kier McClaren he's the one who said kiddo why don't you just ask just be yourself and just ask he just just ask what you want and here's a couple of ways of asking as soon as he said that it was just like the heavens parted the clouds parted and then the Sun came through and shown in my face and it was like that seems so obvious and simple then why the heck happened had done this so we walk around with a set of rules an operating system that is incorrect it's flawed and most of times it's us writing the code so that's the good news is because we can rewrite the code so this episode is really going to be about you staying true to the outcome which is I want to make you feel comfortable now and show that I'm knowledgeable build rapport with you and make it easy none of this is about selling you anything none of this is so you're either gonna like me like my process and might like my work or you're not and I can't change that at all right I'm not in the game to convince you from saying that what was black is not white what is grey is orange and orange is purple it's not I guess I'm not that powerful yeah I guess that's what I need to do is not worry so much about yeah getting it or not gettin it just putting the knowledge that I have out there and just helping them just talk to me like a real human being that you really care and that's gonna be half the battle to know also that the fact that we're having the meeting says I'm qualified then I'm ready and become capable because if I'm not people don't meet with us that's the bottom line there are hundreds of people who send me emails all the time saying look at this look at this look at this and I looked at it like I have no response because it's kind of bad it's just bad what do you mean what are they sending you work hire me hire me all the time yeah and if I'm not responding it's because it's not it's not good you get a gut feeling you know right away well you know yeah you know when you look at the one out okay so if I agree to have an interview or a meeting with somebody it means I've already checked out the work or you already come highly recommended from other people that I trust so you got the meeting it's hard to get a meeting so know that you're ready comfortable and secure in that the client sees you in a certain light even if you don't see yourself in that light the problem here is we don't have enough information so we cannot build an estimate however since you are an experienced person with user journeys and all that kind of stuff you can't block out certain things that you think they need and you can say clearly without doing further discovery or strategic work with you my best guess and this is the best guess as it is you need a landing page you need to sub pages and about page and then you need some kind of transactional thing that's going to happen and for that it's gonna be somewhere between thirty to seventy five thousand dollars I don't know don't hold me to it so what we'll do is if you if this sounds kind of interesting to you and you want to dive a little deeper and further define this let's do discovery let's charge you I'll charge you X dollars ten fifteen thousand dollars we'll do it they'll take this amount of time and you can describe that process very clearly okay and give a range for the rest this is how we do it okay and actually put you a little bit at ease so give them a range and say this is just based on some assumptions where are my assumptions okay the four things I figured out okay and I want to say you just use the word assumptions right in there because we haven't had a conversation yet okay it's important you keep emphasizing that because anybody that gives them a budget without wanting a conversation to doing discovery is giving them a bogus man so what you're doing there is you're setting somebody else up to fail you understand what I'm saying right right because they're like this is how I work isn't this logical anybody else you're inferring that if anybody else comes to you and gives you a bid without having real dialogue meaningful dialogue with you they're throwing numbers together and it could change drastically okay you're either getting overcharged or they're under bidding the project and yet you're getting hit with overages all the time okay so I'm planting that seed of doubt in others that's what I'm doing there mmm-hmm without having to say don't love other people right right yeah if you're getting sir if you're getting a set quote like that's not really a reality because there are so many things that could pop up once we do a little bit of research and exploring and the user journey you may want to add in some extra Oh or maybe you don't you need a website at all.they meeting something totally different all right you ever get in a car accident before yes okay and you need to get your car repaired right it wasn't total you need to get repaired okay have you ever had an appraiser just talked to you on the phone so yeah it's $13,000 and if they did would you trust them no I wouldn't know do you know just send me one or two photos I'll figure it out no you want a full assessment you want to look at the underlying structure of the body what is I call the framework frame see if it's been damaged there's any things that are gonna happen because you your husband and your baby I'm gonna be in that car and this is not one thing that you want to save $10 on you want to make sure that everything is tip-top shape and that the insurance is covered it's done right and right the first time because you don't prepare the car three times that's what I'm talking about that's why I plant the seeds of doubt if someone else doesn't give you a thorough diagnostic before giving you a quote I would be concerned mm-hmm but I don't say those words I just plant the seeds mm-hmm subtly well I just it is what I do and this make sense and then you wouldn't further then logically thinking the opposite would make no sense I'm trying to differentiate the whole time okay all right makes sense and that'll put you at ease okay so next time when you when you do your first meeting make sure you're engaging in the right questions and you're getting structure because just know this just know this if you don't ask the questions now later in your car when you have more courage you don't have to call them again or email them again because you knew a lot of people are afraid to ask what the budget is up front yeah well we I did I asked okay I'm just saying a lot of people are afraid and then they go in the car I'm going over that hurdle fine I don't know what the budget is something gasps and call call my friends you stress out over this let's move down here less hair okay okay so that was just the first part about making a good impression well this will change the desire to hurry up and bid just to get something because you want to seem responsive I think it's irresponsible to provide a bid that has no context no understanding no dialogue so we're gonna get rid of that then there's this whole thing idea about you know when there's the first call how much energy and effort do you put into this to following up and spend your time building budgets etc are you pitching on things all the time and their answer is yes and no let's talk about that when we get a call as for a new project I'm gonna get to the number really fast as fast as it seems not rude to do okay if it's an unqualified lead somebody else is going to vet the client right away because they know say Scott Rothstein who was our executive producer he's not gonna bring me a project Chris apples really excited talk to us but a new campaign I'm like how much is about jeez I didn't know I was like don't talk to me go find out it's 12,500 see you wasting my time we can't do that for that what are they thinking mm-hmm no apples not gonna do that but I'm just give me an example don't get excited over the prospect of doing work that you forget to ask about the budget so how do you qualify a leader there certain questions just give me a few that help you to qualify you how much what do you guys know I'm gonna ask you right now on the spot what do you need to know to see if a prospect is qualified to work with you let's write them down you tell me well I do you think budget let's write down go ahead what is it I would I do think budget is important Naidu carry wanted to know write a budget because of course you need to know the budget can you afford us or not what else timeline if you have if you can afford it and the timeline is ridiculous and there's like Halloween coming up or Thanksgiving and you have plans your timeline that's another question if their timeline is very clearly stated soon all right budget timeline I try not to let time like it makes you caught up you know what they say anything can be done given enough time and money for anything right right so that's why time and money those are your first two questions what else the type of project is it a point if it's a production oriented project I don't really want to do it if it's a branding so you're looking for a fit a fit yeah a good fit like a creative fit yeah creative fit and you're also looking for a personality fit oh my god this person the way he is like fingernails on our chalk when you need jobs sometimes though you know you this is that good we talked about the gut that knows that we shouldn't work with them no matter what and then your money your your bank accounts saying take it - yeah you take it and yeah your life afterwards I would suggest you listen to your gut regardless of how much do you think you need the money do without that because your life is too short that's what I mean that's that's good advice it's hard to take I know it's hard to take good advice I I do feel this way have you ever taken a client that you you know got said no and you regret it every time and we're like let's be smarter we even write protocol after every one of those things and say how do we prevent this from happening so we tighten the filter we tighten the neck about what gets through mm-hmm that's really important we have extensive documentation so when they said this we don't do it well they said nope we have a whole checklist of things that I do I go after yeah that's right well you haven't secured financing see you later mm-hmm oh you haven't sold the job through it's your superiors see you later oh you're actually going after new business yourself so this is not even a real job yet Oh see you later see we have all our rules set up and when we don't listen to them when we forget when our memory fades we make that mistake every once in a while and then we hate ourselves and it's never worth it when you get to that point you start to think to yourself I will pay you money to leave like I don't want this job anymore I will pay so that this is why I say it's really important if that gut tells you and even though your pocketbook says otherwise you tell that pocketbook be quiet I'm in charge this is not worth it imagine heaven forbid you're working on this project they're yelling at you all the time - berating you belittling you the whole time you hate life you see your margins start to disappear now you upside down on the job and they want a refund mm-hmm and then they go on Yelp but they tarnish your name and all that kind of stuff you get hit by a truck the day after that was your life is that the life you want yeah I never thought of going that far it does go that far I guess when you're a business owner on your own you know I've always had the comfort of an agency above me you know but when you have others kind of shielding you from that yes this is that we deal with mm-hmm client saying I want my money back you didn't deliver I'm not gonna pay you so not only did you get jacked on the emotional part the budget wasn't what you wanted yet you're desperate to take it and then you still don't get paid hallelujah and then you've got employees that need to be paid that and you have to pay them okay listen to your gut and I have faith I have faith I have faith in myself my process my work my network that though it's like what they say its darkest before dawn just have faith that the Sun does come up and there's another day to get it started again that does not mean you can sit on your laurels and expect work to come in to expect the work to get better to expect new leads you gotta then pound the pavement they say no you pick up the phone you call three new clients or three old clients you have to do that now that's very good because like I just said you know you being at an agency you you have other people that are shielding you and so this I think has been really really helpful to hear the other side of it that there are so many more things you need to think about as a business owner that paying your employees and if they decide if your client decides not to they don't want to pay their bill then you're in a you're in a bind and I don't want to get in that position oh it's a horrible position again not only are you're not doing the work you're not getting paid yet you'll have to pay so now you're literally paying to make behind go away Wow and it happens yeah if you're not careful this will happen and it will make your life miserable you're better off doing nothing sitting in your room staring at the wall that would be more entertaining and cost less well good lesson to learn now we're not later yeah okay so I want to put a bow on some of this stuff right I want to wrap up this part of it and don't just talk about when the client insists that you put together an estimate and they don't give me enough information and you still want to work with them they're still cool you still want to work with them here's the response you say this I got straight up from Blair ends women without pitching manifesto it's a book I highly recommend you guys get you need to read it not only do you need to read it you need to memorize it you need to practice it you need to be able to teach it that's how well you need to know this material what he says is mr. and mrs. Smith as much as I want to do this I'm not in the business of building proposals that cost time and money to do I need to know how real this process this job is how much the budget is because I'm not in this guessing game - I don't know it takes me days to put this stuff together if it's of any value to you that's what it takes and I since I don't get paid to do that now we can do one of two things you can sit down with me we can go over this so I understand the project better and you can we can talk about the budget what's realistic so it's optimistic the other way we can do this is you can pay me a thousand dollars and I'll build you an estimate I'll bail you for the time of building that's man you can comparison shop that you can do whatever you want but I need to be paid for my time mm-hmm I can't get that back so how does that sound well with option one you're saying you can sit down with me and I'm gonna give you Mike I'm gonna consult with you and my expertise and you're not charging for them but what are you getting out of that first option well when you talk about building a proposal the fear is that they're not gonna buy the fear is that your budgets gonna be some in outer space and so I don't want to do that I'm only going to build the proposal because we have levels of increasing commitment from you you see every time you decide to do a meeting with me a follow-up meeting and a discovery you're making little bits of agreement so I'm bringing you in and you notice let me think about where this is the case certain organizations are adept at selling to you the consumer they know that the deeper you go into the conversation with them the more likely you are to donate to buy something etc mm-hmm telemarketers understand this so they ask you and knock us question would you like to save money this month you're like yeah then they start telling you something and a deeper and deeper and deeper and then they make the sale some of them do it over a period of days and weeks then make you make a small commitment up front that is totally like in your best interest everything's cool and then you follow up and follow and you feel guilty now it's one of the principles from the book influenced by Robert Cal Dini he talks about this that we need to seem to be consistent with our thoughts and our actions so when you make a small action in most small commitment you're more likely to make it again and again and again so what you're doing is you're pulling them in your onboarding them slowly versus saying give me a little bit information I'm going to go away do all the work only do for you to tell me weeks later and you don't even call me back that it didn't work out so that's what I'm doing if we're gonna do this let's do it together what's the budget what kind of features and functions well before we even get into that who is this for one of the business and marketing objectives you're trying to accomplish with this oh okay I get a sense of that and I get into that I said okay well based on that it seems like something like this should be somewhere between eighty two hundred twenty thousand dollars is that kind of where you're at like yeah it is so if I came back to you with a budget for one hundred eighteen thousand you're good to go mm-hmm what else are you gonna use to decide who you work with oh this this is that okay thank you very much then I go back I tell the guys the budget needs to be a hundred eighteen here's the things that we got to put in there and put it in we have templates it's ready to go we knock it out so you just hand over like a nested a nested motion a proposal has our qualifications as a couple of client testimonials it's got our approach it's got our process a couple like relevant projects and then it's got a timeline and a budget yeah that's a purple so you're still doing you are doing them you're doing a full proposal for them well when you say a full proposal you keep in mind the 90% of proposal is already done yeah it's been done yeah it did take a long time to make those yeah once you get a good template going then you just right now you just qualify you're just modifying or the relevant parts mm-hmm cuz we didn't change who we were and we're not changing our staff overnight we're not changing our client testimonials so really what we're changing is the cover letter mm-hmm the the budget and the timeline which we have now probably hundreds of proposals that we put together that oh it's a web project with a little branding or it's all branding or it's all web or it's designed that showroom or it's something else and we have those things worked out okay that makes sense I think I've tried it a couple different ways but I think I just need to get that proposal yes I'd like a template done and then it ever throat and it's just customizing the estimate and maybe tweaking it a little bit you're kind of in year 1 year 2 of your business right yeah that means you've prepared a few proposals I mean you're 22 so I've prepared hundreds of proposals we have them ready to go okay now for for anybody and this seems like a natural segue if you don't want to go through the painful process of putting a proposal together you can buy one of ours we sell them for 59 bucks you just download it and the framework is there you have to customize the information the content but we show you an example there's lots of ways to do this great great so if you're gonna grind out this thing for like two days three days you might want to do it a little bit early okay that's all alright okay was this helpful to you it was okay yeah great so it went a little bit different than I thought you guys it went a little different in that I thought we're actually gonna go into the nitty-gritty but we're not there yet because we don't know what we're bidding on and so it's impossible for me to advise but I can give you the best advice that I can which is to learn to ask really smart questions upfront so that you don't walk away from the meeting not knowing what you need to know that you make the clients feel comfortable that your knowledge will demonstrate your knowledge build rapport and make it seem super easy that's it hmm okay thanks for tuning in for this episode you guys hopefully hopefully will do many more of these things and I'm sure we're going to learn along with Rebecca thanks very much [Music] [Applause] [Music]