Earlier today I stumbled upon an old article from A List Apart – Cheaper Over Better: Why Clients Settle For Less
In the article Adam Schumacher discusses the rather depressing fact that small businesses looking to hire-in web design services will very often choose the lowest bid, regardless of the relative merits of the different proposals they receive. They will opt for whoever can build them a site for the least amount of money.
At nb communication we have certainly lost contracts in the past to lower-priced competitors, despite their offering being significantly inferior. This is a real pain, and it can be incredibly dispiriting to put a lot of effort in to a proposal only to discover that all the effort was wasted.
I have been giving this matter a lot of thought recently and I am becoming more and more of the opinion that there is actually a very simple solution: don’t bid for work from clients who are not fully committed to the web.
Obviously this raises a new problem – how can you tell which clients are serious and which are not?
Luckily it gets easier over time to sort out the ‘good’ clients from the ‘bad’ ones. A key part of this is to ask plenty of questions to gauge their committment to ‘doing things properly’. In particular, don’t be afraid to ask a client what their budget is. There is no point in you spending any time at all on creating a proposal if the client is not willing to spend more than, say, fifty pounds on the entire project.
Remember, it is perfectly alright to say “Thank you for invitating us to bid on your project. On this occasion, we have decided not to submit a bid. We wish you all the best.”
Having said all this, it is important not to dismiss potential clients who would be open to learning why paying for a real professional will reap reqards in the end. It is usually worthwhile to spend time educating these clients about what differentiates you, a web professional, from their next-door neighbour’s nephew.
Written in July 2001, the A List Apart article is still entirely relevant. I suggest that you check it out
