Putting together a proposal for a customer is time consuming.
Even putting together a proposal for the smallest of developments can take many hours. The larger the website or the larger the client the more costly the process becomes.
Quotes for corporates can be a particular nightmare, the process can go on for months and involve many meetings.
One proposal springs to mind where the requirement was relatively simple and from the initial brief it was obvious that we could complete the development in under 2 weeks.
However the selection process the corporate had put in place for choosing the development team went on for ever.
It required an initial proposal, followed by a selection meeting, The corporate then chose their favourite 3 development companies from the initial 7 that they had started with.
The final 3 were invited back in again for round two.
All had to provide a revised proposal along with another boardroom presentation. Then a finalisation of requirement and back in again to present another proposal to the Directors. This process took over 6 months. The calculated time for putting together the proposal was a lot longer than the actual time on development would have been.
We bowed out gracefully after round one.
The problem with lengthy proposals, is that if you don't win the quote, the costs have to be spread over the ones that you do win and you find your quotes start shooting up dramatically.
We are now very cautious before pitching to corporates for these reasons.
By being a bit more selective with who we do enter quote, you will be pleased to hear that we now win most of the work we quote for.
Beecause of this we are able to keep our prices down and our percentage of conversions high.
It's a win win situation for us and our clients!
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