How We Write Proposals in My Design Studio

AS THE HEAD of a newish design studio, I spend a fair amount of time writing proposals. And here’s how I like to do it.

I do it like a conversation, and that’s how we start: with phone calls and emails to one or two key decision makers, followed by a research period of about two to three weeks. And when I say research, what I’m really talking about — besides the usual competitive analysis, analytics, and testing — is even more conversations, but this time with a wider net of stakeholders and customers.

Some studios do this for free, and other studios only do it if the client has signed off on a huge project and paid the first big deposit. But we do this research for a fee. A small, reasonable, consulting fee. If the client then hires us to do the job, we deduct the research fee from the project cost. If they don’t, they’ve gained a lot of great information at a fair cost. (So far, they’ve never not hired us to go on and do the project.)

LEARN MORE...