Your clients do not hire your creative business because they NEED your art. They hire you because they WANT it. Even more to the point, they hire you on (blind) faith that you will deliver what you say you will. To secure the business, all you can do is try to form a relationship with them and let your portfolio, reputation and business process carry the day. What you cannot do is try to win it with a proposal.
Sending a proposal to get business can do nothing but create a hurdle of distrust between you and your client. How can you say what your art costs before you create it? Who is to say that what you can create for your proposal is something they will want and/or feel like they have received value for? What you are doing by earning business on the basis of a proposal is saying to your client: “trust me, I know what I am doing, you are going to love it.” Would you trust you after hearing that, with nothing of substance to back it up?
All clients have budgets. Your job is to meet, not beat, that budget. Win the business because you are the best artist for the client. Build trust by showing your client what you will do for their budget. You can and should receive a retainer to begin your process, but only as much as you need to cover your costs to create and present your work. Once your client sees and approves your art, then they will feel much more comfortable paying your fees. And, no, they do not get to take their design home with them unless they pay for it. Creating your design on spec is as bad as trying to win business with a proposal. Your art is all you have. Clients have to pay you to create it for them.
Your process has to be about building trust, not just assuming it as a given. If you give yourself the opportunity to present your art before you submit your proposal, you will have a much easier time justifying why you charge what you do. If your client does not like what you have created for them, they can walk away (without your design) and you have been paid enough to have made the exercise worthwhile. Better to suss out a wrong fit as early as possible than go down the road where you stand very little chance of being successful.
For those of you who say that that is just not the way it works, ask yourself how it got that way. Clients focus on what things cost because they have nothing else to go by – after all, who is to say what a room by Vicente Wolf or Laura Kirar is worth — certainly more than the cost of the goods in it. For the most part, when a client questions your price it is more a reflection that they do not trust you than it is an unwillingness to pay. Rather than give in to that distrust (i.e., negotiate your price), focus on the power of your art and your ability to demonstrate its value to your client before you ask them to pay for it.
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I agree with some things that you wrote, but not with others. I’m an event designer and am searching for a creative professional. Up to few months ago, I would have agreed with you 100%. But now? I can tell you that some clients are all right with no proposal, but I (as a client) am definitely NOT. Am I supposed to pay a fee for what? I want an explanation about why a designer needs to be paid a given amount for writing up a proposal which could potentially land him/her a project worth 10 times more. And they better be convincing! Any other professional on the planet would be asked to cough up a proposal (think about it as sampling food you don’t know in a store… you might love it and buy a lot more than 1 item ONLY IF you are given the opportunity to sample it beforehand)… and creative people are no different… Just like it works for everybody else they need to convince the client that their vision is the one that fits the most with the client’s needs (in terms of look, feel, AND budget). How is the client supposed to pay money just because? For example, an excellent portfolio doesn’t say how much a creative person is able to listen to the client vs stir the client his/her way. Also, a portfolio doesn’t say how cost effective the designer is. Some people, like me, just want quality… so I won’t pay for junk items no matter how cheap they are (the event design industry doesn’t seem to be ready for this LOL). Similarly, I won’t pay astronomical fees unless the designer’s work is astronomically beautiful. No matter what a person’s name is.
Sorry, don’t agree with this post Sean.
The fact is ,clients don’t want to pay for a proto-type or mock up of your designs. They want you to do it for free. It does not make sense to do this if you are an artist. So what if they don’t get to take your art home. It has still been created, products have still been used up in the creation. You can’t reuse those products. Your time is gone in the creation.
Your portfolio should demonstrate what “you are capable of”, your reputation should speak for itself. If many others trust you why shouldn’t the next client? I believe the deciding factor apart from the proposal is personality….does the client “like” you, feel like they can work with you, do they feel heard….this in the end is what the client will decide on apart from price. This does not mean low balling to get the contract but creating “value” in the mind of the client.
Sarina — definitely agree that you should NEVER create something for a client without being paid to do so. And we can certainly agree to disagree — clients (large and small) will pay for mock-ups — it gets to the bigger idea of transparency which is the subject of another post. Once they see what you have in mind for them, their trust in you skyrockets and the process can only get easier from there.
Sean, but clients DON’T want to pay for mock-ups. Not here anyway. Not in my experience. You can be transparent by describing designs explicitly, showing images that are similar and describing your changes and different design elements and creativity, or simple drawings in the consultation.
I do understand what you are trying to say, but for most in the creative industries it is not realistic. Sure, for the Preston Bailey’s the Vincente Wolf’s whose clientele is in a certain price bracket….those clients are willing to pay for mock- ups.
Hmmm….will agree to disagree…..for sure on this one 🙂
sean –
just wanted to say that your blog is TREMENDOUS! It is really the BEST blog I go to and I am so grateful for you being willing to take the time to share your insights. The posts are full of REAL knowledge and you have a real gift. I really hope that you continue to put so much energy into this blog and beyond. In my opinion – you are better than seth godin 😉 Or at least more applicable I suppose! Thanks so very much for ALL of your effort – I know I am grateful.
The following is my favorite sentence from this post:
“For the most part, when a client questions your price it is more a reflection that they do not trust you than it is an unwillingness to pay.”
Completely true !
Hi Sean.
Good points to consider. I’ll ponder your thoughts.
We won’t go so far as mocking up an entire table without consulting first, but maybe that is what your suggesting? I can see your logic IF it is a party I trully want.
I don’t know about the rest of the world but in my DC bubble it seems that the wealthy clients want your proposal by the end of the day, from 2 others as well, they are verbally agreeing to hire you but they are not depositing. Maybe the recession has hit the upperclass?
I love the trust building process Sean, if we spend as much time building as we do proposing we might find a few more deposited contracts in our files.
I love your blog Sean, thank you.
Thom