One of the liveliest discussions on the CFC LinkedIn Group at the moment is on the ever-debated issue of getting the budget from your client before you respond to an RFP (Request for Proposal) and/or write a proposal. Here's the question that was asked:
Do you think it's appropriate to ask a company you've received an RFP from to disclose their budget?
My company just spent HOURS on an extensive response to an RFP for web development and ongong marketing support. I was just notified that the project was awarded to another company because their pricing "was within the planned budget." It doesn't seem fair to me to request so much effort when we have no idea that there IS a planned budget. Of course we're going to give our best recommendations. If we know ahead of time what the budget is, we can recommend an approach that fits within that budget. What are your experiences with this?
Read the 27 responses (and counting!) here and add your own here or on LI.
And if you need examples of real proposals of all kinds of proposals, check out the Proposal Bundle for Designers here.
A client will always have a lower-than-expected budget, even if he affords to increase it.
What he doesn't visualize, is the influence of the work that will be done with that budget.
So the designer shouldn't limit himself by asking about the budget, but do his best, and hint that everything can be adjusted according to the budget.
So many time's I've done things that were out of the budget scope of a client, but the outcome of the work encouraged him to increase it.