Take your 15K and burn it. 

Why your RFQ will get you a bad website and what to do about it.

Just so we’re clear — this is a positive post and I’m in a good mood today. This is not a grumble but a celebration of being in a good place and not having to compromise on good process. Got that — read on.

If you’ve ever worked for an old school Ad agency you’ll be familiar with the story. You get the request for quote or pitch invite. You receive a brief and you spend hours / days / weeks brainstorming ideas trying to win the work. It’s a gamble. When the rules are simple and the methods are tried and tested this is ok. It’s also appropriate if your potential client has done their homework and knows the process. It’s also fine if you can afford the time. In the world of digital media these methods for choosing a new supplier are simply not valid.

It’s worth prefacing this post with an outline of how we win our work. We spend a lot of time getting to know people in business and ensuring we build our visibility and credibility. We network, I do public speaking, we offer free training we do volunteering and we take our marketing seriously. We have a reputation for awesome digital work and thats why we have good sales and plenty of clients. We’re also a small, young and hungry team and we have to manage time and cash-flow carefully. We are not a multi million dollar agency.

We’re not unique. Most good digital agencies are very similar in size with similar commercial constraints.

The point : Last week we received an email form a fresh prospect inviting us to tender for a website. Stated budget — 15K. Now for some agencies thats a lot and for some it’s a little. Either way lets consider what the correct approach to a new client should be and how it conflicts with what was being asked for by this client.

The brief contained a lot of useful information and lets face it the client was in an easy to understand industry — Read the full article