A Free Guide To Freelance Proposals (How To Get Clients To Beg You

It’s a cruel business world out there: you’ve got to give to get. And if you’re a new freelancer, it can be hard to even know where to start. That’s why we decided to write this comprehensive guide on how to write the perfect freelance proposal. So let us dust off your shoulders and get you ready for your shining moment in the sun

You’re a freelancer. You’ve done the research, have a great idea, and know that you can add value to your prospective client’s project. So now what?

A proposal is one of the most important documents in your business. A successful proposal will not only secure you a client but also put you on their radar for future projects and it all starts with knowing how to write one. 

In this guide, we’ll cover everything from understanding what makes a good freelance proposal to creating one from scratch using our easy-to-follow templates (this part is optional).

Takeaways
1. Master the art of writing persuasive freelance proposals.
2. Tailor your proposals to showcase your unique expertise.
3. Clearly communicate the value you bring to the client.
4. Highlight your relevant experience and past successes.
5. Stand out from the competition with creative proposals.
6. Be proactive and follow up on your proposals politely.
7. Continuously improve your proposal writing skills.
8. Build strong relationships with clients for repeat work.
9. Stay organized and track your proposal submissions.
10. Prioritize client needs and provide solutions in proposals.

Why Are Proposals Important?

If you’re looking to find freelance clients, proposals are one of the best ways to showcase your work and show that you’re serious about working with a client.

Your proposal is an opportunity to show your expertise in a particular field. If a potential client sees that you know what you are talking about when it comes to their business, then they will be more likely to hire you as their freelancer. 

A well-crafted proposal also shows that you take pride in what you do and it can help convince clients (or potential ones) that hiring someone like yourself would be beneficial for them!

Building a successful freelance career starts with writing persuasive proposals. Check out our Definitive Guide to Freelance Proposals to learn essential tips and techniques for crafting winning proposals that will impress clients and land you more projects.

What Makes A Great Proposal?

Do you want to know what makes a great proposal? It’s not one thing, but all of the above.

The most important thing is to make sure your proposal is well-researched so that you can present your client with solutions that work for them. 

This may mean reading up on the company’s history and mission statement, or simply doing a Google search for keywords like “proposal” or “bid.” If you’re not doing the research before writing your proposal, you’ll likely miss something crucial about their needs and end up wasting both of your time by presenting solutions that don’t meet those needs.

Common Problems With Proposals And How To Solve Them

You wouldn’t send someone a 50-page book of your work, would you? Most freelancers don’t want to put in the time and effort to read through proposals that are 10 pages long.

Being Too Complex

From our research, we found that most proposals were too long. Clients don’t have time to read through several pages of information they don’t need. If your proposal is over 3 pages long, it might be too much information for one person to digest at once.

As a freelancer, knowing how to write an effective proposal is crucial. Our comprehensive guide on How to Write an Effective Freelance Proposal will equip you with the skills and strategies to create compelling proposals that stand out and increase your chances of getting hired.

Not Being Clear Enough

A lot of freelancers also struggled with being unclear about their services or what they can do for clients with their skillset. 

A good example would be a copywriter who doesn’t mention words like SEO or conversion rate optimization (CRO) in his description because he doesn’t think those are part of his job description – but what if the client wants those things included? By not mentioning them upfront, he’s already lost some business!

Step 1 – Setup Your Process Flowchart

First, you’ll want to create a visual representation of the work you do and the steps it takes to get there. In this case, we’re creating a proposal for new clients, so our first step is “Client Qualification.”

We then continue down the list of steps with “Proposal Development” and “Proposal Delivery”. Finally, we end with “Client Acceptance,” which is where they either accept or decline our proposal. If they accept, then boom! You have yourself a new client!

Step 2 – Understand Your Client’s Personality Types And Their Goals

You need to understand your client’s personality type and goals before you can do anything. Understanding your client’s personality type will help you write copy that resonates with them, but understanding their goals is essential to writing good proposals. 

If we’re talking about a business owner, for example, it might be important for them to have more clients or make more money or reduce costs. 

Knowing this allows you to create a proposal that addresses those specific needs in a way that makes sense for the client and makes it clear how they’ll benefit from working with you (more on this later).

Now that we’ve covered the basics of knowing who our clients are and why they hire freelancers like us let’s move on to step 3!

Step 3 – Gather Information & Research

The third step in the process is to gather information and research. This is a very important step, and it can get complicated. 

You need to understand your client’s goals, their personality type, their budget, their timeline, their needs (both long-term and short-term), who they are competing against in this market segment…and on top of all that you also need to understand their strengths and weaknesses as well as what kind of culture they have within the company you want to work for.

The last thing you want is for someone to start talking about something that isn’t applicable or relevant based on some assumption about what interests them. 

Even if you only spend 20 minutes doing research into each potential client before making an offer proposal that’s still 20 minutes more than most freelancers will spend!

Step 4 – Write Copy That Persuades And Converts

It’s time to write your proposal. This is where you introduce yourself, state the purpose of your work, and explain what you plan to do. This is also where your persuasive copywriting skills come into play.

Your goal here should be to make the client feel as though they will benefit from hiring you. If a client reads a proposal and thinks “I don’t need this”, they probably aren’t going to hire you. If a client reads a proposal and thinks “Wow! 

This person knows exactly what we need!”, they probably are going to hire you. You want them thinking all those things so that their decision becomes an easy one – hire us because it makes sense for our business!

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Step 5 – Create A Design That Matches Their Personality Type And Needs

Now that you’ve created a brilliant design and written a pitch that will make them want to hire you, it’s time to make sure the design matches their personality type.

First, let’s talk about what makes up a good design. The first thing I tell people is that “design is like beauty it’s in the eye of the beholder” (a quote from my friend Dan). This means that your design can be beautiful and different from someone else’s but still be effective at what it needs to do: attract attention and convert clients into paying customers. 

The key here is that you want to create a visual representation of your brand (your logo) as well as create content (like social media posts) that reinforces this message so clients see themselves working with YOU based on their desires or goals for their business.

The next step is getting clients comfortable with how much work goes into creating professional-looking designs for each client based on their personality type/needs/goals/preferences etc… 

This can be done by showing examples such as websites where they might see similar colors used along with logos from other companies within similar industries who share commonalities with those companies already using these colors. 

This helps them realize they aren’t alone in having these preferences thus making them more likely consider what kind of color scheme would work best for their company too!

Step 6 – Value Pricing Vs Hourly Rates (And How To Determine The Right Rate For You)

If you have a lot of experience and can show the client what they will get from working with you, then value pricing should be a no-brainer. If you’re new and need to prove your worth (or if your skills are more technical), then hourly rates might be the way to go.

In general, I recommend setting your hourly rate somewhere between $75 to $150 per hour for most freelancers. This range is usually enough to ensure that most clients won’t try to negotiate down from it but not so high that they reject it outright because of budget constraints.

If this sounds like what fits into your budget and business model, don’t forget about our free guide on how much money freelance writers make!

Step 7 – Setting Deadlines And Milestones

Set deadlines for yourself. You probably already have a schedule in place, but if not, now is the time to create one.

Set deadlines for your clients. If you don’t set a deadline for your client, they won’t know when they should expect their project to be completed and it will cause you to stress knowing that they are expecting something from you that isn’t there yet.

Set milestones for your client. 

Just as important as setting deadlines is setting milestones for your clients so that everyone is on the same page about what needs to happen during their project and when those events should occur to get everything finished by the end date specified in paragraph 2 above (you can use Google Calendar or Trello or whatever system works best).

Set milestones for yourself – this step ties into planning ahead which we talked about earlier: make sure all of these things are done at least 24 hours before each deadline date so that there aren’t any last-minute hiccups!

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Step 8 – Using Terms And Conditions To Protect Yourself From Late Payments Or Bad Clients

As an independent contractor, you are responsible for the work that you have promised to provide. You are not responsible for other people’s failure to pay on time (unless they have entered into a contract with you).

However, this doesn’t mean that there aren’t any steps you can take to protect yourself from late payments or bad clients who don’t want to pay at all!

Create a contract template and make sure it includes:

• Terms and conditions

• Payment schedule details (including how long before payment is due)

• Cancellation policy details (what happens if someone cancels?)

• Include these items in every proposal sent out

Step 9 – Closing The Deal (The Proposal Followup)

Once you’ve set up the meeting or call, it’s time to send your proposal follow-up email.

Here’s a template that I use all the time:

Hi NAME! Thanks for taking the time to chat with me yesterday about my proposal. I’m looking forward to working with you on this project! 🙂 For us to move forward with everything, can I just get one final confirmation from you? 

The email address that we discussed in our call will receive a Google Calendar invite on DATE at TIME (EST/PST). 

This meeting is only for getting more information about what we’d be working on together and making sure everyone is still interested in going forward; no commitments should be made during this meeting. 

If something comes up between now and then, please let me know ASAP so we can reschedule or adjust accordingly. All right thanks again! Hope to hear from you soon!

Freelance proposals are a great marketing tool to showcase your best work, provide value and sell more of it. This guide will show you how.

Proposals are a great marketing tool for freelancers. When a client has decided to work with you, the proposal is where you can showcase your best work, provide value and sell more of it.

This guide will show you how to create a proposal that gets clients begging for it.

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Conclusion

You’ve just written your first proposal. Your client is sure to love it, and your business is about to take off! But before you hit “send,” take a step back and think about how you can make it even better. 

Every client is different, so don’t be afraid to tweak the sections of your proposal that are most important to them. For example, if they have a particular budget in mind or an unusual timeline that’s especially tight, you may want to spend more time talking about those aspects of their project. 

Or if you’re doing work for a multinational company with offices around the world, showing how much experience you have with projects like theirs can help sell them on working together. Remember: It never hurts to ask for more information from potential clients before sending a proposal!

Further Reading

The Freelancer’s Guide to Crafting Irresistible Project Proposals: Learn expert tips and techniques to create project proposals that stand out and attract clients.

How I Write Proposals That Win as Many Freelance Clients as I Want: Discover the winning strategies to write effective proposals that consistently bring in new freelance clients.

Writing Proposals as a Freelancer: Tips and Tricks: Get valuable insights and tricks for writing successful proposals that help freelancers secure more projects.

Frequently Asked Questions

How Do I Know If My Proposal Is Good Enough?

This is a really common question, and it’s such an important one! There are a few things you can do to evaluate your proposal and make sure it’s as strong as possible. You can look at other proposals in your industry, see what they’re doing, and see if there are any ways you could improve on what they’re already doing.

What Should I Put In My Proposal?

In terms of content, the more information you give clients about what they can expect from working with you, the better. The more clear and detailed you can be about your services, timelines, or even just general questions like “What do you need help with?” the better off everyone will be.

How Long Should A Freelance Proposal Be?

As long as it needs to be! In terms of length, make sure that every section of your proposal is necessary for a potential client to make an informed decision about whether or not they want to hire you.

How Can I Get Clients To Beg Me To Take Their Projects?

You can’t. Clients don’t beg people to work for them. That’s not how it works.

What If I’m Good At Writing? Can That Help?

Yes, it can. But you will still have to be very clear about what you deliver and how much it costs.

So It’s All About The Proposal Then?

Yes! A well-written proposal is what makes a client realize they need you and no one else. It’s also what makes them trust you enough to give you their hard-earned money.

Is It Possible To Get Clients To Beg You?

Yes, absolutely! We’ve found that if you follow the steps in this guide, you can get clients to beg you for your services.

Why Do I Have To Do All This Stuff When I’m Supposed To Be A Freelancer? Isn’t It Just About Being Creative?

Being creative is important, but if you don’t also know how to market yourself and your business, then no one will ever know about all the wonderful things you’re creating. That’s why we’re here to help you make sure that all of your hard work doesn’t go unnoticed!