Proposals are a waste of time instead an agreement should be signed how about that?
I strongly disagree. Hey there! Have you ever wondered what a client proposal is?
If they're relevant or just a big waste of time? In this video we're going to find out
all the answers to these questions and more with a fun interview with Eddie of Cling Digital,
a successful growth marketing agency. Eddie is ready to share his insights and expertise
from his first-hand experience in sales. So stay tuned! You don't want to miss this.
Thank you Anna. Today we're joined by Eddie Lee, the owner and operator of Cling Digital. How
are you doing today Eddie? I'm doing good, thank you. Thanks for having me. Thanks for your time
and well before we start why don't you give us a little bit of an introduction about your
agency and your general overall experience in sales. Yeah, so we're a startup agency
and our focus is mainly on traffic, so doing SEO and PPC but we also do some web work too. So
we get, you know client requests for doing websites and things like that and WordPress.
Mainly WordPress based. Oh cool, I want to play a little game, a simple game that's called
agree - disagree so basically what we did is searched the internet on platforms like YouTube,
Quora, Reddit and tons of dedicated sales related blogs to see what sales and business professionals
think about client proposals as a general overall business tactic. Right now we've got six questions
or should I say statements that I want to discuss with you. So you gotta, you're gonna grade it from
on the scale from strongly agree to strongly disagree. Of course they can be
somewhere in the middle, you can just agree or be in the middle let's say. So the first question is
or rather a statement make sure you talk about price before you put together a proposal. Now
where do you stand on this one? I strongly agree. Okay could you elaborate a little bit? Yeah so
if I get like an inquiry and then it's to book a meeting and then uh it's
the initial meeting with the client uh then I'll always like to especially if it's face to face to
just gauge the ballpark uh budget so I'd like to throw the number and
based on their needs of course, you know first seeing what they want what their expectations are,
what they want, what their expectations are and then I'll give them a ballpark.
Do you give a range or an assessed number? One assessed number. Yeah I would give a range
I'll give a range and I would give them like on the low end of that range what that would
basically include for example how many pages uh to, you know the high end which would be let's say
you know a five-page brochure to a 10-page, that's more in-depth about them to like a 20 page with
multiple location, you know if it's a multiple location client then I'll give them a range.
Okay awesome, next up including the ROI is one of the key parts in client proposals. Do you agree?
That one I'm more on the disagree part of the needle. Okay and I'll say it depends sometimes
it's important like so for example if included in the package for example if I took a look already
at their analytics and and I can see that they already have an X amount of traffic
and I take and I have a good conversation with them, a realistic conversation with
them about their sales fulfillment so if they know how many leads they can close
out of X amount of leads they they can close an X amount of done deals. So the more
metrics that I have and also the more that they're going to employ me for like am I
going to be setting up the conversion tracking for them? and uh how much of it am I going to
be tracking for them? Like it is they just want to get phone calls, they just want to get form leads
or a chat then that's one thing I'll deliver on a certain amount of uh of uh you know X leads right
but if they're going to also be tracking a booking and also tracking like say the on board and after
uh then I can give them a bit a better number of their ROI, so yeah some clients though I
absolutely will not give any type of ROI because it's like, for example, a startup
right and why is that just because there's so many unknown variables. Oh right yeah, there's unknown
variables and actually I can give you just a real quick, like I can't show you like well,
actually it's not showing up but this is a quote here I mean the range is from 33 to 60 to 70k
and um but there's no mention of ROI. It's difficult to measure success
in startups right? And this is for a startup so exactly what you just said.
That would be my take on that. Okay let's go to the next one. Oh this is a good one,
so proposals are a waste of time instead an agreement should be signed. How about that?
I strongly disagree and yeah and just because the proposal is it's a stage right so and and so
our sales cycle, the proposal is a, it's an important stage because then I can gauge
how many proposals are out and how many are closed so even if it's just, I mean, it doesn't have
to be a fancy PowerPoint or something so for smaller clients you know it could be an email
with just bullet points right, so you're getting five pages, you're getting a contact form,
you're getting chat set up , even sometimes with some clients it'll be how many folds
are in each page so just the basics, very very basics and then the price and also delivery,
like you mentioned at the beginning, so the time frame, you know this will be a good two weeks
and and then there's you know how many revisions just in bullet points so
yeah. Yeah amazing, great, to the next one. I think I found this somewhere on Quora.
This one is definitely something that prevents a lot of agencies from sending proposals.
Curious what you think about it. So it says don't send proposals because clients
can use your ideas to work with other competitors, with your competition.
Is it paranoia or a legitimate concern? I would say that's more near towards paranoia
but it could be a legitimate concern to you so I'd be somewhere in the middle, sorry
somewhere in the middle. Right, I think it's down to the the rep, the salesperson or the consultant
to initially gauge that from the client and and then also I'll add to that too, I mean a lot of
legitimate clients they'll be up front saying that look we're talking with this company,
we're talking with this company so I already know who they're talking with like they're being open
about it right and so if that's the case then I'm fine with, you know giving them my pricing and
what it's included in because it's going to help them in their decision at the end of the day.
So I want them to be clear in their head that this is going to be this type of a site,
you know I'll mention 10Web for example right, so I'll say look
I can decrease your cost greatly, you don't have to have an in-house WP specialist for you know
speed optimization for all. You don't have to have all these plugins right so I'll show them,
you know you don't have to have all these books. Now they can do that
with the next guy and say look we want to use this as a host you know that's fine you know it but at
least I gave them some value and at least I told them I gave them a direction and nine times out
of ten if it's a really good client then they'll appreciate that. I still appreciate that yeah, so
yeah it's like I'll just as a quick example I know you guys have a white label yeah but I'd rather be
an affiliate because, you know I could just show them. I say hey, look, you know this is who I use,
I'm being transparent about it and it'll save you a lot of money right, so for 10 bucks a month
you get a specialist, then I'll show them too. I'll say look if you have a problem I'll deal with
the support but, you know they'll go in, they'll optimize your site right they'll do the tweets so
that's just an example. So this next one is seemingly a practical piece of advice, it says
highest paying clients never read long proposals so keep your proposal short.
I guess it's difficult not to agree right, I would agree.
Strongly agree. Strongly right. Yeah also the highest paying clients often it's
not going to be one decision maker so you'll get like the CEO, the finance person
and another person so it's got to be simple enough that they all understand,
right yeah and and then sometimes I've done it before where I've just typed the way I've typed
away all this stuff and and then you just get a whole bunch of questions from
this guy from the, you know the finance person right the accountant doesn't get it,
the marketing person gets it right and the marketing person actually wants the finance person
to get it but that person also has to get it and so yeah I think short simple is the way to go.
Right gotcha. And the last one I guess with your answer we'll uncover if you're
an old-school one or not. It says include a video as a part of your proposal. I okay, I'll
be very upfront with this. I've nibbled and dabbled with video enough close deals off of video,
so I'm not against it but
yeah I mean I but still at the same time sometimes I don't do video.
It depends on the client and what kind of clients do you think would require a video to
be convinced, you know I do that more for SEO
and PPC when I'm sending out something on that because then I can show them their competitors
but it would work with websites too because you go over the website I do that too, you know if
I show them the GT metrics it's easier to show them that, you know I just go to GT metrics, I put in
their website and then I say, look this is what's lagging right. I'm not going to
go into the details but look at your score, it's really low right so sometimes that makes an impact
but to be honest with you I don't do video much. I have done it but I don't do it much
and mainly just because I, you know sometimes I'm just on the go, I don't really
think about doing the video. I just, you know type something up and throw it at them, yeah
so somewhere in the. Yeah but if you would say agree or disagree?
Where would that be? I would say disagree, disagree yeah.
It's a lot of hustle right, a lot of hustle. Exactly, that's a lot of hustle.
Okay thank you very much. This was Eddie Li, the owner and operator of Cling Digital.
Eddie, thank you very much again for your time and take care! Okay, thank you bye, okay bye. Let
our Automated PageSpeed Booster improve your Page Speed Score and Core Web Vitals. Start for free, no
credit card required. Well, that was enlightening. Special thanks to our guest Eddie Lee of Cling
Digital for demystifying everything surrounding client proposals. We really appreciate your honesty,
Eddie. I learned a lot and hopefully you did as well. And the great thing is that the learning
doesn't have to stop here. Comment below and let us know your thoughts on the points and what topics
you would like us to cover next. Until then I'm Anna with 10Web and I'll see you next time.