Excellent point Maria about asking for a budget range first. I always try to do that. ESPECIALLY for jobs I know may tak half an afternoon to write a proposal. Don’t want to spend all that time for nothing. And you’re also right about client budgets sometimes being bigger than you may have imagined. It’s like in negotiating…it’s always best to let the other person give his or her number first.

Thanks for the comment.

My brother used to sell appliances for department store and whenever a customer went up to him and said “I need to buy a washing machine” his first question was usually “what’s your budget or how much were you hoping to spend?” That was it, customer always answered without hesitation and he would show them the best washer he could within that price range. One time in my early years I had someone ask me how much would it cost to produce a cooking video and I just had a feeling I was going to spend a lot of time working on a proposal that she in the end was going to say “this is too much”. So instead I asked what her budget was and she hesitated, I gave her the washing machine example (I probably would never do that again at least using that specific example) and she said oh okay it’s $1500…which was two times bigger than what I assumed she had. So I try to figure out what people’s budgets are so I have real numbers to work with but of course many times they won’t share unless you can get them to understand you are truly on their side. Great blog Ron.