Loren, I was listening to (and loving) this week's podcast and I could directly relate to Sarah's dilemma with companies ghosting her after a pitch. Possible solution...
As Sarah mentioned, preparing a proposal for a prospect is fairly costly and the post-pitch ghosting can be quite frustrating. I was a marketing consultant for over 10 years and a few years ago, at the recommendation of some peers, I started charging for my proposals. If a company wanted me to look at their marketing plan and come up with a strategy or ad campaign, I would charge a minimum of $1500 for the proposal and that amount would be credited towards my services if I won the contract.
My reasoning was that if a company was serious about evaluating my services, they would understand the value of the proposal and would be willing to pay one or more agencies/consultants to pitch them. This worked very well for me.
So, this is just an idea that might be a good compromise solution for Sarah for new prospects = it compensates her company for the time/effort of the pitch and weeds out the tire-kickers and idea-stealers.
(BTW, as Sarah mentioned, some unscrupulous business owners use the agency pitch process to gather free marketing ideas with no intention of hiring an agency. This is hopefully only a small number, but it happened to me a few times and I even heard some companies bragging about their shrewdness in doing this lol.)
Anyway, keep up the great content and doing what you do!
Loren, I was listening to (and loving) this week's podcast and I could directly relate to Sarah's dilemma with companies ghosting her after a pitch. Possible solution...
As Sarah mentioned, preparing a proposal for a prospect is fairly costly and the post-pitch ghosting can be quite frustrating. I was a marketing consultant for over 10 years and a few years ago, at the recommendation of some peers, I started charging for my proposals. If a company wanted me to look at their marketing plan and come up with a strategy or ad campaign, I would charge a minimum of $1500 for the proposal and that amount would be credited towards my services if I won the contract.
My reasoning was that if a company was serious about evaluating my services, they would understand the value of the proposal and would be willing to pay one or more agencies/consultants to pitch them. This worked very well for me.
So, this is just an idea that might be a good compromise solution for Sarah for new prospects = it compensates her company for the time/effort of the pitch and weeds out the tire-kickers and idea-stealers.
(BTW, as Sarah mentioned, some unscrupulous business owners use the agency pitch process to gather free marketing ideas with no intention of hiring an agency. This is hopefully only a small number, but it happened to me a few times and I even heard some companies bragging about their shrewdness in doing this lol.)
Anyway, keep up the great content and doing what you do!