The proposal that wins by saying what you won't do

“We've been burned by people who said yes to everything. We wanted someone who'd tell us what's a bad idea.”

That sentence decides more deals than a portfolio does.

The proposal it usually kills is twelve pages long: scope, phases, deliverables, a slide for every service line, three case studies. The one that wins is four pages, and one of those pages lists what the studio will not do.

Why “we can do that” loses

A proposal that promises everything reads as one of two things.

A menu. Twelve pages, a slide per service line, every capability you own. It hands the client forty line items to compare across three vendors, and nothing that says which vendor thought about their problem.

Untested risk. The fear in the room is what happens when the project goes wrong. A supplier who has ruled nothing out has never had that conversation with a client watching.

Specific refusals are the cheapest evidence of judgement on offer. They cost one page and one afternoon.

Three refusals worth writing down

A “limitations” section reads as an apology with a heading. Skip it, and put each refusal where it does work.

One. What this project excludes, and why.

This is a rebuild of the checkout flow. The account area is out of scope, even though those screens look dated: changing both at once makes it impossible to tell which change moved conversion.

That paragraph does two jobs. It explains the exclusion, and it shows the client you have run this project before.

Two. What you will refuse during the project.

If we reach week three and the scope is still moving, I will stop and we will re-plan. I would rather have that conversation than deliver late.

This is the paragraph that decides deals, because it describes a hard week with you before the client has bought one.

Three. Who this is not for.

This works for teams of five to twenty who already ship weekly. If decisions need three approvals, the cycle time here will frustrate everyone.

You will lose deals with that paragraph. The deals you lose had three approvers and a weekly status meeting, and they were going to be miserable.

What to cut

The refusals only land if the rest of the document is short.

• The service menu. They asked for a price. Describe the project and stop.
• Case studies of a different shape. One relevant example does more than three impressive ones. A fintech logo does nothing for a client rebuilding a checkout.
• The “about us” page. Move it to the end or delete it. Founding stories do not win freelance work.

Four pages

1. What I understand you are trying to do, in your words (three sentences)
2. What this project includes (five bullets)
3. What it excludes, and why
4. Order of work, timeline, and what I need from you
5. Price, with payment terms attached
6. What happens if it goes wrong

Six sections. Nothing about the company.

Deciding first

Writing a refusal forces a decision about the work before anyone asks for one. Most people cannot make that decision in an afternoon. Twelve pages is what they write instead, and the client reads all twelve looking for the one thing the vendor believes.

The four-page proposal takes longer to write. Every sentence in it has already been argued with, by the person sending it.

Next week: what your hourly rate doesn't include.