Client: Can you do this for us?
You: Yup! (with much enthusiasm)
Client: How long have you been in business again?
You: Uhm…

That’s not the answer your client wants to hear but you don’t want to lie either, lying might just get you into trouble. Should this send you back to applying for a job again? NO, it shouldn’t! The message you want to get across is “Yes, I’m fairly new BUT I CAN DO IT!” Now the problem is that the message doesn’t get across through words like “uhm…”. Solution? Embed it inside your product.

You might not believe it but the rate of success is almost a hundred percent. And as far as my experience is concerned, nobody turned my proposal down… but only when I brought the product first.

When I was at Pilita’s Restaurant in Greenhills, I saw that their menu board was quite a design disaster and not a really good match for the cozy place. I’m not an expert but I’m sure I could do better design than that so instead of going straight to Carlos (Pilita’s husband, the chef and owner of the resto) I planned my way to get the menu board design project. Normally you’d go looking for supplies with the lowest price, see how much time you’d spend with it and compute it against your rates, and draft a good looking proposal… to hell with that! First of all that’s too much time just to get rejected, trust me it’s quite frustrating. Secondly, a well-drafted proposal doesn’t get your real message to your client and it’s “I CAN DO IT” and you even lose the chance to say it when they see your price! By this time I was busy with other projects I was working with so I gave this opportunity to my wife who happily accepted it (take note, the project is still not ours by this time). It took two days to produce the actual menu board and guess what, we got the project instantly! His only comment was that the food photos was not his, now that’s so minor for a revision! We are just waiting for the photo shoot and we’ll be done with it.

This was actually the second time I applied the idea, the first time was with Tim Bennett’s motivational books collection CD which gave me the idea actually. When I attended one of his seminars, He gave us a free CD which looks crap! (Sorry Tim). However, when I opened it, I was blown away by the content. Some of it I was actually looking for. But it didn’t show in the packaging. I suddenly saw an opportunity, I can improve it in a way that it would sell. So I went producing the cover, the cd interface and the case. And the response was instant, “If you want the project, you got it” he said.

These are just some of the results but I used this idea several times and it hasn’t failed me ever as of this writing! If you still doubt it why don’t you give it a try? Competition? There are no competition, not much people use this approach.

This would take a lot of effort on your part since you have to work as if the project was already awarded to you. Added to that is the risk that you might still not get the project. But based on results, it’s worth all the effort. Now you have their actual product right before their eyes as if saying “I’m fairly new BUT I CAN DO IT and I’ll do it like this!” There are two major components of this approach, seeing the opportunity and action.

Seeing The Opportunity
You have to look at things differently. Whenever you see something and you hear yourself whisper, “I can do better than this”, you are actually seeing an opportunity, you just have to add “and I’ll prove it” on the whisper and it’s almost complete.

Action
As Steve Pavlina would put it, “It’s only action that produces results” so unless you do something about your statement earlier you won’t get anywhere. So shut your mouth and let your product do the talking.

I hope this with all the other tips get you started soon!

ONWARDS!