Pat’s Point of View

I read with interest, Any Rutlidge’s post on Pre-Bid Discussions. You see, Andy was invited to bid for some work but decided not to do so after an enlightening discussion with his potential client, in which he got a good sense for the project timeline, the nature of the work and whether or not it is work he even wanted to do.

To others, these concerns might seem ridiculous, because for some agencies and freelancers the only relevant pre-bid concerns are 1) is there a slight possibility that I can do the work? and 2) can the client pay? For these folks, nothing else is relevant to pre-bid discussion. The likely result of this foolish approach is a succession of nightmare projects with only periodic success, and a stressed-out and unhappy life and/or staff as the norm.

I know exactly what he means. There have been quite a few times I have wondered why we—the agency I was working for—were even involved in some projects. But in recent years, I’m happy to say that there was more careful consideration given to the work that was taken on, particularly which tenders and RFCs to respond to. In fact, my ex-colleague Cairo Walker developed a set of criteria, or questions to be asked of clients, for this very purpose. (Perhaps this knod her way will entice her to post her thoughts on the subject!)

I like Andy’s approach, but I think many organisations will come face to face with the issue of branding. Not the pretty logo they use but who they are and what they want to achieve—their values. Without a clear sense of this, determining whether a potential client is in-line with your brand will be difficult. The logistics such as budget and schedule can be assessed

All in all, I would recommend we all do more of this vetting, whilst fully admitting that I’m not the best when it comes to this; I have a terribly bad habit of attempting to diligently do whatever anyone asks!

This entry was posted on Wednesday, May 28th, 2008 at 3:33 pm and is filed under Consulting. If you enjoyed this post, you might also like to leave a comment or follow @patrickkennedy on Twitter.

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About the author

Patrick Kennedy is a user experience strategist and design researcher based in Sydney Australia. He leads research activities that improve the user experience of cross-channel products and services; helping both designers and business decision makers in bringing those products and services to fruition. Read more.