[consulting] Getting Freelance Work

[Sam Cohen]

I'm guessing most of you already know this, but for those who don't, having
been involved on the other end of the RFP process for a number of
nonprofits, my experience has shown me that lots of organizations put out
RFPs for show -- for political and/or legal purposes -- because they have to
and have already decided on a vendor beforehand.

So for a lot of RFPs it doesn't matter how good your bid is or whether you
are a shop or freelancer, nothing you do is going to get you the job.

Sam
http://samcohen.com

On Tue, Jun 1, 2010 at 10:10 AM, <skessler at denverdataman.com> wrote:

> You say that you were number two...sorry to be blunt but who cares. There
> is no consolation prize for the first runner up. The goal has to be to win
> the RFP.
>
> We do go after some government RFPs but only when we think we have a skill
> set we can use to differentiate ourselves or we know people involved in the
> review. The blind process is hard and asking the right questions during the
> Q&A is vital.
>
> We have won some busines/nonprofit  RFPs where we have seen a listing on
> some of the boards we are on.
>
> That said as a small company relationships are our core marketing tool.
> People do business with people they know like and trust. That means that we
> build strong relationships in local business organizations like the Chamber
> of Commerce. These "friends" then connect us with the organizations that
> they are a part of.
>
> The question how much free spec work to do is a good one. We are not
> bidding on a local city site because they want three full mockups and more
> just for the bid. We can't do that.
>
> The next RFP question is what you do to get work in the first place. Its
> hard to show you can do it. We work with other development shops for our
> codding talent so this can be a liability as well but we have been working
> on ways to mitigate that. Vote for my session with Andy Walters on this
> topic for Drupal Camp Colorado to learn more.
>
> One last issue I want to raise is that many of the government contracts
> have massive auto insurance burdens even for web development. We have found
> ourselves having to factor this in and watching our prices go up
> accordingly.
>
> Hope this ads some vale to the conversation.
>
> Thanks,
> Steve
> Sent on the Sprint® Now Network from my BlackBerry®
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Sami Khan <sami at etopian.net>
> Date: Tue, 01 Jun 2010 07:48:11
> To: A list for Drupal consultants and Drupal service/hosting providers<
> consulting at drupal.org>
> Subject: Re: [consulting] Getting Freelance Work
>
> > "Dude, I am far better than anyone
> > else you will find, so just hire me."
>
> that's going on my next business card.
>
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