Evan Carmichael explains why he never writes proposals. Instead, build a marketing machine with expert content that makes clients seek you out. Start with a small project, overdeliver, then land bigger contracts. He landed work with Microsoft, Dell, and American Express this way.
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Why I don't write proposals. I got a great question from one of my Facebook readers. Love you guys. Rime, Rame, who wrote in to say, Evan, can you make a video on making great proposals? I'm studying to be a product designer. Proposals will be to various companies, Fortune 500s or startups. So this is a great question. I don't know if I'm the right or wrong person to ask on this because I don't write proposals. I don't really believe in making proposals. The reason is I prefer to build a marketing machine that attracts ideal customers to my business instead of me going out and trying to sell or pitch companies. I find that when people come to you, they love what you do, they know you're the right person for their audience, they're already pre-sold on you, it's much easier to start working together than if I'm going out there trying to sell myself and making proposals for everybody. I think it's a, a much better use of your time to create lasting content and materials that people love and relate to and position yourself as an expert that will draw people in to want to contact you. I want people saying, "We have something that we need to reach entrepreneurs with. Who's the guy to talk to? Evan Carmichael's the guy to talk to." That's what happens. Instead of me going out and saying, "Hi, Mr. Company, please work with me. I hope you'll give me some business and here's a proposal." This is funny because this, this is something that works on every level. People hear this and say, "You don't write proposals? Well, that would never work for big clients. That would never work with the clients that I'm working with." I work with some of the biggest clients in the world. I work with Microsoft, I work with Dell, I work with American Express. I sign big deals with these guys without ever having to go through a proposal. How does that happen? It's because I've attracted them to me. They're interested in talking to me. So how do you go out and do that yourself? Okay? Think about how you can position yourself as an expert in your field. You're producing content that people love, that people can relate to, that people want to share. It's the job of these companies to know who is an expert in these fields, right? If I, I don't know what you're selling, is it product? You're selling software, for example, right? If I have a problem and I need software to solve it, I'm going to go and do a search. I'm going to go on Google. I'm going to go talk to anybody who I know who might know a company. I'm going to start doing my research. You should be everywhere. You should be coming up as the authority. So when I come and talk to you, I'm already pre-sold. Like, I want to work with you. I've heard great things about you. That's how you bring people in. Typically my sales process is very fast. It's not a long, drawn-out, 6-month sales process with huge companies. But how it works— here's the thing, here's a little trick to avoid proposals. Start small. Pick one tiny little bit of a project that you could take on to show yourself and then overdeliver like crazy. That's the secret. When I first started working with telecommunications company worth billions of dollars, the first thing I did with them was just tiny one little project. One little project. Almost no risk for them. And let me prove myself and they love the results so much that they wanted to do more and more and more and more. I got upgrades and upgrades and upgrades. We kept increasing the budget, kept increasing the scope, and I never had to write a single proposal for it. Don't go in pitching this huge thing. Pitch something small. You know, if you're going up against another supplier and they're talking to you, they're talking to other companies, find a way to get started on a really small scale. You know, look at, look at what their process is now. Look at where they have pain. Right now and see what little, one little thing you could solve for them, be amazing at. Because companies want reliable suppliers, and if you're overdelivering like crazy, your competition's not. And they're gonna say, wow, these guys are amazing, what else can we do with them? And it leads to more and more and more and more work. It works. This stuff works. And you can get hundreds of thousands of dollars, million-dollar contracts. You can get this. Without proposals because they love what you're doing. You're ingrained. You may have to do a contract, that's fine. You may have to do a statement of work, but it's pre-sold, right? They already want to work with you. So build a marketing machine. Stand for something important. Be the expert. When people do research, when people are talking about you, it should be all amazing things that you are the guy to talk to in your field. And then when you start talking to clients Just find one simple, easy, low-risk, low-cost way to get started and prove yourself. Because I guarantee you, if you overdeliver like crazy, you make them happy, they're going to be dying to do more work with you. And that's how you build a successful business. Believe. Those of you watching, if you like the video, give it a thumbs up below. If you love or hate proposals, let me know, put it in the comments underneath. And if you want to see more videos like this, subscribe by clicking on my face. Thank you so much, and I'll see you soon.
