Live Proposal Makeovers for 2026

We are live. Welcome to today's episode of Black Belt Startup with Feras. Thank you for tuning in. So what's happening in the world of entrepreneurship? Today's your chance to get your pitch or proposal roasted. You heard it. I've got a few ready to go. And if you're joining me live, you can drop your pitch or proposal in the comments or DM me. I'll review them live. Or if you're listening or watching later, you can still send me your pitches or your proposals and I'll review them in the next livestream. And also, if it's something very, very private, personal, you don't want to share it with the world, let me know in your email or in your DM. I will respond to you. Separately. And I always share anonymously anyhow, so don't worry about anything that is maybe very confidential, very specific. Remove anything that is confidential, of course, but give me the gist of what you're struggling with in terms of proposals, in terms of pitches. You're sending emails, you're calling, you're sending proposals, and you're being ghosted. Nobody is responding to you. You're not getting Um, a yes, you're getting a bunch of nos and a lot of rejections. Trust me, I've gone through all of this in the past, so I'm here to help you succeed, to start— to stop struggling on your way to creating and growing and scaling your consulting company. Now, before we get started, for those of you who are live with us, again, thank you for tuning in. You are free to send me a message or leave it in a comment, maybe a pitch that you've been sending out and you're not sure if it's working or not. As I said earlier, I'm happy to review it live. And I'll be evaluating these pitches and these proposals based on a few key things. These are the same criteria I use when I'm reviewing real client pitches and proposals. So I'll be looking for things like clarity of the problem, and the solution that you're offering. So do you really— do you have a solid understanding? Do you have a solid understanding of the problem that the customer has? And have you articulated how your solution will address their pain point? And also the benefit, the benefit that you offer as an amazing consultant, is the benefit crystal clear? So that's one thing we will be focusing on clarity. I'll also look— I'll also be looking at relevance and targeting in your email, in your proposal, in your networking event, when you're presenting yourself, when you're starting these conversations, these pitches. Does the person on the other side, do they feel that you're addressing them, their issues, or are you selling to the world? Are you selling to, to every, every, uh, person on planet Earth? Are you very specific? Are you targeted in your audience? So if you're speaking with a healthcare provider, don't say clients, say patients, right? So people want to make sure they're heard, they're understood. You want to make sure your pitch, your conversation is resonating really well with the audience. So I'll be looking for relevance, for targeting. Also value proposition, basically how life and business will get better after they say yes to your proposal. So that has to be very, very well articulated. Also, if you share a proposal, a full proposal that you send, I will examine the sections that you have. Is it— sometimes I've seen half-page proposals, sometimes I've seen 15-page proposals. There's a good middle ground in there. Of course, it depends on what you're offering, the service that you're offering, the complexity and all that good stuff. But there are critical sections that I want to see in every proposal. We'll go over that. I'll show you an example of, of a proposal that I'm reviewing today. But I also want to make sure that you understand what sections that you want to have in every proposal that you send. And a couple other things I'll be looking for: positioning and credibility. Do you stand out in your proposal and your pitch? Do you want— does the other person, the person on the other side, do they feel that they will be making the right choice and working with a trusted advisor? That's really important. We'll look at pricing and payment terms, also from a stylistic perspective, design and reliability. Does this proposal or does this pitch look professional? Is it easy to scan? And then a couple last things here in terms of like your call to action. What is this next immediate step that you want the lead to do? And last but not least, tone and kind of stylistically, but also like tone and empathy. Does it sound like it's written by you or does it sound like it was written by a quick prompt by AI with a quick crop, a quick prompt in ChatGPT or in, in Gemini. So, so I want to make sure— I want to— I encourage you to use AI. Actually, I have a video on how to use AI effectively in writing proposals in the Ultimate Guide to Writing Winning Proposals. So I have a whole section on AI prompts, thoughtful, thorough AI prompts. I have a section on how to use custom AI assistance. So, so I'm all for that, but I'm not at all for dumping a quick prompt. Help, help me write a proposal on social media for this client. Like, you're going to get garbage in, garbage out. So, so I want to make sure there's empathy, there's the right tone in the proposal, and the client feels this proposal was written for them. So I'll be looking at all— using all these criteria to help, help you get a better pitch, a better proposal, so you can close more deals this year. Now before we jump in, a couple administrative items. I have these live streams weekly. I cover a business topic and then I answer questions I get from the community. So if you have any questions about the struggle you're going through in your entrepreneurship, in your entrepreneurial journey, whether it's in attracting leads, in closing deals, whether in maybe making that first hiring decision, or maybe back office or packaging or pricing or anything related to starting a business and getting that business off the ground and getting traction, email me, direct message me, um, Leave me a comment. I'd love to help. My mission is to help you stop struggling and get to establish and grow and scale your consulting business. And the other thing is, if you are, if you have some wins, I'd love to hear from you on what's working and what led to that win, whether it's a small or a large win, I'd love to hear from you. I hear a lot of the struggles, a lot of the challenges, I'm delighted that I'm able to help new consultants and entrepreneurs overcome these challenges, but I'm even more delighted when I hear that an entrepreneur who maybe he or she was— they were laid off and then they decided to put that corporate life behind them and start their journey, and they go and work hard and then establish and get that first check, get that first client, deliver that first project, get that first testimonial. I love to hear these success stories. So if you have them, share them with me, and I'll be more than happy to also share either as they come to me or anonymously to help those in the community benefit from your learnings and from your hard work and efforts. All right, good, good, good. So we are ready to jump into They're roasting. All right, so I have those ready for you. Let me share my screen right here. All right, here's the first one, and this is about targeting and about understanding the client. So again, you've seen I've, I've Covered the personal information, but this email says, "I believe that there's a great opportunity for collaboration and synergy. Great between our companies in the cybersecurity area." Okay, well, here's the problem. The problem is that this company that received this email. Is not in the cybersecurity area. So it sounds like the sender, this cold email, is a person who is trying to partner in this area of cybersecurity, and the person who received this email is not in cybersecurity. So, so that's not going to land very well. Now, if this lead meant that they provide cybersecurity services, that's great, but they should have mentioned that a bit more clearly. So don't leave it to the person reading these emails to decipher what's going on. I mean, it's one thing to get people to open your emails, and now once they open them, and that, that's a win for someone to open a cold email, it's a win for you. Now you have— now that you grabbed their attention, you want to maintain that You want to make sure that they continue to read and follow on what you want them to do. So that is one example. The next one. There you go. Hey. All right. I wouldn't— I know there's maybe this is more of a generational thing. Maybe I'm old school, but if I'm cold emailing, if I'm cold calling, I would not start with hey. Even if there's 10%, even if there's a 10% chance that the person on the other side of the call or the email is offended or does not like, hey, why do you want to take that chance? So it's all about these small improvements that will get your win rates higher. So I would say hello, I would say hi, good morning. Good afternoon, depending, right? I wouldn't start with hey. But that aside, he said, I was checking your YouTube channel. Honestly, with the value you're putting out, you could get away— you can— sorry, you can get way more reach within a few tweaks. Now this is a common issue that I see when someone cold emailing or even in person or on a call, they're eager to provide service, they're eager to add value, they're eager to help, and they might be very competent, they might be great at what they do, and they have a whole lot of testimonials, but if you're tackling something that is very challenging and you know it and the client knows it, you can't fix challenging things with a few tweaks. So when you say, I will address this— and let me put this back on the screen for those of you who are watching— when you say you can get a whole lot more reach with a few tweaks, it— sorry, sorry about that— it signals to me, if I'm receiving— if I were receiving this, that this person doesn't have an appreciation of what's involved. They're oversimplifying the this issue and they want to fix it with a few tweaks. So I— you can say I can do things efficiently. You can say that it might take us a while, but I can guarantee certain results. You can, you can make certain commitments and certain promises, but handling or promising or committing to take on something and, and, and overcome big challenges with a few tweaks, it's sort of— it's an immediate— in my mind, it immediately discredits your offer and you as a consultant. So keep that in mind. Yes, you can do things more efficiently. You have workflows and automations and you use AI and you can automate things and you can do things faster than anyone else, but you can't squeeze something that takes a couple months to address with, if you know, with, with offering a few tweaks. So, so that is, that is important. That's my feedback on, on this pitch. Moving on to the next one. Now this came to me, so, and I'm hiding the sender here to protect the innocence. Hopefully they're watching. Hopefully they'll learn from this. No hard feelings. My goal is to help All of you get better at what you do. So if you look at this snapshot here, you'll see, hi Feras, my first name in all caps. Why? What did I do to deserve an all-cap email address, to be addressed in all caps? And then I came across your channel, and while researching consultants, and then there's these parameters. This is for auto-insertion if you, you're using whatever program you're using, it could be HubSpot or Salesforce or any email, any of the email systems out there, you can have this feature where you can auto-insert next to a name, you can add metadata, you can add a company name or a vertical or any metadata, any piece of information that is unique and typically you're trying to personalize the pitch, so you insert more relevant data about the client and about the lead And in this case, something failed in that process, in that automation process. So that's the second issue. And then there was no signature. It was blank. Just there's no thank you, sincerely wish you the best, and then their name, their first name, last name, whatever. So no signature. So 3, I would say, major issues because, as I said earlier, it's really hard to get people to open emails, assuming you've done things right in terms of identified a solid list to email to, and then you've done all the deliverability best practices to make sure you increase your chances of the email getting landing in inboxes, and then you get someone to open the email. So that's, that's a lot of effort to get there. And once they open the email, they see their first name in all caps, not good. They see some auto-insertion error, not good. And then you don't have a signature. Who is it? Who is that you are? The URL to your company or maybe your LinkedIn profile. So it doesn't— there's just no way that I'll— that was again addressed to me. There's no way that I would follow up with this person. It's just this lack of attention to detail, lack of professionalism, lack of— of just presentation. And again, I don't want to go too hard. I'm not going too hard on this person. I wish them the best, but I see this happening all the time. As I've always said, the 5 Ps: prior preparation prevents poor performance. So when you put an email program in place, and if you're using HubSpot or any of these marketing and marketing automation systems, you can make it part of your workflow that you test. You test your email before— your email campaign before you send it out. So if I'm running an email campaign, I would— and that's what we do, and I'm not saying we're perfect and things happen, but I don't believe we've— we have all these 3 things happening in one email. But have the email campaign ready, test it to your personal email, and if you have a colleague or a contractor or maybe your spouse, someone have that email sent to, to the test group. Check the sender, the subject line, the preheader, everything else, the formatting, mobile and desktop, and then schedule this email to be sent out after you make any corrections. So don't be sloppy if you want to increase your chances of selling and closing and at least to make a positive impression on leads who might consider you in the future because they're not ready to buy today. Make sure your presentation is professional. It is— it's about you, especially in consulting. It's all about you, the consultant. Okay, the next one. And again, for those of you who joined, joined us recently here, thank you for being here with us live. I am roasting proposals and pitches. I have a few that that I've already set up here in my slides and I'm sharing. But at the same time, if you have a proposal or if you have a pitch, an email pitch or a script that you use for cold calling and you'd like me to review it live, you can add it in the comment section. I should be able to get it and then I will review it real time, kindly, constructively. And if it's something again, private, personal, you have confidential information, Put it in a Google Doc, remove all the confidential information, keep the relevant content, send me the link, and I'll review it and provide you feedback on it. Now, if you're listening later to this video or listening to this on your podcast, then you can also send me the link. You can email me at feras@startupwithferas.com, or you can direct message me on LinkedIn or on any of these platforms, that on any of the social platforms. All right, moving back to the next one, the next one we're roasting here. All right, now this is really, really horrible. So you see here on the screen, for those of you who are watching, this was— this is 2 follow-ups. This person emailed and then With a good pitch, and then they didn't hear back from the person. So they sent a follow-up email, and the email had a question mark. That was it—a question mark. Can you believe it? Right here. And then the receiver did not reply. So they sent another email, say following up. My friend, I mean, I don't know where to start. I don't know where to start. So here, my friend, if you want to follow up and you have to follow up, this is not optional, especially in a B2B setting. It takes 5, 6, 7, 8, up to 12 follow-ups to close a deal. This is my experience. This is the experience of founders I work with and also backed by data. HubSpot has numbers on this. Other sites have numbers on this based on research, based on input from salespeople. It takes 5 to 12— 80% of the contract wins take 8 to 12 follow-ups. So follow-ups is part of selling. You're not— when you follow up, you're not nagging, you're not bugging the individual. You as a consultant have— you have a solution that you are helping the client with. In exchange for what they will be paying you, you're offering them a solution. You're making their life easier. You're helping them sleep better at night. You're saving them money. You're making them more money. You're making their employees happy. You're making, you're making their customers happy. This is what you do as a consultant. You help them make more money or you help them save money. That's what it's all about at the end of the day from a business perspective. And of course, employee satisfaction and customer satisfaction are really, really important. That's what we do as consultants. This is what we do in business. So, so in this case, when you follow up with a question mark, And then another day later, you follow up with, "What's up, my friend?" Or following up, my friend. That's not cool. First of all, the receiver is not your friend. Second of all, like it shows laziness. It shows lack of etiquette, lack of decorum. We call it what you wish, but it doesn't show professionalism. So instead of a question mark or following up my friend, follow up with something of value. Add, hey, I've— add something that is relevant to the, to the lead. Maybe you found something on their website that could be updated. Maybe you've looked at 2 of their competitors and you found something that they could benefit from, and you said, hey, in my research to better understand about your industry, I looked at these 2 competitors and I noticed They do, they offer this service and this is what they differentiate themselves into. You might want to take a look. I'd love to do more research for you. Let's get a coffee. Let's get on Zoom. Let's have a call to better understand how I can be of help. You can add something new, something that AI is doing that could help you automate what it is that the client is struggling with. It could be an industry report. It could be some new research. Regulation that you came across. So when you follow up, always, always, always add value. Add value in every interaction that you have with leads. It's not just, hey, what's up? I'm ready to sell. Are you ready to buy? Hey, have you reviewed my proposal? When are you going to sign? This is not professional. It doesn't show that you care. Doesn't show that you are investing in this relationship. And people make— buyers make note of this, and they're likely to go with someone else who is more professional, who's adding value, and who is showing them that they care and they're investing in this relationship. People buy from people, especially in services and in consulting. So keep that in mind. You just wouldn't go and meet a stranger and say, I'm following up. No, you have to warm up. You have to build up that relationship. You have to show that you are really going above and beyond in trying to get their business. People feel, a lot of people, most people feel like they feel good when they're wanted and someone's trying to help them. So make it easy for them to pitch your proposal to their boss. Make it easy for them to go and ask the CFO for a, for a budget. All of these things you can do when you follow up. Now this means that you have to invest some time in, in these follow-ups. So yes, you won't be able to send maybe 100 follow-ups a week. You might be able to send 20 or 30, but I can guarantee you that these personalized, customized, value-packed follow-ups deliver much better results and your win rate will improve significantly. All right, so that's on following up. Let's move to the next one here. All right, now this is— there's a bit of a story behind this one. So this, this lead, or this vendor, they sent a very impressive proposal. It was using one of these proposal-focused online systems with graphics, and it's a very, very presentable package. It was very well done. There were some boilerplate components of this proposal, but there were some highly personalized recommendations, and they had their finger on, on, on the issue. So that was good. The packaging was really good. Now the lead, the receiver, in this case yours truly, reviewed this, was impressed by this proposal, and said the following: thank you for reaching out, and thank you for the effort. It was sincere because there was— it looked like it was a very well put together proposal. And it says here, the, the lead now is saying, it looks like you have a good system and a great outreach program. The blend of personalization with your standard content is solid too. I mean, this is complimenting The lead is complimenting this cold emailer, the person who sent this package. And then the lead said, we are working with someone now, but do check back with us at the end of the first quarter in 2026. So not only the lead opened the email, but they thanked the sender. Appreciated the effort. They acknowledged the effort, appreciated the effort. They were very impressed by the personalization aspect of the proposal, and then they said, we are working with someone now, but do check back with us at the end of the first quarter in 2026. And this was sent, I believe, in December. So we'll Within ten weeks or so, check back with us. So what did this person do? Completely understand that you are working with someone, but as you already know, my team and I have ideas. Da da da da. Would you be cool to hop on a quick fifteen-minute call to go over it? So this. Highly qualified consultant vendor, acknowledge that I understand that you're working with someone else, but still pushing, still asking for this lead to get on the phone. And my friends, you have to be able to read the room. Now, this comes with practice. It doesn't happen overnight. But as you are pitching, as you are presenting your proposals to clients and to leads, you want to make sure you get— you want to make sure you read the signals. So if a customer— so if a lead is telling you that they are working with someone and they said get back with us in a couple of months or in a couple weeks, acknowledge that and say you'll do it, you'll do so, and mark it on your calendar in your CRM or If you're using my DIY CRM spreadsheet, use that. Put there, in 2 weeks, in 10 weeks, I will follow up with this lead. So acknowledge what you heard and stop selling. Now, if someone told you, yeah, we're busy now, or, hey, I'm working with someone else, that's different. But they were very specific. They praised you. They acknowledged the hard work. They acknowledged the effort, and then they said, we are working with someone. Please get back with us in the near future. So that is that's the end of selling. At one point, you should stop selling and just listen and take note of what has been said to you by the lead. So I'm all for being persistent. I'm all for working hard and, and doing a lot of the follow-ups. As I said, always add value with follow-ups. But if someone says, I'm working with someone else and I need time, then acknowledge that and act accordingly. A better response in this case would be, thank you so much, I understand it. I have a few things that potentially you could implement with the consultant that you are working on. Here are a couple ideas. And I'll be more than happy to follow up with you in 8 weeks. You did something that no one expects. You're providing your competitor, the incumbent, with some ideas. You're telling your lead that I have some very specific ideas that I was able to find out through my own research or through maybe an audit, and I encourage you to implement with your existing consultant. I mean, that shows class. That shows a lot of professionalism. I'm not saying you share all your solutions and all your recommendations. That's different. But share, add value, share something of benefit to the client, and that shows that you really care and that you are generous and that you are bending over backward to win this, this, this deal. So people want to have that feeling. People want want to make sure they are working with someone who's professional, who's knowledgeable, who is also responsive to their needs, and they also listen. They want to make sure that you listen to their— to what they're telling you to do. So that is enough on that one. Moving on to the next one. All right, so I hid most of this because it was a lot, a lot of personal information. But here someone is pitching their offer, and check this out, I really like this, and you can put this to use right away. After, after doing all the good things— address the person, the issues, showing their expertise, all that— they said, we can test, and they showed how they've done something similar for someone else, a case study that was very good. This is all hidden here. You can't see it, but then this is what the 2 things I really liked about this here. We can test something like this on your website, on your process, on your, whatever the service is as well on a pay on results basis. Okay. So this is performance-based pricing. So That requires a certain level of, of competence, and, and you have to be able to deliver on what you're promising to get paid, right? And I have a whole lot of— I have 19 minutes of, of video on, on the different pricing models. It's called The Ultimate Guide to Pricing Models for, for Consultants. So, and performance-based is one of them. I don't recommend it for someone who's just starting out. It takes a bit of more competency and close to mastery of your domain and also some, some established processes for you to do that effectively. But this is a side point, but this person here, this cold emailer, is saying I can do it on pay-on-result basis. So you are de-risking the situation, you know, the decision that this, this vendor, this buyer about to make. And de-risking is a thing you can do with offering pay-per-performance. You can offer discounts, you can offer different things, you can start small and then sell big later. There are a lot of ways to, to de-risk this. I talk about that in The Ultimate Guide to Writing Winning Proposals. But I really like this, that we can test. I showed you success with someone else similar to you. I can do something similar with you. on a pay-on-results basis, and then I made a 3-minute video explaining how. Would you like me to send it over? I like that. They're asking for permission. They showed you that they've done the hard work. Um, let me just switch screens here. They've showed you that they understand your problems, your pain points. They've shown you that they've done similar work for someone, someone else. And then this vendor, this consultant, is offering a solution on a pay-per-performance basis. And then they said, I've done more research, I've done— I've made a video especially for you. It's 3 minutes only, and you can play it on, on 1.5 speed, so only 2 minutes, and you'll see how I can be of help Would you like me to send that video? So I like this pitch. It's straight to the point, offering something of value, and then saying, I've done more research. I'm happy to send it to you. Now someone might say, why did they not include the link to the video? I've seen it where the link to the video is already included. Sometimes you can delay this till like a second follow-up or a third follow-up because you want to get some— you want to make sure the lead has some skin in the game or at least they're responsive. Opening this email, they're replying. So, so that's, that's a, that's a good tactic. You can do it both ways, but I think initially impress them with what you've done with similar people in their maybe similar situation. Offer something like, I can give you a free consultation, I can do a free training, I can do something of value. In this case, this, this cold caller or cold emailer was confident enough to offer performance-based services, and then I have this video that I made especially for you. I'm happy to send when you are ready to receive, just reply. So I like that, no criticism there. That was good. Moving on to the next one, also a good one here. And then the next— actually, after this one, I will go over a proposal. So for those of you who are watching now Again, if you want me to review this live, a pitch or proposal that you have, send me a comment and I should be able to receive it here through my system and I will review it live and comment on it. And if you prefer not to share what you are pitching or the proposals that you're putting together, you know, with the world, you can just email me. You can direct message me a link to a Google Doc with that information or email me at Feras, F-E-R-A-S, At startupaffairs.com. Back to this. So this is another one that I really liked. So this, this is a book publishing or book production company that's pitching to a coach, and they said, "Hey, I came across that da da da. You're their specialty, and I was impressed by how you are sharing decades of experience that are in a framework." And it's clear that you've built something powerful. So they praised the lead. It's a good idea with something meaningful and something that reflects their years of experience, not some random, hey, you're great, you're a great guy, you're a great gal, I'm happy to help. But then immediately they said, I have a thought. I can help you reach more people and I can help you solidify your authority and open doors for you. Again, this person is a coach, the receiver here. And then they started to say, here's what I do. So first they praised and validated what they've seen on the website or on social media. Then they added, we can help you get more people. And then they said, we will help you publish a book. Now again, for coaches, for consultants, it's a big deal. When you do something like that, you can, when you have a book, you get potentially, you can get speaking engagements. You obviously make some money from the books. You can get potentially interviewed. Books, and we published a book back in 2016, working on a second one now, and that book made a huge difference. It was, we were able to sell 15,000 units. It was 4.7 stars on Amazon. The, the authority book on, on the topic at the time. We were in the analytics space. We were one of the— one of Google's top analytics providers, and we published that book. It's called Google Analytics Breakthrough: From Zero to Business Impact. So, so I know, I know the value of books. So, so this person here is highlighting those aspects of, of, of having someone publish a book based on the experience and the expertise they have. So It's not just a business card. It's a legacy tool that works for you 24/7. Okay. It's a bit of a, you know, a bit of a, I don't know, fluff or, you know, but that's okay. Maybe that was AI. That's fine. But here's the ending. I'd love to explore how we could collaborate. No pressure, just a conversation. I like that a lot. And then I really think it's a great opportunity to amplify your impact. And then if this is not the right time or if this is not the right fit, Just let me know so I will respect your time. I like this a lot because it started with acknowledging that you understand the value proposition that your client has and what, what is it a benefit to their business to amplify their impact. And then you position yourself as the person who can help them with that amplification. And then you're asking the specific call to action. The CTA here is if conversation, no other commitment, to see if we are aligned between what you want to do and what I want to do. And then if this is not a good fit, it's not a good time, not a good fit, no problem, just let me know, I won't bug you again. So I like that. If you want to model after this, I encourage you to do so. Um, just let me know, I can actually send you a link of the text of this one. And actually, in, in the Ultimate Guide to, to, to writing winning proposals this year. I have a, a sample email outreach emails and also sample follow-up emails, so you can grab those from that video. You can go that video and then you can see in the description I have the links to all the, the whole, the entire— I call it the proposal toolkit that you can copy and paste those emails from. Okay, so that is it on, on pitches and email pitches. I have one more thing I want to share with you And that is an actual proposal. And I put this here. Let me see if we got any, any comments. No comments here. Okay, sometimes the comments don't come into my other system, so we are good. No comments on this platform, on LinkedIn. So back to the proposal document right here. This is a very lightweight proposal, okay? So do not copy and use this one. It leaves much to be desired. But as you see on the screen here, let me make it larger so you can see it here. So it is about social media. Okay, what about social media? No idea. We will help you with your social media needs. Great. We have done a lot of work in your space. We're really good at it. Love it. We need better social— you need better social media and we can do that for you. I mean, if you're sending this to someone who has no idea what social media is, maybe, maybe it's, it's okay, but not this year. Okay, then the scope. We will work on whatever platforms you want. We will look at your competitors. Okay, so are you going to work on LinkedIn and YouTube and TikTok and Instagram and like another and Reddit and ten other platforms? Like, are you really going to do all of that? Shouldn't you be a bit more specific? Maybe I'll look at two platforms or one. I'll I'll look at your competitors. How many? I'll give you ideas. Great. And maybe help with comment advice on ads if needed. Timeline, probably 2 to 3 weeks, uh, depending on feedback. And then pricing. Okay, one, our rate is $100, $150 an hour. I like hourly rates for consultants who are just starting out. I have a full video on hourly pricing for new consultants. Check it out as well. But then I like that part. But then when they say Probably around 15 to 40 hours. I like ranges as well, but dude, don't give— don't give a wide range. Make it— this is, this is like anywhere from $2,000 to $7,000. Like, can you be a bit more specific? Or $6,000. Okay, we'll figure it out as we go. Not very professional. You can pay me Zelle. Not professional either. Uh, just you can word it differently. And then About Us. Yeah, Mark The consultant here has worked in marketing for years and knows social media very well. Next steps, let me know if you're interested. So I like the sections, to be fair here, I like the sections of this proposal, but that's it. They have the sections right, maybe they watched my video on proposals because I have a template with all these sections, but my friend, you want to be very, you want to give an overview. You want to give something specific that addresses their issues, okay? Not some general stuff. The scope— be very, very specific when you scope. And I always recommend including a section under scope: here's what's included, and here's what's not included, and here are the dependencies on the customer, on the customer, or on a third party. If you don't have access to systems, if they don't give you access to the backend of their LinkedIn or Facebook or YouTube, how can you assess? How can you look at the data and the stats, right? So put what's included, put in what's not included, and then what the dependencies are. Timeline, be more specific. Pricing, I like hourly pricing for new consultants. Just if you want to give a range, do give a range, but— I mean, 15 to 20 is okay, 15 to 25 is okay, but 15 to 40, it's just too wide of a range. Payment, my friend, set up your master, you know, set up your credit card processing mechanism. Make sure that you can also, you know, say list all— list all payment options. Don't lose the deal because a client can't pay you via Zelle or PayPal. Like, most companies are not going to pay you by Zelle. They're going to issue a purchase order, or they're going to— you send them the proposal, they'll send you a check. So maybe they do ACH or wire. So just offer all payment options and then provide more details, not 5 pages of about you, but something that is relevant to the situation you're trying to solve. Okay? So that is it on this proposal. We have time for maybe one more roast. If those of you who are live have more things to ask about or you have something for me to review, Add it in the link, but meanwhile, before we wrap it up, I do want to highlight a couple of resources for you here that will make your win rate, your success rate much higher, and that is this resource that we have on the channel right here, The Ultimate Guide to Writing Proposals as a Consultant. So it's an hour and 4 minutes. This is the most in-depth video I have worked on since I launched this channel. It has everything you need about winning proposals and it has, it addresses a lot of the misconceptions. The proposal is not just a document, it's one piece of the puzzle. There's a lot of things you should be doing before you send the proposals. There are all the things you have to do when you send the proposal and the document and the sections and then what is it that you do after send the proposal so you're not ghosted and you increase your win rate. So check out this, this video and also this video about the hourly rate. Um, if you're new and you're not sure about how much you charge and what your hourly rate and what pricing model that you, you want to use, check out this video on hourly rates. And then I mentioned 2 other resources in this video, one on, on, uh, on the ultimate guide to the sales funnels if you're new to sales and especially in a B2B setting, sales don't happen overnight, and there's a lot of things from education to evaluation to negotiation. All these steps, I cover those in this video on, on sales funnels. And also there's an ultimate guide to pricing right here, pricing models. If you're new to pricing, check out these videos. A lot of details, a lot of examples, and then templates and worksheets you can put to use right away. So that is That's it for today. I appreciate your time, and don't forget to hit like, subscribe on whichever platform you're on, especially on YouTube, and leave me a comment, and then you can go to startupaffairs.com and join my newsletter. It's a weekly newsletter with tips and strategies on how to start, grow, and scale your business. See you next time. Thank you.