The Low Bar Is Higher Than You Think

Or…

How to qualify prospects and lose more business sooner.

We receive more inquiries via email and telephone every week than we can possibly respond to immediately. They all promise the potential of new business. We’ve learned from experience that, unfortunately, the vast majority of those promises are empty.

I read a great article once that said, “lose new business as early as possible.” That’s great advice… and true. It’s way too easy to invest hours, days, even weeks, in exploratory dialogue, interviews, emails, travel, meetings, et cetera, only to find that the prospect isn’t really serious about the project, it’s too early in the process or it’s just not the right fit for designer and/or potential client.

At R.BIRD, through trial and error over the years, we’ve developed a good approach for quickly filtering in the inquiries that are serious and a good fit, versus not.

First, there are some good clues at the outset:
* Email is from somebody@yahoo.com.
* Only telephone given is a cellphone number.
* There’s no address given.
* There’s no company name.

Believe it or not, where any one of these conditions were true, the inquiry nearly certain to be a dead end, an empty promise, a bad fit, or all three. But, definitely not an opportunity. This rule has never failed us, even when our hearts have led us astray and we’ve pursued anyway. It’s best to invest little energy in pursuit in these cases.

Second, our first response to new prospects includes a brief questionnaire. A “pre-proposal” project survey with some very basic background questions. We have three surveys, one for each of our practice areas: CI, BI, UI.

Our survey for brand & packaging design prospects, for example, contains about 25 questions. Yet, the new prospect only needs to answer exactly 9 of them. The rest can wait. Once again, this has proven to be a foolproof method of not only filtering in serious inquiries, but also helping prospects clarify thinking to their own benefit. If the prospect can’t answer all 9 questions, then they are much more than likely not serious or not ready.

Every now and then, we edit and refine. But the surveys have remained essentially the same and quite effective. Some active clients have even adopted the questionnaires as a best practice for simplifying the task of writing project briefs.

I’m going to share with you one of the three: our brand & package design questionnaire. Here it is:

R.BIRD Brand & Package Design Questionnaire
As a Word Document
As a PDF

Download and use it well. Feel free to copy onto your letterhead and make it your own.

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About Design is produced by R.BIRD, a New York identity and design consulting firm with more than 25 years of experience creating brand identity, packaging, corporate identity, and more...