The Siben Consult, LLC, is half-way through its 10th year of operation. During that time, I have provided strategic planning and marketing-related writing and design services (SOQs, technical proposals, short-list presentations, website text and brochures) to more than 30 clients.
That might not sound like a huge client roster, but I believe success is about the quality of client list rather than the length of the list. Over these 10 years, one client has given me 42 separate assignments; another has given me 33 separate assignments.
Who are these clients? Without naming any names, I can tell you that they have ranged from a 6-person WBE and a 10-person MBE/8(a) to a major international firm with more than 50,000 employees.
Only two of those 30+ clients has ever asked for a Confidentiality agreement (one was the firm that ultimately gave me 33 assignments, and they only asked on the first one; the other was a management consulting firm with a very confidential research project). This is one of the things of which I'm most proud.
I believe that the reason for this is the integrity I have demonstrated to these and all my other clients throughout the 10 years. My rules are few, and they include:
- I never share client information, confidential or not, without a client's written permission to do so.
- I treat everything I write as proprietary to the client who paid me, so I never use information developed for one client in another client's proposal.
- I never write submittals for multiple clients in response to the same RFQ/RFP; I am convinced that it would be too easy for the thought process and discussion of one team to spill over into the other.
I have a friend in another city who is also an independent marketing consultant. In one phone occasion, this person mentioned that they had just given a client a draft of a proposal and could now start drafting a second proposal for another client.
"Are you actually responding to the same RFP for two different clients?" I asked.
"Yes," my friend responded. "I do it all the time. Why? Don't you?"
I explained why I choose not to do this. To me, this is very important. When I commit to crafting a response to an RFQ or RFP, that client is buying my best work. Only one client can get my best work on a specific RFP.
I don't ever want to be accused of giving any client my second best work.
I have some standard text that I use often, but these are paragraphs that I have written on my own in response to information requirements I see often. For example, I developed a brief project approach for ID/IQ-type contract vehicles because, if the RFP doesn't mention a specific first project or hypothetical example, you can only present your approach to this kind of contract.
I also have a brief discussion of sustainability that I developed as the idea of sustainable design caught on. These days, it comes in very handy because more than 1,000 cities have signed on to the U.S. Conference of Mayors Climate Protection Agreement. So you almost have to include a statement on sustainability in a proposal to a city whether the RFP asks for it or not.
But any text or graphics that I develop for one client belong to that client. I do not use the text, the graphic, or even the idea for another client without permission.
It's about integrity. Without it, clients don't come back 30 and 40 times.
"A psy-COW-delic Crossword Puzzle"
(Austin downtown cow art collection)