I can completely sympathize with this and I can see that his criteria are probably on the money for any business-to-business(B2B) organization. Consider this criteria when analyzing your prospects. Take it from me, I have been in the position of needing revenue and taking a client that later, I regretted on a repeated basis. New companies are usually a problem unfortunately.
Take a look at your current best, most profitable clients and you’ll likely find a common thread between them. Ours are clients who have been referred to us, who have owned their own business for ten years or more, and who take action quickly and decisively.
SitePoint Tribune
I had an enquiry last week about the redevelopment of a web site. I thought I’d pre-qualified the prospect pretty well — including assessing his budget by asking him “Is $8,000 the sort of budget you have?” — and proceeded to put together a solid web development proposal based on a full days’ analysis, six telephone conferences and numerous emails.
When I gave the quote to the prospect — via telephone, because he lives in another state — he said, “I’ve fallen off my chair with that price!”
This prospect needs a sturdier chair. The price was great value for money and completely in line with the expectations he’d told me he had for the project’s budget. The prospect asked me to “revisit” the quote, because he’d received five other quotes from web developers and we were the most expensive.
It was at that stage that I told him that, unfortunately, we couldn’t adjust our pricing — we’d included the best value we possibly could within this quote — and he might be better suited to go with the cheaper developers.
