Stop Writing Unpaid Proposals and Choose Conversation Instead

You spend late nights crafting a 20-page proposal, designing speculative ideas you’ll never get paid for. Your eyes sting in the glow of your monitor, and you wonder if there’s a better way. One day you decide to try: a one-page email that says, “Can we hop on a 15-minute call to see if we’re a fit? This saves you waiting on me to produce a full proposal.”

Your prospect replies within the hour, and soon you’re on a video call, discussing challenges in real time. You sense mutual respect replacing the transactional back-and-forth. Later, that call yields a small paid discovery phase—you map their needs, share findings, and lay out a clear path forward.

By skipping unpaid proposals, you free yourself from endless document-writing cycles. Clients appreciate the human conversation, too. You’ll still produce contracts once you’ve agreed—no more sinking hours into speculative work.

Research on decision-making shows that people commit more deeply after a conversational agreement than after reviewing pages of text. Conversations build trust faster and weed out mismatches early.

Decide on your minimum project fee and share it in your first outreach, then invite prospects to a 15-minute call instead of crafting a full RFP response. Offer a paid discovery sprint to diagnose their challenges, and once you have mutual agreement, move straight to a concise contract. This shift will cut wasted effort and deepen client trust—try it on your next inquiry.