There’s a pattern that emerges in all great stories. We’re at point A and we want to get to point C, but to get there, we have to go through point B. And this goes back to Aristotle’s poetics, you see Aristotle said this: all great stories are made up of intention and obstacle. To fulfill a character’s intention they must first overcome a great obstacle. Let’s pause for a second. Aristotle didn’t actually say any of these things. Mainly because they’re in English, and not Ancient Greek. Aristotle was right though, that type of thought goes well beyond storytelling and affects entire industries, including and especially web design and development.





Anyone who’s been on the internet, already knows this feeling. Most people who visit a site have an intention, and want to accomplish a goal. The entire idea behind most websites is to overcome any obstacles that person has while trying to accomplish that goal. How does this relate to a client proposal? Because a lot of people think a good client proposal has to sell you to your potential client. They think it’s about the relationship between you and your client. A good client proposal has at best, not very much, in fact, almost nothing at all, to do with identifying your obstacles. There’s a third party that’s far more important and far more interesting than you or your potential client. That’s because the most important variable in all of this, is your potential client’s client, and identifying those obstacles, that’s where things start to get interesting. Now, previously we talked about inbound and outbound marketing for your freelancing business. This video is specifically an example that involves taking a deeper dive into creating a real world proposal as a form of outbound marketing to get clients for is an awful sentence we’ll have to rewrite and say differently because that's two gerunds, an awkward adverb, on the script here there’s what looks like an em dash when it should be a hyphen, it’s in Papyrus when it should be Courier New, but here’s the point: we’re going to move forward as if this proposal research is all we have. We’ll make sure this works for us, even if we don’t have an extensive portfolio or any portfolio at all.

Now, in this video we’re going to look at a format, a template, a guideline, there’s probably a better word. And this format can be applied to anything, so we’re going to apply it to almost everything. And we’ll do not one, but five exercises. We’ll analyze five different potential clients: one for a doctors office, another for a Los Angeles-based film and television producer, we’ll do a curiously well-funded startup that specializes in vegan beef jerky, and another analysis for a private educator who works with children who have special learning needs. Then we’ll wrap up by covering the same thing for a law firm which is [pause] twelve minutes from our current location. Let’s start with a format. Because they’re all going to follow the same general structure, and it goes back to where we started in this video: intention and obstacle. It’s not about you, it’s barely about your potential client, it's about your potential client’s client. It’s about understanding their intention and figuring out what’s in the way of getting it done. This is what most people miss in freelancing. Let’s pull up a table: doctor, producer, startup, educator, law firm. Let’s start to fill this out. Who are they to you? They’re your potential clients. Who are you to them? Nobody at the moment. But who are their clients? In other words, who are your potential client’s clients? For freelance web design, it’s figuring out who's searching the web for the doctor, who's looking at the producer’s website. For all of these, it’s about the perspective of those clients or customers who are visiting these people, visiting your potential clients on the web. How do people find these businesses? What happens when they get them? What happens when they land on the site? Then, only after we understand that can we make any type of proposal or recommendations about what we can do as freelance web designers or developers. If we don’t understand this process, there’s no way to understand our potential clients.

And here’s why. In the mid-2000’s Best Buy used to teach a sales technique called “Care Plus.” And believe it or not, the same basic principles of this technique apply to freelancing today. When someone would come in and start browsing products, employees would go up to the customer and contact them. That’s the “C” in Care Plus, contact, they’d start by contacting the customer. But the next part was the most important. The “A” was for Ask Questions, and this is the key. Because the customer who came in would say something like, “I’m here to get a computer.” And, you can’t just point to the most expensive computer or the fastest computer. You can but it’s useless, because each system has different hardware. Each system might have different software. And, whether it’s retail sales or freelance web design, making a recommendation without understanding the customer is a really fast way to lose both trust and authority. That’s why asking questions is so important. For Best Buy, it’s who’s going to use the computer? And what are they using it for? Will this be used in an example almost two decades later to somehow tie it all back to freelancing? The questions here are so important, not because of the actual way these questions are asked, but because of the answers you get from asking those questions. If you understand their intentions, and you can identify what obstacles are in their way, based on the answers to the questions you ask, you can make a real, genuine, recommendation. That’s the “R.” Take someone over to a specific computer and say, “hey, you know how you said your daughter would be gaming a lot, check this out.” And you’re making a recommendation on a specific computer because it matches the customer’s need. And that’s the key, whether it’s retail sales or freelance web design, the recommendations are based on the interaction, based on the answers you get from talking to and better understanding the needs of the customer. Once we’re done with that, we can encourage the sale. That’s what the “E” stands for by the way. And the customer can better justify saying yes, whether it’s a computer, a website, or whatever because what they’re saying yes to fits their needs. It’s something that’s been recommended to them based on the answers to the questions they were asked. How about the Plus? Well that’s you, that’s what you put into the interaction to make it your own. But what about the “E?” What does that stand for? Well we just covered that fifteen seconds ago. This whole thing of asking questions to better understand and making recommendations based on that understanding, it doesn’t just apply to retail sales. It works for almost everything. And that’s because humans respond to personalization. It’s the defining difference between getting spam and getting whatever kind of mail you receive that isn’t spam. And it directly relates to the format we’re about to dive into. It’s also the difference between a cold call and what a lot of people call a warm call. A cold call is approaching someone with generic, not at all personalized information, trying to push something to an unsuspecting victim with what can at best can be classified as junk mail, because you don’t yet know what’s right for them. Before we make a recommendation or even think about what we’re going to offer a potential client, we have to find answers to our questions.

Now, in our hypothetical five analysis scenario, we haven’t yet reached out to any of these potential clients, and that’s a good thing, because there’s a lot we can determine without contacting them first. So, for our potential doctor client we wanted to learn as much as possible. We want to know how our doctor is getting patients. How are people finding his site? How does it look on mobile devices? So we asked Amina to set up an untraceable Gmail account via a six-point chain VPN, from which we posted an ad on Craig’s List. Someone to make contact with a private investigator. We got the cash from an ATM, then made a series of small purchases at a CVS to get change, so none of the original bills could be traced back to our production crew. Stacy then wrote the instructions for the private investigator who’d be following our potential doctor client using Stacy’s left hand, making it more difficult for a forensics team to determine if anyone associated with this course had anything to do with the job. After that we had Grimur do the first handoff, then our Craig’s List contact met with the investigator at Whiz Burger at the intersection of South Van Ness and 18th. The investigator was tasked with getting the following: we wanted to know how our potential doctor client was getting patients. How are people finding his website? What did people find when they got to his site? How did it look on mobile devices? Then we realized we could actually get this information online by looking for our doctor on a search engine. Behold, the doctor’s website: the structure, the layout, even a performance check on an iPhone. And since freelance web design is based upon the small idea that getting clients is the way to start out and stay in business, we found that using a search engine was far more cost effective and it didn’t take four weeks and two run-ins with local law enforcement. But, that’s the point. We can get in the mind of our client’s clients, the people searching for and finding our potential doctor client without leaving the computer. We can do this by asking the questions they might have.

So, let’s more clearly define our format. We know we want to make a series of recommendations, these are the services we’ll provide. We know we want to ask questions. We also know there are ways to get answers to those questions, many of which don’t involve what certain attorneys would call a string of misdemeanors that might lead to a felony stalking conviction. Again, their words, not ours. But we can break this format down into three categories; these are going to serve as the basis for any proposal we make. Not just for the doctor and not just for a law firm, but for each of our potential clients. This is it, three parts: how people are finding them, what they do when they arrive on the site, and how we the freelancer can help. Okay, the first part is how their clients or customers find them. For the doctor, it’s how people are learning about his services on the web. For the producer, it’s how people are finding her. What would they search for? What comes up? For the startup, how do people learn about it? Same thing for the educator, or the law firm. People are searching and we want to get a good idea of how people are finding them. We’ll go deeper into this in a few moments. The second thing, the second part of our format is arriving on the website. If our potential client has a site, what does it look like? Do they even have a website? How does it perform? Is it responsive? Can we quickly find answers to questions? Does it appear trustworthy? Does it look like it was made on GeoCities? The third part is, and this is where you come in, is moving forward. These are next steps, what you as a freelancer can do to help. If the first two parts are talking through what you’re able to determine about your potential client, the business, their website, you’re getting a ton of information about them. You’re getting answers, answers to the questions their clients and customers have. And that means you’re able to make recommendations based on the answers you’re getting. Because a lot of the answers might not be great. If the question is, “Can I as someone visiting this site easily browse the content on a mobile device,” and the answer is no, it’s just the desktop version of the site that’s been scrunched down on mobile, that’s not a deal breaker. It’s the perfect opportunity. It’s the perfect opportunity to go in and say hey, we noticed this, here’s what’s going on, here’s how it’s affecting you and your business, and here’s how we can help. That’s the difference. Cold calls, or cold emails, don’t work because you’re offering services without taking the time to understand. If you understand how your potential client’s clients think, the people who are searching for and finding the doctor, the producer, the startup, the educator, the law firm, you can warm things up. You can make it relevant. Now, a lot of people might not like this. You can get ignored or shot down. And people can say, “don’t bother me,” or worse. But, you’re putting yourself out there, you’re only reaching out if you notice something somewhere in which you can provide value, an opportunity to help someone or someone’s business in a positive way. This is one format. You might have something that works better, and that’s great. There’s so many ways to get new clients, and this is one way. But that’s the format we’re going to use here. Communicate how people are finding them, what they’re doing and how they might be interacting with their site, and how they can work with you to move forward. How you can help.

And if that’s the format we’ll use, let’s apply it to our five examples. So, our doctor. How do people find them? What is their intention? Let’s put ourselves in their shoes. Not the doctor, but the doctor’s potential customer, the patient. Chances are people who come across Dr. Wesley’s site usually do so for one of two reasons: one, they heard about him somewhere else and either go to his site directly or they type his name into a search, or two, they find him by searching without hearing about him first. That’s it. Now, we can determine by looking at Dr. Wesley’s site that he’s an otorhinolaryngologist, an unfathomably long word which admittedly takes nine syllables to say what could be said with far less effort in only six: ear, nose, and throat doctor. But, why is that important? Because we can see what his specialities are. Sometimes people search for otorhinolaryngologist, probably not. But they might search for ear, nose, and throat doctor in Jacksonville. And Dr. Wesley appears right here as a search result. But what happens when we search for one of his specialties? Sometimes people search by specialties or even the problem they’re having. Sleep apnea doctor, or sinus specialist, they’re actively looking for this, that’s their intention. And when we search for these, he’s not coming up. That’s a huge obstacle. Now, this is hardly scientific and we never want to present it to a potential client as if it was. Search results can vary based on location, your search history, and about a billion other factors. But it gives us a pretty good idea, plus search engines too care about trust and authority when it comes to providing users with relevant results. And, from that we can make some guesses about why. Sometimes it takes some digging. On Dr. Wesley’s site, he literally brands himself as an expert in sleep apnea and sinus conditions, but this one page site really doesn’t talk about that. It’s not listed in plain text, and the only place we see it, is it in the logo itself. That’s just a rasterized image, and that means it’s likely that the content inside isn’t getting indexed, it’s not getting picked up by search engines. What about mobile? How does the site look on a phone? Well, it looks like the same site. But it’s basically the desktop version of the site scrunched down to fit a smaller display. In other words, it’s not responding to the size of the device. That’s a pretty poor experience for someone landing on Dr. Wesley’s website if they’re doing so from a mobile device. But that’s already a huge discovery. Sometimes it’s not that straightforward and we have to do some more digging, but just by visiting his site, and doing a couple searches, we already have some really good answers. Those questions that Dr. Wesley’s potential patients might have, they can be as simple as that Google search. That’s number one. Get to the site, or if they get to his site, there’s not much there to read about. Think about that. You’re looking for a sinus specialist, and there’s not really any information there. Imagine how much more confident you’d feel, and imagine how much better Dr. Wesley could rank in search results if he had dedicated pages on this site for each of his specialties, for people dealing with sleep apnea, allergies and sinuses, thyroid, whatever he’s trying to do, whatever those specialities are. Earlier in the course we covered trust and authority, two things any freelancers portfolio needs to communicate. Most certainly people want that from doctors too. They want to trust the doctor and know that they’re an authority in that speciality. That’s number two. And how can we help? As a freelance web designer, what can we do? Well, now that we understand the problem, or at least we have an idea, we can make recommendations, based on our understanding. We did our unscientific but understandably revealing search for sleep apnea doctor and nothing about him came up on page one, page two, page three, or page eleven. We’ve a pretty strong hunch that creating more detailed content about sleep apnea on a website that currently doesn’t, outside of the logo itself, come close to mentioning anything related to sleep apnea, we have a pretty strong hunch that adding that content could dramatically improve search performance. And it could dramatically improve the experience of someone coming to and wanting to learn from his website. That’s something to communicate. We can help there. We also know the site isn’t responsive. When someone visits on a mobile device, it’s like printing the Magna Carta on a postage stamp and asking Grimur to read it from across the room. That’s another place we can add value. We can build a fully responsive site that works on all devices, not just desktop and laptop computers. Not only can that improve search performance, but it’s a much better user experience.

So, if that’s a quick overview of what we can find out about our doctor, what about our producer? We’ll take the same basic approach here. Start not with the producer herself, but with the people who are going to be looking her up. Put yourself in their shoes. We can do the same thing we did before with Google searches, but that might not be the most common way that Fran plans to get contacted. In fact, we know this because in this hypothetical and not at all real scenario Fran gave us her business card. We can infer from that interaction that she gives out her business card a lot. So, how do people find Fran? Based on the business card, they can just search for her name plus the word producer, or they can type the URL directly into the browser. Same thing here on her site. What do we see on the page? Just as importantly, what would people visiting her site, want to see on her page? There’s no real info on this site, which could be okay, but it’s also a big opportunity, if we’re thinking like others who also received business cards, there’s probably a bit of confusion. Why would a website we found on a business card and typed into our browser contain the exact information that’s on the business card? For a film and television producer, we can take a leap and imagine people might want to see examples of the work she’s done, or at least a summary of the work she’s done. If we’re trying to communicate trust and authority, listing out this work is a step in the right direction. Linking out to her IMDB page, adding testimonials from directors, other producers, actors she’s worked with, the list goes on and on. Same format. When we communicate with Fran, we’ll want to talk through how clients are finding her, what they see or don’t see when they get to her site, and what we might recommend. Yeah, there’s a chance we could reach out, list off some of the stuff we recommend, and she can just go into the WordPress template and implement the changes herself. That’s okay. But the very fact that we’re reaching out to her in the first place, making careful observations, and professionally recommending a direct course of action, we often find the trust and authority that comes from that, the communication itself, makes not only a great first impression but a really big difference when it comes time for a client to make a decision. That’s the producer.

What about the startup? A friend of a friend needs a new site, an e-commerce site, an online store to sell vegan beef jerky. They don’t have one now. So, a dramatically different approach? Not at all, same pattern. Sometimes not having an existing site is great. How do clients find them online? Well we can still search, maybe they have a Facebook page or even an article about them in a blog. For all we know, someone’s already building their site. So we don’t want to get too invested early on in the process. That’s true for any client proposal. But we can read and learn as much as we can. So the questions are almost exactly the same. Future tense: how will customers find them? What will happen when they get there? Will they order vegan beef jerky online? What’s the checkout process going to be like? Will it match the rest of the branding? Even without a site we can make recommendations based on putting ourselves in the shoes of those who are finding and wanting to learn about and buying, for one reason or another, vegan beef jerky.

What about our educator? Very similar to our doctor. When someone’s offering a service, discoverability is usually pretty important. How is the educator being found? What are people searching for? If they already have a site, what is it like? What subjects or focus areas does the educator specialize in? In other words, what do they teach? We see here that the educator specializes in working with students who struggle with reading comprehension, she also works with kids who are in remedial math classes, she has a bunch of amazing areas in which she specializes. But, they’re only listed in bullets. So, what happens when we search just like a potential student or the parent of a student might perform a search? Not so good. We can infer that the reason that’s happening is because there are just bullets on a page. Now, there could be any number of factors affecting this but if we turn these bullets into actual links and made pages that talk about each of her specialities, that’s real content. That helps students and parents better understand the services she offers, gives them confidence. It communicates that trust and authority. And that’s great for search engines too. We load it up on mobile, it says this website is best viewed on a laptop or desktop. Not so good. The pattern here is the same. We’re figuring out how people are finding them, we’re talking about what happens when those people get on the site, and we can make recommendations based on those observations.

Now for this one, our law firm, let’s follow the same format. How do clients, these are potential clients of the law firm, how do people find Conrad, Woolf & Dostoyevsky? What are people searching for? Think about the combinations of searches that could be performed, any combination of practice areas, locations. These are the real world searches that people are performing every day. And, for real people, who are searching for these services, we want to better understand their thought process. For a law firm, it goes something like this. We do a search for a thing, we find a site that comes up as a search result, after reading a particularly helpful description that seems to match our needs, we click the link. Enter the website. First things first. We’ll want to confirm that the service we’re looking for is handled by the law firm. Is there a practice area listed or described here that matches our needs? Is there an FAQ or a resources page, or something that let’s me learn more before engaging with this law firm? Once we’ve confirmed that the law firm has what we’re looking for, we’re thinking higher level. Are they trustworthy? For someone seeking legal advice that’s a big deal. Does the website look professional? Does the attorney biography section make us feel like the firm is qualified? Do we get a good sense that we’ll be represented well? Once we get past this, we have an interesting point, and it may seem really, really obvious but people need a clear way to actually engage the law firm. How do they make an appointment? Can they quickly find the phone number? Is there a contact form so people can reach out? Is there a clear address and a map to their office? These are just some of the many things that go through the heads of people searching for stuff on the internet. And in most cases, not having clear access to all this information is a huge obstacle. They’re on the site because they have an intention, so the job of the site is to help anyone overcome these obstacles to accomplish their goal. Our job is to communicate this to the law firm. And, we’ll do it like this. We’ll break down how their clients are finding them. We can include some common search terms that are relevant to what we found on their existing site. We know their practice areas, we know they offer these services, let’s make sure to communicate the types of searches that could be happening around each subject. We don’t point out flaws. We don’t trash their existing site. There’s a high chance they or their nephew created it. Instead, let’s educate them. Let’s make observations that inform their thinking. And in this kind of proposal we’ll want to get inside the law firm’s way of thinking. How is this affecting their business? Once someone arrives on their site, we can simply ask the same questions we thought of earlier. We can include screenshots or descriptions of what happens when someone lands on their site, what are the practice areas look like? Do they link out to pages where we can learn more about them? How does the site look on mobile? Here we can see it’s scrunched down. It’s a website designed for a desktop or a laptop computer and is virtually microscopic. These observations are then turned into the next section: moving forward, how we can help. After we’ve educated and made observations, we can talk about what we do, tell them a little bit about our process, and how that process relates to what we’ve talked about, how we can positively affect their business. Because we’re making recommendations for them based on the research we’ve done, they’re infinitely more likely to respond when compared to spamming them with generic unpersonalized nonsense. That’s the key with all of this. The doctor, the producer, the startup, the educator, the lawyers, we communicate to them, we educate. We aim to get them thinking about what their clients or customers are going through when they search, when they arrive at their website, and we tell them what we can do to help. And that’s the type of research we want when we’re putting together a proposal.



