May 21, 2007

Its 2:30am and I’m I’m just going to bed. I spent the last 4 hours working on a proposal that we may, or may not, get. And before I received it, someone else worked on it for an hour. As I was about to lay down to go to bed, I realized that I probably need to bring up two points.

Point One
I have three other proposals that are staring me in the face every day. And I need to finish them because proposals bring in money. Not immediately but eventually. The way it works is this: leads turn into meetings turn into proposals turn into sales which turn into money. It’s all a numbers game. So, when you realize that you don’t have anything going or that you’re not making enough money (in sales) it’s probably because you don’t have enough poles in the water (a good sentence since I’m at the lake). Don’t complain because you don’t have money, complain because you haven’t drummed up enough leads, went to enough meetings, or finished enough proposals.

Point Two
When you look at someone’s hourly rate, think about how much work goes into the work before the work even starts. I know… that’s confusing to think about, but I’ve already invested 4 hours into a proposal that I may get… If I get 25% of the work that I write proposals for, I would get 1 job out of every 4 proposals. If I took 4 hours to develop each proposal, It would take me 16 hours worth of work to get 1 job.

Other things to think about when developing your hourly rate: taxes, vacation, insurance, and other stuff that needs to be paid since you’re employer isn’t paying for you.