Years ago, my agency received an RFI (Request for Information) in our inbox.
The project sounded fun and right up our alley. We sent the info they requested and said we’d respond to the RFP (Request for Proposal). Not long after, they told us we were shortlisted as one of their final candidates.
A few weeks later, the RFP showed up. We worked on our proposal and booked a time to present it in person.
When we got to their office, we checked the sign-in log. We spotted our competition: two huge consultancies. (Funny thing: they had both hired us before to teach design systems to their teams.)
The presentation went great. They loved everything: our work, our team, and our plan.
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Get Lesson #1 NowJust as we were about to leave, they threw us what they literally called a “curve ball.”
They showed us new brand assets and asked us to apply them to their website as the final step of the proposal process.
(Holy spec work, Batman!)
We didn’t love that request. But we didn’t want to lose the chance either. So we split the difference by writing what we called “a reverse case study.”
Here’s how we prefaced it in the document:
This is the case study we would write for this project after the fact. The research and data is fabricated to weave a better tale of how this may have played out in real life. Please enjoy our fiction!
We mapped out a fake process and mocked up a few element collage-style interface ideas… just enough to hint without committing. Then we packed it all into a 55-page PDF proposal with three pricing options: $1.2M, $800k, and $350k.
They loved and chose the top option with all the bells and whistles.
After a few weeks of radio silence, we finally got word…
…that we had 3 days to answer 99 questions in a document their IT department sent along. We took it as an annoying but good sign that they’re doing their due diligence with us. After all, if they weren’t interested in working with us, they wouldn’t even be asking, right? RIGHT??
We asked for a call to talk it through. Nope; they wanted it written, with no wiggle room in the deadline. We rushed to get it done.
I also sent a separate email to our main contacts titled, “Working on working together.” It was my polite way of saying, “This is starting to feel weird.”
We smoothed it out on a call. Things felt okay again.
Then the good news came: we won the project!
They said we were “universally loved.”
“A refreshing break from the rest.”
It felt like a massive win.
Next up: contracts.
We met their procurement team and brought in our lawyer. Over lunch we hit a surprise snag: price. I thought we had settled that.
They wanted everything in the $1.2M option but said projects over $1M meant longer reviews and delays. So we removed some scope and gave them a few options between $750k and $950k, with a payment schedule of 50% up front and the remainder paid monthly throughout the duration of the project.
They countered with essentially the original top option for $880k, with 50% up front, 15% halfway through, and the remaining 35% paid upon receipt of the final deliverable.
We countered with $950k with 75% up front and the remaining 25% at the halfway point.
We got on the phone to talk it through.
After a few days, their counter was $1M for the original top option with 25% up front, 25% at the end, and regular monthly payments throughout.
One rule I always keep: payments should be tied to dates, not milestones. I’ve done enough projects to know that milestones move—for lots of reasons—and I want them to be able to because that‘s the nature of high-stakes projects. But just because milestones change doesn’t mean that scope does. And if scope doesn’t change, neither does the price. And if price doesn’t change, I should be able to project cashflow for it. So, any project where a payment is tied to a milestone makes it riskier. And if a project gets riskier, the price goes up.
We made a final counter: $950k for the top option, with 50% up front and the rest paid monthly.
They agreed. Phew.
As a matter of policy, we always start with our GSA (General Services Agreement). I think it’s a very even agreement, with both parties having an equivalent level of checks and balances. I like starting with most terms being mutual. For example, if they get to terminate with 30 days notice, we get to terminate with 30 days notice. That’s the way I wanted every project to be, and starting with an agreement like that felt like the right first step.
We passed 5 versions of contracts back and forth for 2 months. And they kept getting worse:
Through all the contract negotiations, this was the biggest sticking point in the end:
Their biggest fear was that we’d deliver a product that wasn’t complete or of adequate quality to them, which is why they wanted all of the work to be subject to their full approval.
Our biggest worry is that they wouldn’t be able to agree on approving anything and we’d be contractually obligated to work on this project forever.
We offered these fixes:
After sending the email, I started to realize that, even if they agreed to one or all of these things, it wouldn’t solve the problem: we’d be forced to work in a completely different way than we know how to be successful.
Not to mention: this whole process had been extremely draining. Were we really ready to sign on for 12 more months of this?
Before we had a chance to think too much about it, we received their latest contract revision: a redline saying that, if the project went late, we’d pay them $1,000/day for every day past the term.
This was the worst option yet.
We wanted them to move faster. This let them drag their feet—and make money off it.
If we accepted this, they were ready to sign and get started.
We talked internally and gave the client a call.
Seven months from receiving the initial RFI, we told them that we were bowing out of the project.
Their main boss wasn’t on the call.
Minutes later, we received a phone call from him. He told us that he was at his kid’s baseball game and yelled obscenities and insults at us until we decided to hang up.
They couldn’t pay me a million dollars to endure more of that.
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