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How to Write a Winning Freelance Bid.

How to Write a Winning Freelance Bid (How to Bid & Win an Online Job)

Becoming a freelancer comes with several tags. Part of that includes being able to search for clients. Clients are and always will be the life-line of your online business.

Whether you are on freelancing platforms or working directly with clients, you have to know how to write excellent bids. Great bids make you stand out and above the competition.

What is an Excellent Bid?

By an excellent bid, I mean one that will make the client come back to you in search of your services. It has to be unique and convincing, yet meet all the conditions set in the Job Description set by the client.

Clients can tell when you copy-paste a proposal. Most cases it does not address the project in question and other specific details such as the timelines and scope. An excellent bid is developed from starch and not from a copied template. When starting out, steer away from the copy-paste thing.

Note:
Established freelancers may use templates. But most of that comes from tried and proven techniques. Writing out an excellent bid should have a target to trigger a series of communications between you as the freelancer and the prospective clients.
Let’s look into some of the key things to include in an Excellent bid

● Address the client warmly, Dear John, Hi Jimmy, Hello Dear Client…

Example, “You have done a great job in explaining what you want done and I’d be more than excited to work on this project, which I feel perfectly qualified for.”

Clients appreciate the personalized bits. After all, they are human like you are. Address them by personal names if the is possible. It creates a personal touch and that increases your chance of getting a reply and possibly closing a contract.

There are all sorts of strategies to locate the name of the person to target. Explore the internet, company profiles, posts, and valuable LinkedIn searches. Read the job descriptions, some are signed off in the client’s name.

The title of the target person also matters. Sounds right?

If you do content writing, please target content managers or marketing leads. You stand better chances of responses than when you fire off your pitch to the logistics and support guys.

In rare cases, if you are unable to target that “person, you can then resort to communication or HR guys. If all your hacks fail, you can finally resort to sending your pitches to founders/ CEOs”

● Be straight to the points

Your bid should be a combination of conciseness and relaying of just what’s required to warrant a client to contact you.

Bonus point: Clients are busy people; some have no time to read long proposals. The ideal proposal gives a glimpse of who you are and how your services can benefit their business. Just be straight to the point and address the client and job description directly. Find those words that attract attention such as , “Wow, this is a perfect job for me.” The client is left with one question why? Go ahead and answer it. “This is the kind of jobs I like to work on because of A, B, C…”

So, do not give long lectures, let the client know who you are, what you can do to benefit the client. Experienced freelancers first create rapport via prior communication. That could be emails, social media posts and their comments, blog comments or even physical meet-ups.

So, when a pitch lands in their inbox, they’ve got a clear picture of who you are. That’s a great plus for you as a freelancer. There are strategies to craft irresistible bids.

Remember, clients are short in time, yet they need your services. When a bid is convincing in quality, convenience, reliability and price, you can be sure the client will contact you.

How do you stand out of the numerous emails landing in their inbox?

I’ve seen two approaches work here:

For one, approach the client from a point of a great article or comment on their posting but is quick to comment that you can offer this or that.

The second approach emanates from a point of credibility, as a freelancer, you include your links to a very credible source and then shift focus to what are to offer.

Credibility requires your past records. What can you show for your past projects?

Do you have samples to show? The more credible the better.

More Pro-Tips to Crafting an Excellent Bid:

● If you must use Templates, use the tried and tested templates.

There is no one size fits all.
Therefore, be free to test out different pitching templates. Seek to improve and retain the ones that give you the best of responses and client closure rates. You can search on Google for examples of best winning bids. This should be a starting point.

● What do you put as email headers?

Let it communicate your intentions. If it reads something away from your intention, tweak it to fit appropriately.

Some freelancers argue that it’s the header that sells and I can’t agree more. With heavy emails, readers/clients just have time to scheme through. So, you stand better chances when your email header is appealing.

● Signing out.
You have to be smart here. Use fewer, cheerful words that act as a CTA (Call to action).

Let the client feel the suspense of needing to engage more with you.

In summary:

How to write a freelancing bid
Bids in freelancing aim at triggering the crucial engagement where you end up selling. As a smart freelancer, start by crafting an excellent bid, one that can speak tons about you even with your physical absence at the client’s side.

After pressing the send button, be ready for interviews. Have your rate card reachable. Have more samples if needed/ and testimonials as well.
It’s an open-world; a bid can even be a video recording. Just make sure it’s something your clients would want to see. Most importantly, it starts from the same old steps – exploring everything, learning at every step of the way – and this way, you only keep getting better.

James Maina Mwangi is one of our established guest freelance content writers. Reach out to him via:
| Facebook | E-mail: maina@cedgg.org |Linkedin | www.freelancerpal.com | Skype:mwajame83 | Twitter:@mwajame