There’s this point in a project where you pour your guts in. You put yourself fully inside an idea, and you sort things out. Then you spend hours writing about it. It’s only later that you find out if you’re going to be paid. So goes the process of landing new work.

We’re six hours into any given project by the time the prospective client ever sees a proposal. Sometimes the time spent is significantly greater, but this isn’t to complain. I don’t see it as spec’ work since the initial documentation is as much a service to us as it is to the client.

Every so often, though, we get an inquiry asking for more than a proposal. It usually starts like this: “We’re looking for a partner in this. We want you to let us know what we should be doing.” In other words, they need consulting time, but, depending on the individual, it can be hard to distinguish between writing a proposal and developing a blueprint. The latter, of course, is a lot more work (and should be billable.) So, what seems like a simple request has the potential to be a lot more.

I mentioned the proposal process above. We don’t move on to a fully detailed scope document until we get project approval. This limits the time we spend on speculation, but, more importantly, it lets us formally schedule work / assign tasks as we plan. In the example I use above, the prospect is asking to see a full scope before they decide, and that scope would be based on research. So, now it’s spec’ work.

There’s a lot of grey area in this. We don’t position ourselves as strict contractors, and we wouldn’t be doing our job if we weren’t recommending what clients *should* be doing throughout the process. But it’s probably fair to point out we’re being paid to do so.

Our instinct lately seems to be to bounce the inquiry to a firm that has this all figured out. Two problems. 1) We don’t know any. 2) It always seems like we’d be bouncing a problem.

In the spirit of full disclosure, we’ll break just about every rule we can come up with if the client is cool enough. Problem #2 above is probably the bigger issue.