I am getting bigger on taking the recommendation of so many business writers when they talk about value based fees in a proposal instead of an hourly breakdown.  We all know the projects where the meeting to discuss it, writing the proposal in great detail, and getting it approved after major tweaking actually takes longer than the project.

In my opinion, smaller projects do not need an extreme detailed write-up including a breakdown of hours in multiple categories.  If you can breakdown their needs and what you will be delivering within a few pages with a set dollar amount, the clients will be farther ahead.

I had a meeting to discuss a proposal with roughly six people from the client side.  It lasted an hour.  It took a few of hours to go through the proposal including questioning of hours being too much in one area in their opinion.  The actual work came down to 8 hours to develop and 4 hours of execution time to get the deliverables created.  So for a total of 16 hours of everything, a good chunk was arguing over the hours being written in the proposal.  Instead, it could have been less than three pages with a dollar amount of what it will cost.  Work completed the same week as the initial meeting.

At times, we need the hourly breakdown especially internal with managing so many clients and a lot of work.  Even then, I am seeing a benefit of just giving a dollar amount with a project completion instead of hours to the client.

I look at it when I buy a car.  I could really care less about a bunch of numbers the dealership is throwing at me.  BOTTOM LINE.  How much is it going to cost me?  Plain and simple.