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Filter out the unqualified bids

We only need 1 winner (most of the time), so we want to systematically filter out the trash. It helps if you’ve put some rules in the proposal that you’ve posted, this way you can systematically disqualify all non-compliant bids. It will also DRAMATICALLY reduce the number of rubbish bids you get. If you set even basic qualification requirements, many providers won’t bid… this is great as we don’t want to work with them anyway.

In addition to our defined project requirements, a couple of simple qualifiers I normally use for sub $1k projects are:

• Minimum of 10 previous reviews at a minimum average of 9.0 on the website (more for larger projects)
• Minimum of 5 examples of similar work completed (more for larger projects)
• Agreement to a fixed delivery timeframe eg. Please advise that you can deliver within X 5 days of being selected.
• Quoted upfront price (or hourly rate in special circumstances)

First up, knock out the guys with too few reviews or low averages. This could be as many as 75%. Got 9 reviews? We don’t care. Got 30 reviews with rating of 8? We don’t care. All of these bids get hidden or deleted. We don’t respond or acknowledge as they don’t comply with our requirements.

Death to Empty Form Letters… at least arbitrary exclusion

Now we execute the empty form letter bidders. If someone can’t go to the trouble of reading our proposal, and providing a personal and accurate response, can we really trust them to pay attention to our work? My experience suggests that you can’t

Here’s a classic form letter. It did not address my requirements, and presumed to know much more about the project then was possible. This was a bid on a graphic design and logo project- nothing to do with the web. It got binned as it deserved.

Gah.. read the proposal.. Time Wasters!

The next thing to look for is empty promises. These are red flags. The above example includes a big red flag in that the above was “attached is a plan for implementation, cost, and time estimates”. If you were thinking “wow, how nice of that guy to go to all that work for us!” think again!

Like the flimsy form letter, these form letter project plans aren’t worth the paper you might be tempted to print it on. Aside from the fact that they don’t know enough about what we want at this early stage, they’d go broke if they wrote free project plans for every bid. It is another type of form letter trash and not worth opening.

The other thing to look for and treat with extreme prejudice is any bids that promise more then what you’ve asked for, or promise things that are unrelated to your proposal. Nothing is free, be weary of anyone promising too much.

No Price, No Dice

In our qualifiers we asked them to quote a price. Anyone who hasn’t provided a price as requested is also cut. This is a gambit to get you to talk to them. At this stage for a small piece of work you don’t want to waste time haggling via email. Not worth the effort. These bids are cut.

Affirmation of delivery timeframe

We want positive agreement that they can do it in the timeframe we’ve asked. This is a qualifier too. Understand that this may ultimately change, but right now we’re concerned with identifying the bidders who actually read our proposal. No ‘we can do this in 5 days’ = cut too.

Ok, so what’s left?

Now you should be left with 2 types of bids that meet your stipulated requirements:

• Type 1: ‘I can do this for you’.
• Type 2: ‘I can do this for you, and here’s how’ bids.

We want type 2. Engage with these guys. Give them greater detail about what you want to achieve. Query them further on how they plan to do your work. You should receive helpful, concise responses. They should almost always have further questions/clarifications for you. This is a good sign, they should be taking a lot of interest in the detail at this point.

It should only take 1 or 2 posts or emails from this point to select your winner and get started. This is a huge time saving, if you compare it to attempting to talk with everyone. It’s all thanks to good work processes.

NB: if more emails or conversation are required to firm up the project, take this as a likely indication that your requirements are not detailed or clear enough.

A winning example:

Here is a winning bid. Underlined in blue were the various requirements and qualifiers that I set in the proposal. The bidder has shown me that they read and understood what I was requesting. It makes an interesting comparison to the other example.

This bid proves the outsourcer read the proposal

This bid was also $225 cheaper (75% cheaper) for me than the other bid, showing how price is a poor indicator of quality. Also, as suggested by the quality of their bid, this company was attentive, skilled, delivered on time, and did an all around great job.

But isn’t it mean to ignore all of those bidders?

Just in case there are any bleeding hearts out there thinking “It’s not fair, we should be polite and talk to everyone who took the time to bid…’ Let me try and dissuade you. Freelancer’s and many outsource companies post A LOT of bids every day. In a survey I saw recently, more then ½ spend 3-6 hours A DAY just bid writing. If they’re unsuccessful on your project, most won’t give a stuff (unless it was a biiig project!). They don’t want to hear from you unless you’re offering work. They’re already focussed on getting their next meal ticket. So, by responding you’re wasting your time and theirs…

Your feedback and comments are always welcome.

This article is part of the series “How to Find a Great Freelancer Online”, which includes everything you need to know to find the best guys (or gals) for your project.