It's a tricky business and something I wrote about in the Learn to Write Proposals blog
here about whether you are offering a solution or just some free consultancy.
In a business to business situation I'd recommend a non-disclosure agreement to be put in place, but that probably isn't going to be practical in your situation. If you create bespoke designs then they are copyright - I'd imagine that it would be difficult to enforce any breach of that though - as well as being expensive and counter productive. However, I would include a strong copyright statement in the proposal.
One approach I have often used is breaking a project - and the proposal - down into smaller chunks. You say that your proposals get quite detailed, so you are presumably including a reasonable amount of bespoke design work up front in your proposal.
Why not break the proposal down into two parts? Firstly, the initial design phase and then the actual installation project itself. Explain to the client that your expertise is in the design and that this is charged for. You could perhaps say that any design costs will be discounted off the cost of the actual installation project if they go ahead.
To make this work you need unique selling points - reasons why they must choose you and not the guy down the road.
The benefits are that it's a low cost initial outlay for the client - after that you are just upselling and though the guy down the road may be cheaper you have an opportunity to sell your quality and skills in the design project. The other advantage is that even if they do use the guy down the road, you have been paid for your time designing the solution...and of course you get paid for the designs you do do, and not spending unbillable time on designs that are never going to see the return on investment.
One of the common questions with this approach is "How do I get them to pay for the design project, when previously this was included in a proposal?".
If you are the market experts, it should be easy to sell your knowledge and design experience as a design project - don't give it away. Clients should be convinced by your portfolio and recognised authority in this area. Sometimes, particularly when starting up a business it's tempting to give away more than you need to in order to impress a potential client. But if you are the recognised authority, then your knowledge is a commodity in it's own right and that needs to be recognised by the client.
If you ask an architect for a price to design a house, how many include the full design in their proposal? They don't. but they will include portfolio information, testimonials and a description of the benefits of working with them.
I'd be interested to know if you've tried this approach with clients and what their response was, And to what degree you feel you could limit the detail of a specific design in a proposal in order to win the business?
James
