We wanted to share our very own pitch and onboarding deck that helps us win client projects. Hopefully, it will help you and we're giving it out for free.
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If you’re a designer, or anyone that sends project proposals to potential clients, I’ve got little trick for you that helped me go from turning some of my enquiries into clients… to turning all my enquiries into clients.
If you’re actively pitching yourself or your work to a potential client, it’s typical for freelancers all the way up to huge agencies to send the potential client, a project proposal. It gives them an insight in to your or the agency, shows them what you’re about and what you can do. Straight forward enough, right?.
I used to send my pitch deck to potential clients, some decided to go with me, some didn’t — it's part of life. The ones that did go with me, I sent another ‘onboarding’ deck, which better detailed process, what to expect, more about me.
Its really good to give the client something as the project starts, it can instil confidence, set realistic expectations and give them more reason to pay their deposit.The trick…. I simply stopped sending the pitch deck. I kinda rolled it all under one as the ‘onboading’ deck and now I simply send that to potential clients and just laugh it off as being overly forward in email. I’ve been doing this now for over a year and it’s worked flawlessly.
How to use
Love it or hate it, we remade this in Canva so anyone can use it for free! You'll want to customise this deck, that is unless you're a terrible designer and in that case this deck will do nothing to help you. It's been kept ultra minimal on purpose and while it looks great as is, you may want to inject a little personality. The wording and imagery is a result of using my own as prompts for AI generated copy. The copy is in no way representative of a final example but you'll get a good idea what yours should include.. Make it unique, speak from the heart and empathise with the potential client.
Process
Feel free to use the example as the basis for your own, especially if you don't have one, but this should be a brief overview that helps clients understand the major milestones and what to broadly expect.
Goals
All projects have goals. Even if your client just feels like they just need a website. Be specific enough to define what you set out to achieve.
Objectives
All goals have objectives. Define the necessary objectives in order to achieve the goals. Examples might be "contextual calls to action throughout" or "luxury, dark design with plenty of room to breathe".
Proposal
This is where you can freestyle depending on your preference. Be as specific as you like. I prefer to be fairly broad and simply sum up the project in a few sentences by describing the feel.
Managing Expectations
Unless you want calls at stupid o'clock make sure to set boundaries. That way you keep your sanity. State when you con be contacted and how.
Project Terms
You may choose to include your terms here or attach them separately. If you don't have a contract it would make sense to at least state payment terms here per milestone. Make sure the milestones are clearly defined. Your payment terms should not allow for client delay, so protect yourself.
