This is pretty much exactly how I did prospecting back in the day, although I'd probably position that last-stage-before-contract as either a "scoping session" or "proposal" rather than "complimentary consultation." You want the client to be sufficiently onboard with paying.https://twitter.com/sehurlburt/status/986791598175338496 …
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A proposal does a number of things for you operationally as a consultant. Importantly, it signals to serious counterparties that you are unambiguously pursuing a professional relationship and that they should apply all of their standard expectations to the proposal process.
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Qualification is a bit of following a checklist, a bit of a science, and a bit of an art. People sometimes asked me "How'd you avoid people blowing up at you when you quoted them $60k for a consulting gig?" and a major part of the job is never quoting anyone who'd be surprised.
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Incidentally: the lower bound for the revenues of a sustainable software company is $200k per white collar employee. 25 employees? They have $5M ARR. Or they've received investment. So if you need to know how much revenue someone has to qualify them, that's three ways to ask it.
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Because I cannot shake my middle-class-kids-do-not-talk-money background I almost always phrased it as "You can feel free to answer this question in a lot of detail or a little detail, but it would help provide context for me: what's your revenue?" Sales folks skip to end.
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End of conversation
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