You Never Know

Maybe it was a mistake to write about formatting. Yesterday I got a call from someone who said he was an editor, and was working on editing a proposal for a client. But, he said, his client didn't realize that editing did not include formatting, and he didn't know how to properly format the proposal. So his client now needed someone to do that and could I help?

I gotta wonder where he got the idea that I did formatting work. This blog, perhaps? Of course I do formatting, but I've never been asked to do just that. I only do it as part of my proposal writing/editing/reviewing work. I proceeded to tell him that, and also told him that it would probably be much less expensive if his client used a word processing specialist (or whatever they are called these days -- I'm not sure). But he was pretty insistent and sounded kind of desperate. So I agreed that he could give my name to his client. Then I promptly forgot about it because a bunch of other things came up that I had to deal with.

About an hour and a half later, his client called and put me on speakerphone. There were two of them, which seemed kind of odd for a company that was just looking for someone to do basic formatting work. I did my song and dance, telling them that I was not a word processing specialist -- I was a professional proposal writer. There was this sort of excited scream from the other end. A proposal writer! What did I do? So I explained and suggested they take a look at my website. They got on the site while we were still on the phone. Then the real story came out. They were putting together a proposal, but were running into problems. They needed someone like me. And the proposal was due in a week.

So of course I got interested-- a potential new client. But it didn't turn out the way you'd think it would. As they started explaining what the proposal was for, I realized that it was the exact same bid that I am currently working on for another client. Whoa -- conflict of interest! I can't help them. Goodbye new client. I ended up giving them the names of two competitors. They said they'd like to talk with me further after they finished this bid because they had a lot more proposals coming up. If that's really true, then one of my competitors is likely to continue to get their business. Oh well...

Just goes to show -- from formatting to proposal writing -- you never know!