Fortune_Hunter - 12:51 am on Nov 7, 2005 (gmt 0)

johntabita:

I mean, he's regarded as the consultant's consultant. If you were known as the web developer to whom all other web developers looked to for advise, how much easier would it be for you to close business?

Very good point! In fact I am trying to do more consulting and less actual development work and all the stuff I have been reading including Alan's stuff is to become a "guru" which you do through writing articles, books, professional speaking, etc. Overtime if you do enough of this stuff on a topic people begin to regard you as a guru, which is where you want to be to do things like Alan does them.

You mentioned you were located in Ohio, whereabouts? I am also in Ohio, Toledo to be exact. In my neck of the woods it just seems that people have a different form of thought about pricing. Most clients that are local to me, though I have a few out of state, seem to regard prices like 5K high for a site. I could be off base, but it seems that if you quoted that price in NY the person would think you are the cheapest thing around.

I think about Eric Meyers the CSS guru and people do come to him concerning CSS. He can probably get some nice fees for his work and it is probably much easier for him to close contracts as well. He is in Cleveland, not that far from me and I have met him once or twice, pretty down to earth guy.

Alan has a book published called "How to write a proposal that is accepted everytime" I just got the book and started reading it so I haven't made it too far yet, but he starts off by giving you questions and processes to go through the whole sales process and ask the right questions to get areement to the conceptual value. The book was pretty steep at $115 used from Amazon, but if I get one proposal out the thing it was worth it hands down.

Fortune Hunter