Forum Moderators: LifeinAsia
I would like to learn how RFPs or (RFQs) are handled when they are coming from Free email ids such as Yahoo or Gmail etc.
As there are so many chances to get such enquiries from our competitor next street, who can simply edit what we send them and make them ready to their clients. Being an offshore development company we get many enquires - how to ask them to send their business details without hurting them.
People may mot send their Business Email IDs or Contact details to the bidders to protect 1. The keep their information confidential
2. They may be wanted to have their web presence for the first time. Since we can not ignore both and ignore their hidden potential which we may not know.
How do you handle such enquires? If we say that as a POLICY!, we need their details, they may not come back. So without hurting them we need to phrase the words to ask politely their business details.
I use a method; capture their IP from the form (Even if they send direct mails - I ask them to fill certain details from a Form) but which is delaying the process.
Being a web development company from India, We need to ensure more on this. From the IPs I identify that some are sent from Ukraine, Philippines and Romania, this alerts us.
Looking forward to help to write to such inquires to avoid competitors as well as avoid loosing business?
Best Regards,
Send me your phone number. Without that you are destined for the garbage. My "Contact Form" demands a phone number, fill in a false one, and you are in the garbage.
In the last 6 years I did make 2 sales without ever "talking" to the client. One was simple, the other demanded huge amounts of email communication, which I was only prepared to entertain 6 years ago.
Today (and for the last 5 year).....we need to talk! The phone is quick, a meeting of minds, cost efficient, any other method is just not practical.....that includes face...to....face meetings!
People have every answer now. They say that they are startups - fresh to business and have only a free email id. I am confused if we need to bother them or add my previous business hours in preparing proposals.
We are in India, Phone may not work sometimes (We use Vonage though).
Suggest you get yourselves a US and a European phone number, forwarding to you or to voicemail if you're unavailable.
I'm in the UK and I work with people in India, this is what they do, it works all right from my point of view as the client, only problem is that the audio quality can be poor.
hth, a.
