Are you tired of sending out Upwork proposals only to be met with silence? It's easy to blame your new profile or lack of a portfolio, but the real reason might be something else entirely—your proposal.
In this article, I will demonstrate that even with a new profile and no projects in your portfolio, you can still win clients. I will show you the art of crafting a compelling proposal that wins clients' hearts at first glance.
A Game Theory Approach to Proposals
When you write a proposal, be aware that you are playing a multiplayer game with other freelancers. You not only need to do your best but also consider what your competitors are going to do and how you need to adjust your proposal to make it stand out.
Over the past five years, I have analyzed over 1,000 Upwork proposals. Here are the most common things freelancers include:
- They claim to understand the project and reiterate what the client said to demonstrate their understanding.
- They showcase their portfolio to prove their experience.
- They talk about the technologies they know and how those technologies fit the job post.
These are the well-known ground rules for winning a client. Everyone knows them, and you can use this to your advantage. Instead of following these rules, accept that everyone else is following them and write something that will stand out.
Show, Don't Tell
"Show, don't tell" is a well-known writing technique that helps to immerse the reader in a story. For instance, instead of saying, "Josh went to a hotel and felt intimidated," a writer would say:
Josh opened the door and felt multiple eyeballs staring at him. Every person in the room was silent; the only sound was the door closing behind his back.
You can read more about this technique in this blog post, but let me explain how it applies to writing proposals.
Most people think "Show, don't tell" applies when you reiterate what the client said to show your understanding. This is a kindergarten-level application of this rule; you need to go deeper.
To show that you really understand the client, you have to give them a solution outside of what they wrote in the job offer. Let's say you have a non-technical startup founder looking for a team to build an MVP.
Instead of saying, "I have built multiple MVPs and I understand how important speed is for you," think about how you are going to build their MVP fast.
- Authentication: Every app needs it. Instead of writing something from scratch, you can propose using a service like Clerk.com to save up to a week of work.
- Admin Panel: Most apps need an admin panel. Instead of building one from scratch, you can advise your client to use a No-Code tool like NocoDB or Softr to build a simple admin dashboard.
Challenge the Status Quo
When people go to Upwork to find a freelancer, they obviously don't know something they need help with. They expect you to have better expertise. They would be happy to see you correcting their misunderstandings and advising better solutions.
- Let's say a client has GoLang in their requirements for building an MVP. You can advise them to use TypeScript instead to build the MVP faster and concentrate on scalability later.
- Maybe your client wants to implement conferencing functionality inside their product. You can warn them that conferencing infrastructure is expensive to build and maintain. Then, you can advise them to build an integration with Google Meet instead.
99% of freelancers do not do this. They think of a client's request as a project that needs to be executed instead of a problem that needs to be solved.
Provide Value
If you've ever tried to produce content on social media, you may have heard of the rules of engagement:
- If your posts get no likes, the content isn't relatable.
- If your posts get no replies, they aren't thought-provoking.
- If your posts get no shares, they do not provide value.
Most social media platforms value shares the most. Likes and comments are cheap engagements, but if your post gets shared, it means a follower finds it so good that they want to come back to it later or share it with friends.
When you write an Upwork proposal, you are creating a piece of content for a very specific target audience: the client who made the job post. The same rules apply, except there is only one action the client can take: book a call with you. The only way to achieve that is to provide value.
When most content creators start, they choose a strategy of volume, creating as many pieces of content as possible while sacrificing value. History teaches us that this is a losing game. Creators who become obsessed with their content, trying to make it as perfect as possible, earn the trust of their audience and eventually grow much faster.
The same goes for writing proposals. Instead of sending 50 AI-generated proposals a day, write 10 proposals that are absolutely amazing and give your client practical value. However, to give actual value, you need to be an architect, not a manager.
Be an Architect, Not a Manager
When I speak of "managers," I mean not only agency managers looking for jobs for their team. I am also speaking about the mentality of individual freelancers who think of themselves as developer-power that needs to be sold. They work hard on their resumes, craft pretty personal websites, and build portfolios to create as much scalable credibility as possible.
In a world where everyone does this, this strategy stops working. Nowadays, everyone has a great resume, website, and portfolio, so the only way to demonstrate your credibility is to show it directly in the proposal.
Just to be clear, I love managers. They bring peace to every project and help it go smoothly. However, all managers are at a huge disadvantage when competing with an actual architect who knows their stuff.
The only thing a manager can do in their proposal is reiterate requirements, highlight team strengths, and showcase a portfolio.
An architect, on the other hand, can:
- Try to solve a client's problem without waiting to be hired.
- Suggest an architectural approach that will make the system more reliable.
- Share a new technology they recently saw that could be handy for the client.
- Research a library that is going to cut development time in half.
- Find an open-source project that will work as a boilerplate for the whole product.
These things bring real value, and they win clients. In a world where everyone can position themselves as an expert, only those who can prove it from the first second are going to win.