It sharpens everything.
Seth is talking about doing “date-certain” work as a freelancer or as a service business, noting that it should cost more to get it “at 11AM on Tuesday” than to get it “soon.”
Well, all proposals are date-certain work — aka drop-dead-deadline work — and that fact sure *should* sharpen everything:
- Focusing us on what matters to the client as we design our solution
- Reminding us to train and coach newbies so they’re productive sooner
- Leading us to create more-reliable and, hence, faster processes to draft our response
- Getting us to accept the “good enough” and to let go of the “perfect”
Of course, we can do that other thing instead, and just throw an unprepared team against an impossible mountain of work and hope for the best. But that actually costs more: in bids lost and in people chewed-up.
Seth would not be impressed.
Related post: The Most Important Thing in RFP Responses