The last company I was at completely turned around when we stopped begging people to let us do their proposals and instead started charging them for the privilege to have us analyze their business, create actionable guidelines (that they could conceivably have anyone implement) and provide a quote for what our services would cost to implement them ourselves. They were welcome to take that strategy plan elsewhere, but when we started charging people for it, we had more clients than we knew what to do with.
People start to see you differently when you value your time, ideas and strategy and don't just give them away. Yes, there are some cases where it's worth doing one gratis, but the vast majority of time, we got more business by refusing to work with people who didn't run through our proposal process.
I am making a tactical point, and you are making a strategic point.
Strategically: of course you should structure your interactions with clients so that you are paid for your time, ideas, and strategy.
Tactically: avoid being that firm that wants money just to provide a proposal.
We are literally just talking about different ways to word things.
And while I totally believe your firm "turned around" once you started asking people to pay to get proposals, in my universe, the first purchase order you get from a client comes with multiple weeks of legal negotiation over an MSA. Nobody is going to do that casually.
The last company I was at completely turned around when we stopped begging people to let us do their proposals and instead started charging them for the privilege to have us analyze their business, create actionable guidelines (that they could conceivably have anyone implement) and provide a quote for what our services would cost to implement them ourselves. They were welcome to take that strategy plan elsewhere, but when we started charging people for it, we had more clients than we knew what to do with.
People start to see you differently when you value your time, ideas and strategy and don't just give them away. Yes, there are some cases where it's worth doing one gratis, but the vast majority of time, we got more business by refusing to work with people who didn't run through our proposal process.