There is nothing more demoralizing then spending a bunch of time and effort speccing out a complicated tech project and then getting ghosted by the potential client once you deliver the estimate. Once I started charging for speccing, this never happened again.
And, once I started charging for this process, my conversion rate on proposals delivered went up a tremendous amount.
I think a couple things are at play.
1. Many clients leads aren't actually serious but it can be difficult to figure that out, especially when you're new to the game. If somebody is willing to pay for this process, they're clearly serious about the project.
2. People respect you when you charge for your time like this. My agency got taken much more seriously by prospective clients as soon as we mentioned that we charge for this process.
3. By charging for it, it forced me to create a clear process and clear set of deliverables for that fee. Clients LOVE clear processes and clear sets of deliverables. It makes it much easier for them to say yes. They are like a warm security blanket for the decision maker.
4. I believe it was HN's Patio who taught me that as long as your offering is below $1000, it usually falls under the discretionary spending threshold for most departments, meaning it doesn't require boss/committee approval.
If a prospective client was surprised by this fee, I took them through my process of all the things I'd help them figure out along the way that they clearly didn't have figured out yet, and make it clear they were free to go with a different agency after this process was complete. No strings attached.
I believe that clients who understand the business value of that work are much better clients than the ones who do not.
Shoutout to Brennan Dunn for the idea to charge for scoping.