Description: In their own words, Bidsketch is “Simple proposal software made for designers”. I found that to be true. It simplifies and organizes what often frustrates me most; writing proposals for new projects.
With Bidsketch, you just log into the web app, feed numbers and descriptions into one of several templates, and then send if off to the client. Bidsketch then keeps track of the proposal and its approval status (another problem of mine). I’ll leave it to you to take their tour, but I found the interface to be well crafted, the writing concise and the entire app highly useful.
I’ll use the following methodology (originally created for Startup Atlanta but it will do for here) for my reviews of web apps
- Problem Solving – It can be a cool product, but does it make anyone’s life easier?
- Actual Customers – I define the customer as someone with both problems and money.
- Simplicity of Pricing – Can the fees be described to anyone? Do you need more information about the prospect before you can offer a quote?
- Chicken and Egg Problem – does the product require a lot of Customer A before Customer B becomes interested, and vice versa? This applies a good bit to middleman/broker type companies like E-Bay.
- Remarkability – that is to say, can someone who heard a quick presentation about it describe it to someone the next day, and have it be understood?
So, with no further ado, here is my review of BidSketch
- Problem Solving – 8/10 – Writing proposals, particularly for new clients is a huge time sink for me over at my other company, Digital Tool Factory. It is definitely a problem of mine, so this gets and eight out of ten.
- Actual Customers – 10/10 – After reviewing the site I signed up for the service, so ten out of ten.
- Simplicity of Pricing– 10/10 – Only two options! I like that a lot
- Chicken and Egg Problem– 10/10 – no chicken and egg problem that I can see
- Remarkability– 9/10 – “Simple proposal software made for designers” – pretty simple and specific, I like it, very easy to describe.
Total Score: 47
Quibble: I found it easy to create multiple copies of “sections” with the same name and different content
Suggestions:
- Have more standard templates.
- Partner with a copywriting service and poll your best customers and present them the following offer: Let us write one each of your most problematic proposals, and then genericise it for all Bidsketch clients.
- Integrate with QuickBooks (somehow)
I recommend signing up, it solves problems and pays for itself in the first hour. Plus it helps you have an easier, simpler, and more productive day.
This post originally appeared on the Stronico blog – with the absorption of Stronico into Digital Tool Factory this post has been moved to the Digital Tool Factory blog
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Written By Steve French |
Very nice review and very helpful. We waste so much time on proposals. I just started using a similar service called Quotegine.com and have found it to be a huge time saver for proposal creation as well. Will probably also check this out!