How to Craft a Cover Letter Clients Can’t Ignore

Gabrielle: If they have a very specific ask, reflect those words back to them. Just like you would want somebody to reflect words back to you and so that they can say, “No. I understand you.” Right?

Ed: With every proposal, I always submit a cover letter. The cover letter introduces you to the client, opens that door to the relationship, highlights your skills that are aligned with the proposal. Because the proposal is really the details of the actual job.

Gabrielle: You don't have to write about how great you were or how amazing you are. They're gonna be able to figure all that out once y'all start working together.

Farah: If I have an idea or a concept or something that I want to, make the client understand that I'm really fit for the job.

Ed: I reference the work that they're trying to hire me for because that tells them, “well, this person has paid attention.” And if you notice on some of the postings, they'll put it towards the end or three quarters of the way down, put this word, they're looking to see if this person can follow instructions. You know, nobody likes to work with people that just don't follow instructions.

Bryan: My other secret tip of cover letters is to ask questions. Because ultimately, at the end of the day, the cover letter is the beginning of your chat with the client.

Ed: Anytime you can get that edge, take advantage of that. The cover letter is an opportunity to get the edge.

I'm right next door to the studio. I'm home, sitting on our deck, and, and the studio is just right next door there. Yeah. So it's perfect. Yeah. My commute sucks.

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This is How to Build a Rock Solid Proposal

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Ed: The proposal really works hand in hand with the cover letter, but it highlights the scope of the work. It highlights the timing of the deliverable part of the of the job and also talks about the budget and defines all of that.

Armando: There's a lot of AI proposals right now. Clients are not, dumb. They can read and they can notice the patterns. And some proposals are impossible to write in that amount of time.

Ed: AI really doesn't capture emotion very well. How you write and how you respond in the not just the spoken word, but the written word, especially today, the written word. You can project, you know, your humanity through your words.

Gabrielle: You wanna build trust immediately. You want them to like you right off bat. You don't want them to have to search for a reason to connect with you. Right? And you want them to open it and say, wow. They really they took five minutes just to figure it out. They went above and beyond, and I haven't even given them any money yet. Can't wait to see what they do when I pay them.

Bryan: Find a process that you can follow that helps you create the proposal without kind of reinventing the wheel every single time with every single client. I've never kept the same process, for too long. I'm constantly improving and tweaking a little bit about how I assemble proposals.

Ed: Tailor it, personalize it to the client you're trying to get the work from. That's important.

Farah: I do send, like, my fee with what it's included so they can understand that it's not just the work I do on the illustration. I will present my fee and then say this includes source files, one year or whatever, you know, license type, the period or the geography, how many revisions, and these kinds of things.

Bryan: Start small. Start with something that's tangible and discreet, and use that as a jumping off platform to the larger project. It also means that you're not over committed. You can complete that project and be done with it, or you can complete that project and use it as an opportunity to expand from there.