What if you’re not available for client work for several months?

When a client approaches you, should you just say you’re not available, or should you go through project discovery, provide a proposal, and then tell them when the start date would be?

You might be worried that when you get to the point of telling them you’re not available for a few months they may not want to wait. You figure you might as well tell them up front before you got through all this work of doing project discovery.

But going through the project discovery, giving a proposal, and showing the value that you could provide is actually going to increase your chance of getting that client.

When it gets to the point of them finding out that you can’t start the project for a few months, at least at this point they know what value they could get from working with you.

Believe it or not, clients are willing to wait for good work. If you do a good job on this proposal, they will be willing to wait a couple months to do a project with you.