Sadly, those things won’t help you get or keep large clients. Larger organizations have totally different ways of operating, and a service attitude is just sort of an every day thing that won’t make you seem any different from anyone else.
A crappy vendor with a personal connection to a company will beat a high service company every time!
This is so true. While I actually work for myself online and have considered myself a small online business owner, I have had some sad experiences with my offline business. Kind of a little bit off topic here: we supply computer and electronic equipments to government agencies through biddings. And most of the time if not always, those suppliers with very crappy products win because they know someone from inside those agencies.
Sagewing is right again!
Big companies care very little about all that. I use to work for a large corporate company who use to land deals in the millions. Seriously speaking, it was all about the connections and business exchanges. The only clients that were truly disappointed with our services were the small - medium scale businesses.
Companies love detailed proposals, many agencies are vague in what they are giving, saying this even a small guy with a detailed relevant proposal stands a good chance of getting those big fish.
There is a lot of ambiguity in the web market. I still get people who want to pay 500 euros for a site, which is simply not possible for what I am offering. This being the case maybe a small scale might be seen as anything under 1K.
Since we’re talking local, you have GOT to have relationships. If you’re not in the circles where the bigger companies play, you’re not going to get noticed. While many of the contracts that go down, in my experience, have the appearance of bids or proposals, the decision is usually made internally by a select few people - and nothing you submit in terms of a proposal or a well-written bid is going to change the fact that the guy who got the job goes to church with, golfs with, or otherwise has a relationship with the decision-maker.
So the best advice is to enlarge your social circles and really engage - not for the sole purpose of getting more clients, but simply because if you interact with and associate with the people you are trying to win, you’ll have a leg up on the competition. Any advantage is going to be in your favor. The key is to make this your life, not just some task you do to win projects. If that’s not you, then you likely need to hire or work with a sales person who is already connected.
I show my site on forums and make them reply to the needs
And you find large clients on forums this way?