dragonfly editorial

Sometimes it’s better to say no

Posted by: Samantha Enslen, president and senior editor, February 25th, 2009

One of our favorite clients recently called recently to find out if we could edit a 250-page federal proposal over the weekend.

“No problem,” I told her. “That’s what we’re here for.”

Then she told me that the proposal was just in draft form, and about 100 pages would eventually be cut out of it. That’s when I put on the brakes.

Even though I was happy to do the work (and told her as much), I advised her that it was a waste of her and her company’s money to hire us. They would be paying us to copyedit material that would subsequently be heavily revised — if not cut. If the material had to be scrubbed for political reasons — to be cleaned up for a C-level review, for example — well, we’d do the job. But our strongest recommendation was that the document not be copyedited at this stage in the game.

Guess what? They took our advice. Sure, I gave up some 40 or 50 billable hours of revenue as a result. But I think it’s more important in the long run to help our clients spend money wisely, and at the right time.

That’s what we’re here for.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, February 25th, 2009 at 9:39 am and is filed under Customer service, Our cool clients, Proposal editing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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