Free short analysis
Before you send it: Are price and scope actually clean?
Send it as a PDF. I will tell you which passage costs you money later, and why.
- That is the whole effort
- 1 PDF
- No questionnaire
- Real proposals
- Five per month
- Free
- Never shared
- Confidential
From practice
„What is missing is standardisation and transparency.“
Real proposals, no questionnaire.
4eck is building a proposal configurator from the results.
Without an ERP project you get the same standardisation as a result.
Illustrative example
This is what you get back.
A constructed proposal on the left, the engine's unchanged output on the right.
Corporate website relaunch
Scope of work
Concept, design and technical build of a new corporate website on a content management system. Home page, service pages and further sub-pages as required.
Included are review meetings and revision rounds until the client is satisfied.
Fee
Fixed fee €28,800 plus VAT.
Payment: 50% on acceptance, 50% after go-live.
Pre-flight, extract
The most important change
State a page count before you send this.
The proposal names no figure for pages or volume. Every later request becomes a negotiation. Price is not the biggest risk here.
- Found in
- Scope of work, first paragraph
- At stake
- €28,800 contract value
Dokument · belastbar
Change now
3Worth noting
1Smaller, still there
4Not yet assessable
2Colour only where a rule delivers a class. The right says what the statement rests on.
An example, not a client's proposal. Rules, ordering and the two open signals are unchanged.
Get your proposal checkedIllustrative example
Same price, different risk.
Two constructed proposals, both €28,800, both ten weeks. Both run through the same engine.
- Proposal A
- No quantity, revisions uncapped, no rate for extra work, nothing before start.
- Proposal B
- Ten pages, two revision rounds, €120 for anything beyond, 30% before start.
Constructed, not a client's proposals.
Two moments, one method
Check before, or understand after.
| Pre-Flight | Analysis | |
|---|---|---|
| Frage | What do I change in this proposal before it goes out? | How do I actually price things? |
| Du lädst hoch | 1 PDF | 5 to 15 PDFs |
| Du bekommst | The most important change before you send it, with the reasoning.Dokument · belastbar | An analysis of your proposal history and a walkthrough.Historie · noch eingeschränkt |
| Kosten | Free, five per month | €1,750 for the first five clients, then €3,500 |
| Get your proposal checked | See the pricing audit |
The same procedure, with more documents. Not a second product.
Your proposal is the data source. Not your memory.
Price, scope, deadlines and payment terms are already in your document.
Upload the PDF. Done.
Questionnaire
Your proposal
Illustrative example
What the review reads.
One constructed proposal, run through the same check. €28,800 for a relaunch with a content management system. Eight places where this proposal loses money or time before anyone has talked about the price.
The engine's order: class before what is at stake
- 01
Open-ended commitment
Scope open-ended
“among other things”, “including coordination”: every sentence without a limit is an invoice you will not send.
- 02
Open-ended commitment
Revision rounds unlimited
The last ten percent of the project costs you thirty.
- 03
Open-ended commitment
No rate for additional work
Every change is negotiated on its own, in the middle of the project.
- 04
Cash depends on the client
Little money before the project starts
You finance the first weeks yourself.
- 05
Cash depends on the client
Payment tied to a sign-off with no deadline
The client decides when you get paid.
- 06
Schedule risk
No deadline for client input
The end date moves, your capacity does not.
- 07
Negotiating position
Proposal valid indefinitely
The client accepts in six months at today's price.
- 08
Presentation
Payment terms only in the fine print
The client sees the 30 days once the project is already running.
Constructed example, no customer data. Counter-test: the same text at €5,000 through €400,000 returns the same eight findings, no rule reads the amount. How often these eight points appear in real proposals is not stated here. That needs proposals from many different agencies. The number goes on this page once it holds.
How it runs
Three steps, and the machine does not do two of them.
01
two minutes
You upload your proposal
- PDF or Word
- Client names may be redacted
- No signup
02
two working days
I look at it
- The check runs by machine
- The judgement is mine
- If anything is unclear I ask
03
before you send it
You get the change that matters
- One action first
- With reasoning and the exact passage
- Short video walkthrough
From the report
Three pages from a report.
Constructed example, run through the same engine.
01 · Finding●
Six of twenty proposals leave the scope open-ended.
How many pages, templates or sessions do you owe under your last proposal?
Part 1 · Analysis
02 · Analysis○
Two revision rounds cost 5 % of contract value.
What do unlimited revision rounds cost on this proposal?
Contract value €28,800
Hourly rate €120
Rounds over the limit 2
Effort per round 6 h
2 × 6 h × €120 = €1,440, which is 5.0 %
Contract value and hourly rate are stated in the proposal. Six hours per round is an assumption.
Part 2 · Decision
03 · Recommendation
The sentence that closes the gap.
Ready to paste
Included are two revision rounds per deliverable. Further rounds are billed at €120 per hour, subject to prior approval.
How you find out it was wrong: send the next three proposals with this clause. If more than one in three gets it struck, it was too hard.
Part 3 · Implementation
Constructed proposal, no customer data. A real report is longer and carries the agency's own figures.
Till Opel
Why I built this
A corporate has a department for pricing questions. A fifteen-person agency has the owner, in the evening, between two projects.
I spent ten years costing proposals at EY and Senacor. I now do that for the ones with no department behind them. On my own, no team.
More about me →Founding clients
Do not start here. The way in is one proposal, free: Get your proposal checked
Five slots at half price, and I'll tell you exactly why.
One agency has put its proposals through the analysis, I have no other references.
What you get
- The full audit, nothing reduced
- 30-page playbook in 14 days
- 5 proposal templates with your numbers
- 60-minute walkthrough call
- Direct line to me, not to a team
What I get
- Your numbers, anonymized, in the DACH benchmark
- Your name on this site as a founding client
- Honest feedback on what didn't work
The only guarantee
Finish the final call, tell me it was not worth it, and you pay nothing.
Book the pricing auditFAQ
Questions we hear most
- Do I have to remove client names?
- No, but you may. Redact what you would rather not show. The check needs only scope, deadlines, payment schedule and price.
- What happens to the document afterwards?
- It sits in my mailbox and nowhere else. After the analysis I delete it, at the latest after 90 days. Nothing is passed on, deletion on request at any time.
- Which proposals fit?
- Fixed-price project proposals, ideally the one you are working on right now. Retainers too, there I also check the capacity covered per month.
- How fast do I get the analysis?
- I commit to two working days. I have delivered exactly one analysis so far, so that is a commitment, not a measured time.
Get Started
Send me the proposal
you are working on right now.
Checking a proposal is free, five a month. The full analysis of your history is €1,750 for the first five clients.
If I cannot help you, I will say so.