Many companies are lured in by the hype of shrewd sales people espousing fancy dot.com terminology, and saying anything to get your business.

One of the most basic techniques of getting your business is offering FREE stuff such as the free quote, free proposal, free story boards or even a free spec, though as you will shortly find out, you will pay for what you get.

Sadly we are here to tell you there is no such thing as a FREE lunch and there is no such thing as a FREE Quote or for that matter Spec. Most development firms, big or small won't tell you this because they will say what ever it takes to get the business. Happily we can afford to be honest with you, because of our careful selection of Clients who understand our value.

We believe you should know the following before you select your development firm:

Reality Check #1: First, if your project is of any substantial size, then there is going to be a need for someone to invest some expert time in to determining the cost and pricing of your project, and this is even if you already have provided the development firm with a detailed specification.

Outcome #1: Most development companies, if not paid to do so (thus engaged by you), will not be concerned with analyzing your bid to determine an accurate bid. That would take them too long on the FREE program. Rather, they understand something that you may not and that is that no matter what bid they give you even if they claim it is "fixed", they know that there will almost always be what is called "scope sliding" or "project creeping" that will ultimately increase the cost of your project in the form of "change orders." Therefore their primary goal of providing the FREE stuff is to position their bid so as to win the bid, knowing full well that they will deal with your "unrealistic" fixed bid expectations once you have engaged them (once you are stuck with them.)

Reality Check #2: A second and even more dangerous reality check is the understanding that most development companies do not understand their real costs of doing business. This in itself is one of the biggest reasons technology firms go out of business.

Let's do some simple math to demonstrate this. Lets say that the company you chose to develop your project spent 8 hours on your FREE quote. Now lets say that they did this for 250 prospects at their a cost of $100 per man hour including overhead. That's $200,000 in real man hour costs that your development company spent on FREE stuff. And, they probably were only awarded 10% of these projects.

Outcome #2: Right in the middle of your project, your development company stops work and moves on to the next project because he underbid the project because they did not thoroughly examine it or even worse they go out of business. They did not thorough examine it because they did not get paid to examine it. This outcome, by the way, occurs in over 50% of existing development projects.

The Bottom Line: If you don't want to end up like many businesses out there on their 3rd or 4th development company, it is vital understand that if you do not value the developer's expertise and time you can be an unwitting participate in the debacle of your own project and your development firm's demise.

Therefore we recommend before engaging any development firm, verify that the development firm meets your criteria first, then compensate adequately for time and expertise. Below are what we believe are some helpful tips:

1. Verify the development firm is adept with respect to the scope and magnitude of your project requirements, both in man-power and technology.
2. Verify the development firm is honest and has integrity. It doesn't matter whether the development firm is large or small, you still want a verification of satisfied clients. Talk with the clients and verbally verify satisfaction with the understanding that this should occur once you have seriously considered the development firm as a solution. (Obviously, if the development firm's existing clients are bombarded with reference calls, this could pose a challenge for the development firm.)
3. Confirm that the development firm is meeting existing client expectations with respect to  deadlines, and cost estimates and deliverables (work product.)
4. Beware of any company expending substantial FREE consulting time within the Discovery phase. This is typically the case for desperate development firms who may be on their last leg, or existing from deal to deal, and as we have all seen, this is as easily the case with a big firm as well as a smaller firm.
5. Secure an established development firm that provides a profession service at a reasonable cost. Typically, large development firms bill out at $250 - $300 even though most of your project may be assigned to junior programmers. One-man shops may bill at $50 - $80 per hour though they may lack the required skill set range for your project and carry the greatest risk of project abandonment.