Guides
Selling translation services: six facts buyers omit, the proposal stages, and the deals to decline
How a language services sale runs: the six facts buyers omit, each proposal stage, an assumptions register, and negotiation moves that protect your rate.
What to take away
- Selling language services is mostly the work of finding out what the buyer has not told you yet, because they do not know it matters.
- Six facts decide the shape of every deal: the content's purpose, the locales, the source condition, the review model, the freeze point, and who approves.
- Sell the review model explicitly. Buyers who think revision is included and then see a price without it conclude you are expensive.
- Put assumptions in a register with numbers, so a change to any one of them has an obvious consequence.
- Signature is not the end of selling. The first project either confirms the promise or starts the countdown to churn.
What buyers do not know to tell you
A buyer sends a file and asks what it costs. Inside that request, six things are unknown and all six change the answer.
Purpose. The same paragraph translated for internal understanding, for a customer-facing page, and for a legally operative document is three different jobs. Ask what happens to the text after you deliver it.
Locale, not language. A buyer says French. They mean France, or Canada, or both, and the conventions differ in ways their own market will notice immediately. If they do not know, that is worth surfacing before a linguist guesses.
Source condition. Whether the file is final, whether the text is editable, whether anything is trapped inside images, and whether the author is still writing it while you translate.
Review model. Whether a second linguist checks the work, and whether the buyer's own colleague in the target market will look at it and when.
Freeze point. When the source stops changing. Interface and multimedia work without a freeze point is a series of reworks.
Approval. Who signs, and whether that person has seen the requirement yet.
Everything else in the sales process is a way of getting those six answers on the record.
The stages, and what each must produce
| Stage | What it must produce | The sign it went wrong |
|---|---|---|
| First reply | One specific question about their content | An acknowledgment with no question in it |
| Discovery | The six facts above, written down | A quote request with no file attached |
| Analysis | A content breakdown you can explain in one sentence | A total with no bands behind it |
| Proposal | Scope, assumptions, fees, and a change rule | A document that reads as a brochure |
| Negotiation | A written record of what changed and why | A verbal concession nobody wrote down |
| Agreement | Terms that survive a dispute about acceptance | A signature on a quote with no terms |
| First project | Confirmation the promise was real | Silence, then a smaller second order |
The assumptions register
Most proposals bury assumptions in prose where nobody reads them. Number them instead and put them in one block.
The value is mechanical: when the buyer changes something, you point at the number. "Assumption 4 was that source files arrive editable. These are scans, so we are outside the quoted scope and here is the revised figure." That conversation takes two minutes. The same conversation without a register takes a week and costs goodwill.
Minimum assumptions register
- Source condition
- Locale set
- Review model
- Freeze date
- Deliverable format
- Character limits where relevant
- Client's turnaround for approvals
Sell the review model out loud
The most common price objection in language services is not really about price. A buyer compares your quote to another and cannot see that yours includes revision by a second linguist and theirs does not.
On the proposal, state in one line the buyer can read in three seconds: what is checked, by whom, and what is not checked. Offer the cheaper option with the same clarity, and let them choose.
A buyer who knowingly chooses translation without revision is a fine client. A buyer who did not know is a complaint in six weeks.
Claims, and what you can support
A proposal is a marketing document with commercial consequences. Statements about coverage, credentials, who performs the work, and turnaround all have to be true and supportable, which is the standard the FTC advertising guidance for small businesses sets out. Two claims deserve particular care in this trade.
The first is anything described as certified, sworn, or attested. What that means is decided by the institution receiving the document, and it differs by country and sometimes by office. Ask the receiving authority, in writing, and quote what they said rather than what the internet says.
The second is any claim that blurs written translation and spoken interpreting. They are distinct professions with distinct practice and supply, as the occupational profile of interpreters and translators describes. A proposal offering both should show them as separate scopes with separate assumptions.
Keep what you signed
Proposal, assumptions register, change orders, and the signed agreement belong together with the project cost record. That is how a disagreement eighteen months later is settled by a document instead of a memory. It matches the expectation set out in the IRS guidance on records a business should keep that documents support what was billed.
For the wider commercial questions that grow alongside a sales function, including insurance and structure, the SBA guide to managing a business lists the topics to settle with a qualified adviser rather than from a template.
What you are selling is defined in what each language service line involves, and the figure comes from how pricing and margin are built. The buyers and channels are described in the marketing and growth guide, and the order in which the whole business gets built is in the startup and market guide.
Negotiation moves that do not cost margin
Change the scope, not the rate. Remove a review round, extend the deadline, or reduce the locale set. Each is a real concession with a real cost.
Negotiation moves that protect margin
Change scope
- What changes
- Remove review round
- Cost to you
- Real concession
- Risk
- Lower scope
Trade for terms
- What changes
- Shorter payment cycle
- Cost to you
- Often free
- Risk
- Cash flow
Trade for volume
- What changes
- Committed volume
- Cost to you
- Defensible discount
- Risk
- Hope vs commitment
Trade for pilot
- What changes
- Smaller first project
- Cost to you
- Standard rates
- Risk
- Learn account first
Trade for terms. A shorter payment cycle is worth money to you and often costs the buyer nothing.
Trade for volume commitment. A discount attached to a committed volume is defensible. The same discount attached to a hope is a rate cut.
Trade for the pilot. A smaller first project at standard rates beats a large first project at a reduced rate, because it lets you learn the account before the exposure is large.
Three deals worth declining
Qualification is a sales skill, and declining is part of it. Three shapes cost more than they pay.
The pair you cannot cover twice. A single available linguist means the client's deadline sits on one person's health and calendar. If you take it anyway, say so to the buyer and agree what happens if that person is unavailable. Taking it silently is the version that ends badly.
The buyer who will not release the file. Sometimes there is a genuine confidentiality reason, and a signed agreement solves it. Sometimes the file is not ready and nobody wants to say so. A quote produced without seeing the content is a number you will defend for months.
The rescue job with no diagnosis. A buyer unhappy with a previous vendor arrives wanting the work redone quickly. Before agreeing, find out what actually went wrong. If the cause was ambiguous source text or an unbriefed reviewer, the same failure is waiting for you, and you will inherit the blame for it.
Declining well is not a lost sale. Say why in one honest sentence and offer what you would do instead. That sentence is remembered, and it comes back as a referral more often than a reluctant yes ever does.
Common questions
How long should a proposal be?
As long as the assumptions require. For a single document, a quote with a scope note is a proposal. For a multi-locale program, the register alone will run to a page.
Should I include references in every proposal?
Include them where the buyer has a formal process. For a content owner in a hurry, a reference slows the decision down and a specific question about their file speeds it up.
What if the buyer will not share the files before quoting?
Quote a range with the analysis as a condition, and say plainly that the figure firms up once the files arrive. A single number quoted blind is a guess you will be held to.
Is a signed quote enough, or do I need terms?
Get terms. Acceptance, liability, confidentiality, and asset ownership are not things a quote covers, and those are exactly the four subjects that produce disputes.
