[nthj]

> I'll even go through the discovery phase and estimate/quote out their project

I've started charging for this process. Partly because otherwise I'd spend all my time consulting for free, partly because it's a huge value add to their business, and partly one-to-many "oh great, thanks for estimating this. I took it to your competitor and now they're willing to underbid you by $5K because all the hard work is done for them." scenarios.

[JangoSteve]

That's a very good point. We haven't had the problem of them taking our quotes to our competitors very often. We've had several people who took our quotes to our competitors, they undercut the quote, but then they ended up choosing us anyway even at the higher price, almost always because we "inspire more confidence than anyone else" in our ability to execute.

That being said, it usually only takes us another couple hours to quote a project once we've gotten to that stage, and we have started billing for it when it seems like it will take longer, or if they want more detail or revisions.