I think this article, while correct, really misses the boat on why offering ranges is so important. In a lot of cases, the wide-eyes dreamer client is the pers

I think this article, while correct, really misses the boat on why offering ranges is so important. In a lot of cases, the wide-eyes dreamer client is the person who needs the most guidance on what something will cost. My typical way of doing this is the same way I also give estimates of time or effort in software development: IF X is true, and IF y is constrained by z, then typically a project like this will be between $and $$. Think of it as a qualification gate - before you're going to go through the time to scope out a project fully, does this person have the ability to make something at that price point happen? Even more to the point, after you give them the ballpark, you should say, "if this project comes in somewhere in that general range, do you have the authority to sign off on this amount of money?" Now you've not only potentially saved yourself some time, you've learned whether you're dealing with the decision maker here, or as some refer to it the "economic buyer" Now, it's true, someone might say, "I want to build a social network for Journey fans that includes a live concert recording site", and yeah, that's too vague to scope something. But in those cases you scope it out as much as possible: "do you need chat? Is it mostly for sharing pictures? Is there a buy/sell aspect?", and then you put a floor on it: "Well, we really need to spend a lot more time on this, but I would say something like this starts at X and goes up from there", where X is a large dollar value that you feel is 50% more than it would take to do the basic version of what they want. But again, not giving ballparks is losing out on a great opportunity for you as a sales person to control the deal progress.