Yes and no. The internet is full of unscrupulous people who will get you to write their RFP for them. If you write a beautiful proposal to a company it’s not at all unheard of for them to turn your proposal into an RFP for that scope of work and shop around for someone else to do it cheaper. You’ve taken the time and effort to do an analysis of their needs and write a detailed scope of work and now they’re using your labor and effort for free.If your client is someone you’ve met face to face I would NOT give them a detailed proposal in digital format. Instead add the entire scope of work to your contract and and give them a hard copy of the contract face to face when you close the deal. It’s a lot more work and obviously theft of IP if they start retyping your document and many people will hesitate at this point and possibly give you the project. If you’re too accommodating you’ll definitely get ripped off in this business. I spent about $4–5,000 in wages putting together an analysis and scope of work for a massive project that I had been assured was mine (about a $4–500k project). They took my RFP broke down into stages and hired a much less capable company to do the first stage of the work. Eventually the project stalled and they had to do something else, but I had already lost the contract and the money spent putting together the analysis. I should have charged them for the analysis but I was operating under the assumption the project was mine (because I had been verbally assured this was the case). Never again.If you’re meeting them only online, ask them to tell you what they want (you answer their RFP) or pay you to do an analysis of their needs. Otherwise they’ll just pick your brain and take your ideas for free.