4 March 2014
How We Sell
We’re asked from time to time what our sales process is like. This should give a good overview.
Initial Contact
Sales leads come as word of mouth from existing clients and the developer community, as cold contacts from the website, and from training class attendees.
We create a deal in Pipedrive. Pipedrive is the tool we use to manage our sales pipeline. We’ve used Trello and Highrise in the past, but we’re fans of Pipedrive for several reasons. First, it has a Kanban view. Second, email integration. Third, the timeline view. And last, the statistics and metrics.
On the website, we ask a couple simple questions about budget, timeline and overview. We’ll introduce each other over email.
Next, we’ll set up a phone call or meeting in our office. We like to invite potential clients to our space to see our work environment.
Meeting and Qualification
A meeting is usually arranged by Dewayne, our COO. He manages the pipeline and helps to qualify leads.
Questions We’ll Ask
-
Tell us about your project. We want to make sure the project is a good fit. If we aren’t the best fit, we’ll recommend another company who is.
-
What’s your timeline?
-
Do you have a big marketing effort coming up? Are you negotiating a large new customer? How much time do we have to get the project where it needs to be?
-
What problem are you trying to solve? We want to understand the goal. We want to understand how we can be most useful, and demonstrate that to other businesses.
-
Are there existing solutions you’ve investigated? Are we reinventing something? Custom software is expensive and risky.
-
Who is your market?
-
We want to make sure our clients have done their homework. Is this just an idea?
-
What is your budget? Budget is where we want to begin the conversation. We can’t answer the “how much will this cost question” until we understand the effort involved.
-
How did you hear about us (unless we already know)? We want to understand where our clients come from so that we know where to look.
Questions We’re Asked
-
How long has your company been in business?
-
How much will this cost?
-
What’s your typical project look like?
-
Who are your clients?
-
When can we get started?
-
Can I pay per feature?
-
How is a project team structured?
Discovery
Once we’ve talked through things at a high level, we’ll have another longer meeting. This time, we’ll bring in a developer and a designer to talk more in depth about the project.
There’s a adage in our business: “Weeks of development can save hours of planning.” We do discovery so that we don’t waste time or money working on the wrong things.
We want to know what the most valuable features of the application are. What will give you the fastest return on your investment? What is the smallest piece of functionality that you can sell to your customers?
Negotiation
We’re confident in our process. We know we can deliver working software, quickly.
We offer three kinds of billing: weekly teams, support retainers and hourly support.
Clients ask if we’re willing to negotiate on the terms or rates, but it’s something we take very seriously. We’ve worked hard to get where we are.
Once we’ve reached a decision to move forward, we’ll send our development agreement for approval and schedule the project.
Onboarding
Historically, Dewayne has been the single point of contact for the client. Now we’ll introduce our Account Manager, Peter, to schedule the project and form the team.
If the project has particular needs that are matched to a particular skill, we’ll schedule those team members for the project.
Next, we’ll provide a few documents for the client’s benefit. Including pictures and names of your team and email addresses, PDFs of the development agreement, and relevant information.
Conclusion
Sound good? We’d love to talk to you. Drop us a line at hello@gaslight.com
