Hi! This is the Daily Overpass! My name is Eric and I make apps!
Now today, I want to talk about going a little bit extra to secure your clients.
Alright, so a few days ago, I talked to you about securing clients and I talked
about how as a software developer you don't want to be a commodity. You want to
be able to distinguish yourself from other software developers because in
terms of your prospects or your clients, to them, we all look the
same. .We- a software developer is a software developer, even
though we know we're all different, we all have different skills and different
mentalities and and all that kind of stuff.
Today, I want to talk a little bit more about acquiring clients coz
there's two ways that we do it. We either do outbound or inbound, right?
Outbound- I've never been really good at. I'm terrible at cold calling, I
do a little bit of cold emailing, but not so much. A lot of the stuff
we get lately has been inbound, so people finding us, they call us up and
all this kind of stuff. But sometimes, you know, sometimes that works really
well. Sometimes you will get a call so he says, "Hey, hey, we need an app. We'll have a
meet, drop the designs and then boom! We're off and going, you
know, they're excited, we keep the enthusiasm going, we try- one of the
things I try to do, and I'm not the best at this, is to try to keep the excitement
at the right level, all the way through. So that means, if somebody comes
to you with an app idea, they're excited about it, if you let it sit for a week or
two weeks or three weeks like I sometimes do, before I actually go back
to them with a quote, then the excitement runs out and things just sort
of sort peter out and the lead runs cold, so you know.
Sometimes, we were able to do that right away and sometimes
it takes a little bit of extra effort. I want to tell you this, a few years
ago, we have one client now, we've had for a few years now, we've done a lot
of work for them and I'm still quoting on some new stuff for them now.
But when they call me up a few years ago, it wasn't easy to get them
as a client. I mean, the thing is that they called up me, it was a head of this
company. It was a small company. I mean, not small like
my company, me and then overseas developers. It was like, I think a dozen
people, 20 people in the company, something like that. I get a
call from the managing director of the company and he's- this was
like December a few years ago. So, it was like, he calls
up, he says, "Yeah, you know, we need an app and I
normally work with a different software company, but the guy that I
normally talked to, he's on holiday at the moment. So, I just had a quick web
search and I found your website and I basically wanted to see if it may be
something you could do or whether or not I just wait for him to come back or
whatever." So, we had a quick five minute conversation, all this kind of
stuff and he wasn't- not really committal, but I said, "Yeah, we
should get together and talk again. I'm happy to come out and meet
with you all.." that kind of stuff and and that was that was it. Call ended.
Later that night, I send an email saying, "Hey.."
I got this contact information obviously, sent an email saying, "Hey, it
was really great to talk with you and it sounds like an interesting
project. I love to work on it and I'm really looking forward to hearing from you."
Yeah, no response. You know, a week later, I kept
thinking about this, thinking, you know, this is the kind of clients that
we need. We need businesses, we need
recurring work as opposed to an individual who might have an app idea,
which is great, it's great we all started with an app
idea, but sometimes that doesn't deliver as much as with the business because
I'll have one app idea and not have two clients and it spreads a lot more.
So, I saw an email little week later and then I'm emailing two weeks later.
and I just kind of like- then I can't email, this is like over a
course of couple months. Then I got to the point where I felt like I
was reeking of desperation. I felt like or at first I was kind of
nonchalant about it. Then after a while I started
to feel like- feeling like 15 year old kid who keeps calling the
same girl over and over and over again. She doesn't call them back, right? She
just like, "Hey, let's go. Yeah, I we could go out sometime." Whatever.
It's just felt like I was just reeking of desperation. Anyway, so
this was like late January and I just sort of thought, this
lead is cold. I mean, it's dead. It's not gonna happen or whatever. But,
I didn't really try that hard to get it. All I'm doing is calling
them and asking for- or you know, emailing and calling and say asking
for 10 minutes of their time, whatever. And I'm not getting any response.
I'm thinking either they're just no longer interested either or they weren't
impressed with the conversation we had,
or maybe the guy that they were dealing with before came back from
holiday and he's gonna do it or whatever. But I thought- but I still
didn't give enough try. So what I did was, I sat down, I just sort of blocked out
like half a day, and I just started writing a specification based on our
quick five-minute phone call. I started putting together some flow
charts, some you know architecture diagrams, some wireframes saying how
the app would hang together. I had to make like- because if you know anything
about what they actually need and I made a lot of assumptions about
it. So based on what kind of technology they use,
what cutting technology they probably use, what kind of-
what their users were like or that kind of stuff, based on what he told
me which was not much for an app but what other things could
we add into that based on that. I gave this detailed specifications with the
the flowcharts and the wireframes, everything, then I get that one the
wireframes to Sandee, our designer, who's you know, she's great! So, she takes it
and she gives a mock-up. I talked about this before, the money shot, right?
Every time we do a quote, if it's something that we really, really
want, we'll do a mock-up of it. So, just give it to her, she'll go through
and put together some different designs, and say how this could look in
everything, like that based on their brand and everything. And it
looked really good. Then I get a price based on with a lot and there were
a lot of stipulations in this quote. It was like, if this is what
you need, if it's depending on this, depending on this, this is the type of
quote we would need. But this is a pre- discussion ballpark figure. Pre-
discussed goes like, I don't really know what you need, but this is the the quote.
It wasn't really a high quote who's like I think it was like six grand.
I think it was like six or seven grand and again, I don't talk a lot about how
much we charge because it's difficult. It's always different.
So, that that's though. Anyway, when I
met with them- so anyway, I send this quote out and like within
a couple hours, I got a response. Like for months, no response.
For months, I could tell that, you know, I can see the read receipts and
all this stuff, I know they're reading the email, just sent this thing through
and bam! They responded. They said, "You should come in and we can meet."
Like a week later, I went in and all in my suit and
everything, went down to their offices, met with them and everything, had
a sit down and we discussed around. And they're still still a client today.
It all worked out really well. Well, one of the things they said was, the reason we
called you- I mean, the quote was really good, the designs are really good,
or the the flowcharts, everything. You obviously understood what we're
talking about in that short conversation. But the big thing was the price because
you didn't come come out with like 50 grand or whatever. And I
thought, I said every time- I hear this a lot. I hear this a lot with
clients, they'll say, "Well, as long as it's not like 50 grand or
200 grand or whatever." and I'm thinking because they have no idea how
much an app cost. Nobody does. (laughs) And every time they say, that I always say, is
that how much room I had to play with, I want to change my quote. But you
know, it costs what it cost. I mean, maybe the stipulation's based on the
time and materials, everything like that. So when they said that-
that's when they were interested talking. Because that's the big thing
that hangs in the air, whenever you're talking to any client, whenever you're
acquiring any client, the thing that they don't know is how much it's gonna cost.
And thing is you can't give them a quote, unless you know what
it is they need. Because you know they're all different. So, once you get that
out of the way, a lot of times things get moving a lot quicker. Like I
said, it was a half a day of work and it really worked out.
With this kind of stuff, we've done all the time. I mean, I we don't do it for
every quote anymore and for a while I was trying to, but it was just
killing me every time you have a 10-minute conversation with somebody on
the phone and you have like a three-hour task of putting together this quote and
the designs and the mock-ups. So, after a while that became not
sustainable, but it is something when a lead runs cold we have to keep
that, get that nudge and just sort of try to get the
excitement back up a little bit again. Because the last thing you want to
do, to lose with when dealing with prospects is their excitement about the
project. You have to keep that going, otherwise up they'll think, well
what, maybe you're. Maybe it's not such a great idea. So
anyway, and you know, sometimes, you just have to make those those
investments and not even without knowing whether or not, is gonna work out.
Of course, people say, how do you know they're not just gonna take that
quote and those designs and take it to another company to do it for cheaper- and
that's just one of those things I just have to assume that
we're the ones who- we're the ones who understand it, we're the ones who get
it, we're the ones that based on what you're talking about,
we're the ones who can help you realize your dream. Then they always come back to
us. Anyway, these ways always works so far. Anyway, I hope that's
been interesting, helpful, whatever. It's one of my proud moments in
terms of client acquisitions. Alright, anyway, that's it for today. I'll talk to
you, guys, tomorrow.