Hey! This is the Daily Overpass! My name is Eric and I make apps! Now today, I want
to talk about the four questions that new clients always ask.
Alright, so today, I want to talk once again about working with clients. Now, I
know some of you, guys, out there don't care anything about working with clients.
You're not interested in it at all. And it can be a lot of hard work. It could be
very challenging. It can be very frustrating sometimes but, you know, it
could be very rewarding too. And at the end of the day, the bills have to be paid.
So, for those of you who have enough revenue coming in from your apps, that
you're able to pay all the bills and everything like that, and you don't have
to worry about working with clients, that's fantastic! I mean, I've been there
before. Actually, I think I'm there now. But I have the team and we're beyond,
it's never enough. I want more, more, more. So, for those of you who are
thinking about working with clients or who do work with clients, I wanted to
share with you some of the questions that I get asked a lot, from clients who
call in or when we set up that first initial meeting. When we're actually -
we're pitching the project or we're doing that first - not the requirements
gathering, not doing the actual quote, but just having that first initial phone
call. Now, when people or face-to-face meeting depending on how we do it, right?
So, I've had - I must had about 50 or 60 of these now over the years. And when we
have more, you know, as we're gaining as we're growing in popularity, we're
getting more and more of these. And there's four questions that
always seem to come up from clients, that it would be really good for you to have
a set answer for if they come to you. So, I'll tell you what my set answer is, but
it's not necessarily the best answer. But just so you know. And it's
different when you talk about working with companies or working with
individuals. Companies seem to have that - I mean, they have different concerns.
They have - you're dealing with somebody who may be a CTO or
somebody in a technology department, who's just looking for a good partner to
help them with with their stuff. Or you're dealing with an individual who would
like to earn revenue and have a little bit of money coming in. And in the
wildest dreams being the millionaire, the new snapchat or
whatever, but you know, on more realistic terms, just having something that
generates a bit money. So, these are the questions always coming and by
far the biggest question that everybody has whether they ask it and immediately
or not is, "how much is this gonna cost?" So, this is, you know, everybody who calls
up wonders how much this is gonna cost. And sometimes, I'll ask even before they
tell me what the app is. They'll say, "Hey, I need an app. How much it's gonna cost
me?" And I have to go through and I have several questions all lined up. You
know, is it an app or a game? Do you need an iPhone, Android, Windows Phone? Do you need
it on all of them, use an iPhone and Android? Does it require a
server? And that's - sometimes, I'll say it doesn't require a server. Most of
the time, they don't know the answer to that. So, I'll say, you know, just to
communicate, that's like if it's a game, just have a leaderboard. Does it
communicate with other users? Does it send push notifications, that kind of
stuff? Does it interface with social media? You know, that kind of stuff.
And then I asked to give me a general description on the - of the app or the app
idea or whatever and sometimes they won't. They don't want to tell me that
right away, which is the second question that seems to keep coming up. And this is,
"how do I know you won't steal my idea?" Probably about 80% of the time
that I talk with new clients, I do an NDA. It's - for an individual,
the concern is that I'm going to take their idea and run with it. I've got
loads of free time and I could just build it and put it out there. So, one of
the things I have to say is that, "You know, I'm actually really busy and I've
got loads of ideas I would like to work on myself but we just don't have the
time for. However, I'm happy to sign a Non-Disclosure Agreement. I have this
template, just give me a bit of a few details and we'll send that over
to you signed and that's the end of it." With companies, it's
different. They still want you to sign the NDA and it's not so much because
they're afraid you're gonna steal their idea, because this could be very specific
to their company. So, like let's say, it's like a warehouse application or
something like that, they're not worried that you're gonna take it and
build your own warehouse application. But they're more concerned that
you're going to go on social media and say, "Hey, you know, let's say, Sony
contacted me because they want me to build their big app." And they
haven't really put -they're just calling around, they haven't really approved
anything of it. So. they want that to be kind of hush-hush.
I mean, in fact, I met with - once I met with a client, they were like a big
publisher and they were talking about how they were talking to another
developer before me. They were just in the initial stage,
talking about what they want to develop and the developer went and shared it on
their blog saying, "Hey, such and such publisher is gonna work with us." And
that scared me so much that I have to assure new clients that I
don't really advertise my clients. We don't have a "My Clients Page" on the
websit. You can leave a testimonial if you want, but you know, by
and large is just you know, we're just trying to do -it's not
my story. It's your story. You're the one building the app, I'm the one helping you
build the app. So, that's more or less where we go with it the app. The third biggest
question is and this is getting - this goes to individuals who want to
make money from the apps is, "will this idea work?" And this is one that again, I
can't answer. Well, I'll answer it with the - telling them about some of my
apps. So, my biggest app, which I was asking all my friends and everything,
"Do you think this will work?" I asked my family, "Do you think this will work?" You
know, Ear Agent, you hear people's conversations, it works like a hearing
aid. And most of the people told me it was a dumb idea.
It was, "Yeah, it doesn't really sound like something that would work, or sounds
creepy, or I don't think you should do it." But I did it anyway. And it's made
hundreds of thousands of pounds over the last few years. I
have other applications which I thought, "Oh, this is going to be huge..." and they
just (swoosh sounds) right? Well, so far they haven't picked up. So, I'll tell these kind of
stories and I'll say I if I knew what would work and what wouldn't, then I
would only do the things that worked and I want to be doing client work at all.
That'll be up to you. That's the risk that you have to take as a person, every
app developer or app owner has to take. And then the fourth question
and this is mostly with companies is, "will we be able to
take the code afterwards, or are we gonna be tied to you as a developer going
forward? Are you gonna have a percentage of it?" You know, sometimes like
with individuals of the first question will be, I don't know - or
they'll say, "I don't have any money. Will we have - can we do a percentage
50/50, that kind of stuff?" I've talked about that so many times in the past.
And I just say - politely say, "No, but you will be a 100% owner of the
application." But with companies, they want to know that if they work with
me and they don't like me or if I raise my rates or
you're difficult to work with, will they be able to take that code and go to
someplace else. It's surprising how many companies and individuals have told
me that they their last developers wouldn't let them go someplace else. They
were tied to them to do any maintenance and fixes in the future. And for me, I've
always just been - this is something I addressed even before it gets asked now
because it seems to be such a selling point, which is, "Yeah, you just take
it. You know, we're like plumbers, right?We'll do the work and if you need
to take it to somebody else, you should be able to take it to another developer.
But our goal is that we do such a good job that you're not gonna want to." So,
anyway, those are the four questions if you do work with clients. Like I
said, it it could be very challenging but it's also, you know, looking - just
showing that you know what you're doing and having ready
answers to those questions would probably help out a lot. So anyway, I hope that
helps a little bit and for those of you, guys, out there who do client work, let
me know if you have any other questions that keep coming up because those are
the four ones that I could that I can think of that always, almost, always
come up in these conversations. But there may be some that I'm missing that - or
that I just never haven't encountered yet. So anyway, that's it for today. I'll
talk to you tomorrow!