What advice would you give someone who is selling web development services?

March 1, 2005 10:39 AM

I have been charged with training our retail representatives on how to sell our new web development services. Since I'm a code monkey, I have no idea about how to sell web development.

Most of the clients that our sales reps will be calling on will have expressed an interest in getting their site developed but will have no idea how to go about it.

What information would arm the salespeople best for the jungle of questions that they will have to wade thru? Are there any books or articles that would have information on this subject?

posted by bryanzera to computers & internet (14 comments total)

A question for the ages, truly. But are you more interested in getting our sales reps to understand what you do, or to *sell* what you do? In this case, unfotunately, the knowledge might not help them sell it, mostly because the feeling of most web clients is that the web is cheap or free.

A good starting book is "Don't Make Me Think" by Steve Krug, if you want the salespeople to understand the importance of every step of web development.
posted by steelbuddha at 10:44 AM on March 1, 2005

Will your salespeople be contacting managers or IT people to sell the services to?
posted by odinsdream at 10:45 AM on March 1, 2005

Back when I was doing web services sales I would go drive around town and find small business. Write down names and then find out if they had an online presence by checking with google. If not I would call them up and offer monthly payment solutions and service packages. Also, I would have a coder do up a fancy slash page just for them and if they needed a more content driven example of our services I would show them some examples of oracle integration we had done. Also it's all about networking; getting in with civil service projects and organizations is big money. Also the small Logistics Companies never have a web presence and desperately need one.
posted by Livewire Confusion at 10:51 AM on March 1, 2005

Ideally, I'd like the sales reps to understand what it is that I do, but right now I'm just shooting for being able to answer the questions that the clients have without floundering too much.

And the sales folk are contacting managers, not IT people.
posted by bryanzera at 10:57 AM on March 1, 2005

I guess my thoughts are more on how to get clients that already know you to pay for your services. Within our studio and as a freelancer, people seem to think a fully functional and effective commerce site can be created for far less than reality.

Either that, or they don't understand what functions must be built into a website.

bryanzera, is your question about promoting your services, or selling the services to customers already acquired?
posted by steelbuddha at 10:57 AM on March 1, 2005

Sorry, my post came in right under yours. That's a tough question, though, because the services are first filtered through your sales reps, then through the managers on the other side to the people implementing the solutions, yes?

If your web services are like the ones my studio offers, then your sales reps probably need a basic understanding of the difference between dynamic and static coding, the importance of information architecture, and the basic timeline and budget that a template creates vs. a series of static pages.

Other than that, unless you can give them an understanding of the entire process from IA to design, front-end to back-end, there are going to be questions that they cannot answer.

A favorite story of mine is when our studio was asked if we could do the pages in ColdFusion a few years back and the two code monkeys nodded, said "no problem," then went online to find out what ColdFusion was.
posted by steelbuddha at 11:04 AM on March 1, 2005

The very basic element of selling anything in business (or getting change of any sort) is how will it improve the bottom line. If they believe it will help their bottom line (e.g. increase revenue, save money and/or time), they will buy it and if they don't then they would be crazy to.

Think about every aspect of what you're selling in terms of how it will affect the customer financially. This part will reduce the (paid) time it takes to do this task. This part will increase sales. This part will cost less than the method you're now using to do this.

Don't talk about anything that doesn't save/make the money.
posted by winston at 12:11 PM on March 1, 2005

That should be "save/make the customer money"
posted by winston at 12:12 PM on March 1, 2005

winston is absolutely right--helping potential clients figure out how your services will help their business is _much_ more important that helping them understand the underlying technology or any of the other things that (rightly) consume you on a daily basis. It's a classic mistake of selling technology consulting--because the technology, or your methodology, or the visual/IA design, is so important to _you_, you assume it's a critical part of convincing a client to buy your services.

Smaller companies, especially, have a very tight grip on their bottom lines, and they're not going to invest in spending on web services without a lot of confidence in how it's going to help. They can be a very hard sell, because even if they're willing to listen to you and entertain your arguments, it's still a very big step for them to open up their checkbooks. You're easily one of a _list_ of things they'd like to do, like get a better deal on their office/plant/storage space, improve their vendor/marketing/benefits costs, etc. They're not going to do most of those things, and most of those things are 10x more urgent to them than having a website or e-commerce app.

I don't mean to be discouraging, but I do want to emphasize the fact that the underlying technology is just really not all that relevant to their decision. A good salesperson is going to have a clear list of "pain points". If you can help your salespeople walk in, say "I understand your business, I understand what's keeping you up at night, and I can paint a very clear picture of how we can help you", then you're in great shape. "Our Proprietary Technology"? "Our Awesome Five-Step Methodology"? "Our Award-Winning Design"? They don't understand enough to care about that, and they shouldn't have to.
posted by LairBob at 6:21 PM on March 1, 2005

I agree with LairBob mostly, but I do think even small companies appreciate explanations as to why certain things are of value to a company. That is "your site needs to be more usable; we can help you with that. Good usability accomplishes x, y, z, which saves you money in the long run by keeping customers satisfied without any overhead costs." As for urgency, I can think of nothing more urgent or valuable to a company's continued existence than having good advertising, and their website is possibly the easiest way to start.
posted by steelbuddha at 7:09 PM on March 1, 2005

steelbuddha, I wouldn't argue that they don't _appreciate_ that sort of explanation, but I would say that--in my experience--it's not often a convincing factor in whether or not they commit to the sale. I've had lots of clients/potential clients who are more than happy to kick their feet up on the desk and explore ideas like that, but that isn't necessarily any kind of indicator whether or not they're really going to buy.

It certainly can't _hurt_, and I'm not saying flat-out "Don't bother doing it", but if you want to focus on the mechanics of what's going to create a real sense of urgency on their end, and push them to close, that's not where I've learned to put my efforts.
posted by LairBob at 8:17 PM on March 1, 2005

These are fair points, all. I think it's difficult for a code jockey to know what good sales technique is, since they value their work so highly. For bryanzera's sake, I hope the salesperson at least tries to understand the value of the work and then present it in such a way (along the lines you suggest, LairBob) that the client feels their needs are addressed, and also has an understanding of how that's being accomplished.
posted by steelbuddha at 8:59 PM on March 1, 2005

Absolutely. And since you've rightly brought things round to focus more squarely on bryanzera's specifics, here's what I would offer as concrete suggestions:

1) Definitely make sure your salesfolks are very clear on what your firm's actual advantages are. This might be your cost-effectiveness, it might be your proprietary features, or whatever, but your sales team definitely do need to be able to differentiate your firm from the crowd once they convince the client they need help. You don't want them to help convince someone they need web services, but then hire someone else just because they're cheaper.

2) Also, make sure they know that you expect them to talk about things in terms of client needs, and while you're not necessarily the expert in that field, you'll do what you can to help them drive those points home.

3) To that point, cast your mind back over the interactions you have had with clients, and try to parse out the real issues you've think they've had when you've dealt with them. Being a code guy who's got a good grounding in client realities is really the single best thing you could do for them--there's nothing better for a follow-up sales call than bringing a tech guy who _also_ understands the client's business.

To put all this as straightforwardly as possible: Make it absolutely clear to them that you understand that their job is to close sales, and that you want to do whatever you can to make that happen. Without a doubt, the exact mix is going to depend on who these people are, what level of technical expertise they have, and a hundred other factions. No matter what, though, a single fact always remains--sales are built on confidence and intimacy.

Your team has to have a real confidence that what they're selling is valuable, unique, and critical for the client to buy. If they're new, that confidence has to stem from you, and the intimacy has to come from what you can teach them about client needs. Do what you can to make those things real.
posted by LairBob at 10:24 PM on March 1, 2005

Also keep in mind that there are different bottom lines to appeal to. The manager who you are selling to is being judged by the financials of his/her own little group/area/department -- that's what his/her job depends on. Saving/making more money for the manager's own area is a more powerful incentive than saving/making money for the whole company (which is not to say that you can neglect the latter :-)
posted by winston at 12:12 PM on March 3, 2005