- Original Poster
- #1
I wrote an article for our blog about how dangerous unpaid consultancy is proving to our business. We do complex things and I realised I was spending an awful lot of time educating clients... for free!
We think we have some of the solutions coming into place.
I actually started thinking about it after a short seminar with a very nice chap called Mark Pickles who is a Sandler Sales type up here in the North West. Now, I've not signed up for the Sandler thing as I'm not sure it's a direction I want us to go in. But it did make me stop and think about what the actual impact of this free consulting is on our business.
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One thing that happens a lot in the web development and design sphere is the problem of unpaid consulting.
Actually, Ill rephrase it a little it happens all the time!
Its rather tricky. Clients are interested in us because we offer them something that gives them better efficiency, sales and returns. But what we do is complex and sophisticated.
As its me that does all the sales work I find myself often giving over two hours of my time to a prospect in order to explain how the dynamic websites work. Im educating them. For two hours.
How much would it actually cost to get an expert in any field to educate someone for that period of time on a one-to-one basis? £120? £240?
Certainly it wouldnt be cheap.
Yet there I am, explaining various elements of design, hosting and development all for free.
Not only that, but many clients expect proposals, complete with mockups. For free too, of course. After all, were only selling.
And its a trap I think that all IT types need to be wary of. Were natural born pleasers. We want to write cool stuff, but more importantly, we want people to acknowledge that coolness. Its interesting that the concept of Open Source is so strong in IT. There arent nearly so many top photographers offering any of their materials with a right to free duplication as there are developers.
But heres the thing free doesnt put food in the table. Each prospect may be the result of two hours of work before we even get to visit. On top of that is the two hours of free consultancy they end up receiving when we go and see them. Then theres the proposal - that can be four hours for something simple, but easily a 16hr job. So we have up to 20hrs per prospect, before a sale is even agreed.
If we then assume a one-in-three conversion (because theyll probably talk to three potential clients) that means up to 60hrs of work for each client won. Ive actually estimated that by and large we manage on about 40hrs per client win.
Now heres the funny thing - many of the websites we produce take less than 40hrs to build. Lets say each is 30hrs of work to build - what with all the toing and froing of ideas, images and copy.
That makes 70hrs per website. If youre going to make a modest, middle class income, and cover costs, then chargeable rates have to be around the £30 an hour mark. Thats about what most backstreet mechanics are charged at. So the very base price for a website built according to expectations above, has to be £2,100.
Read that figure.
£2,100!
For a basic, simple, custom website.
Were working on developing techniques to get web developers away from this problem. Expectations are far higher than can be fulfilled economically.
Check back to the blog regularly to see our up and coming announcements
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Of course, we do build sites for less than £2100
But we have to be very firm now about what people are getting at that price - it's stuff off the shelf, basically. Anything else starts to cost very serious money.
I suspect that as the market matures, prices will go up quite dramatically - if you want a website, get it now is probably the best advice I can give!
We think we have some of the solutions coming into place.
I actually started thinking about it after a short seminar with a very nice chap called Mark Pickles who is a Sandler Sales type up here in the North West. Now, I've not signed up for the Sandler thing as I'm not sure it's a direction I want us to go in. But it did make me stop and think about what the actual impact of this free consulting is on our business.
---
One thing that happens a lot in the web development and design sphere is the problem of unpaid consulting.
Actually, Ill rephrase it a little it happens all the time!
Its rather tricky. Clients are interested in us because we offer them something that gives them better efficiency, sales and returns. But what we do is complex and sophisticated.
As its me that does all the sales work I find myself often giving over two hours of my time to a prospect in order to explain how the dynamic websites work. Im educating them. For two hours.
How much would it actually cost to get an expert in any field to educate someone for that period of time on a one-to-one basis? £120? £240?
Certainly it wouldnt be cheap.
Yet there I am, explaining various elements of design, hosting and development all for free.
Not only that, but many clients expect proposals, complete with mockups. For free too, of course. After all, were only selling.
And its a trap I think that all IT types need to be wary of. Were natural born pleasers. We want to write cool stuff, but more importantly, we want people to acknowledge that coolness. Its interesting that the concept of Open Source is so strong in IT. There arent nearly so many top photographers offering any of their materials with a right to free duplication as there are developers.
But heres the thing free doesnt put food in the table. Each prospect may be the result of two hours of work before we even get to visit. On top of that is the two hours of free consultancy they end up receiving when we go and see them. Then theres the proposal - that can be four hours for something simple, but easily a 16hr job. So we have up to 20hrs per prospect, before a sale is even agreed.
If we then assume a one-in-three conversion (because theyll probably talk to three potential clients) that means up to 60hrs of work for each client won. Ive actually estimated that by and large we manage on about 40hrs per client win.
Now heres the funny thing - many of the websites we produce take less than 40hrs to build. Lets say each is 30hrs of work to build - what with all the toing and froing of ideas, images and copy.
That makes 70hrs per website. If youre going to make a modest, middle class income, and cover costs, then chargeable rates have to be around the £30 an hour mark. Thats about what most backstreet mechanics are charged at. So the very base price for a website built according to expectations above, has to be £2,100.
Read that figure.
£2,100!
For a basic, simple, custom website.
Were working on developing techniques to get web developers away from this problem. Expectations are far higher than can be fulfilled economically.
Check back to the blog regularly to see our up and coming announcements
---
Of course, we do build sites for less than £2100
But we have to be very firm now about what people are getting at that price - it's stuff off the shelf, basically. Anything else starts to cost very serious money.I suspect that as the market matures, prices will go up quite dramatically - if you want a website, get it now is probably the best advice I can give!
