Welcome to the first part in what (I think) will be a five part
series about how to work with a design agency — and specifically
about how to work with Blue Flavor.
We’re often asked about things like process (something I’ve
written and spoken quite a bit about), how we deal with problem
clients, how we deal with the sales process and RFPs, etc. For some
reason it seems like we shouldn’t talk about this stuff openly and
to be honest, I’m not sure why that is. So I’m just going to
do it.
About This Series.
This series will cover how to engage us to work on your project,
how our process functions, what happens when we run into big
problems, how to give feedback and enable us to do the best job
possible, and how to cooperate with us to ensure a
successful outcome.
These will probably be pretty weighty articles. I’m going to try
to dump into them as many lessons learned, observations,
reservations, truths and revelations as I can. I want to give
potential clients (and anyone else who’s interested) an honest and
complete look into how we work and how to best work
with us.
Ok, enough preamble (for now) — let’s get to it. First up, let’s
talk about how we handle sales and how you can engage us to work on
your project.
Our Philosophy On Business Development.
Before I get into the details, I’d like to talk a bit about how
we handle sales, at least as of the time of this writing. Before
Brian
and Cyndi left the company, Brian handled most of the business
development and he generally enjoyed doing it. He is much more of a
salesman than anyone else here at Blue Flavor and in many ways he
was a natural.
This is not the case with either Nick or me,
the remaining principals. Nick doesn’t mind doing business
development, but I generally abhor it. When Brian left we struggled
a bit to keep our new business funnel flowing. With Tiffani’s
help we were able to get a basic handle on it, but we found out
pretty quickly that none of us liked doing traditional
“sales” work.
So we don’t do sales, and I think that’s ok — it seems to be
working out fine. What we do try to do is gather as much
information from a potential client as we can and then do our best
to explain how we can help. Assuming we’re all on the same page, we
then tie that scope to a cost and timeframe and present it. Simple?
Not exactly, but we try to make it as easy as we can.
The main reason for keeping it simple is we like to
work, rather than spend our days selling our services.
We’re a small company of craftspeople and we’re happiest when
helping our clients by doing actual work. None of us will be happy
doing sales all the time.
One of the reasons why I’m writing this post is to give
potential clients a starting point in what can be a confusing
process. My goal is to set the expectation up front that we’re more
interested in helping our clients solve design problems than we are
going through 40-page RPFs or dealing with legal issues. We’re
designers, communicators, problem-solvers, developers, etc. We’re
not salespeople.
So, our philosophy?
- Listen to your problems and needs.
- Tell you how we can help.
- Tell you how much it’ll cost and how long it’ll take.
- Begin building a relationship.
- No selling.
- No smoke and mirrors.
- No empty promises.
Of course real life is more complicated, but this is a good a
place to start. Speaking of starting, you might be wondering what
we do and how we can help you.
What Does Blue Flavor Do?
Our primary focus is design. Design for web sites, web
applications and the mobile web. We do interface design,
information architecture, information design, visual design for
online media, and things like that. Our secondary focuses are
strategy (marketing, social media, content, etc.) and development
(xhtml/css, CMS development and
deployment, etc.).
At the moment we’re much more focused on design than we are
development, although this may change in the future. We’re thinking
about fleshing out our development resources to better service our
clients, but for now we just don’t have enough people to take on a
whole lot of development work.
Our Value Proposition.
We believe firmly that design expertise can make all the
difference in the success of a product, brand, web site, etc. Our
value lies in bringing great talent, years of experience and lots
and lots of elbow grease to bear on our clients’ problems. We’ve
seen time and time again, and can prove, that the work we do helps
our clients succeed. The vast majority are very happy with the work
we’ve done, and can show how we’ve helped them in their
own initiatives.
We’re passionate about design and want to work with people who
value that passion.
A Typical Project.
We work on a wide variety of projects, but our most common work
falls into two basic categories: the end-to-end project and the
IA/Design/Templates project. These are
typically our most successful projects, and we do an equal measure
of each.
An “end-to-end” project involves a redesign or initial design of
a web site or application. I’ll go into more detail about this in
further installments of this series, but in general the end-to-end
project starts with a discovery and information
architecture/interaction design phase, and ends with a
fully-realized web site or application.
Our other most common project is similar, but has a different
end point. We often work with folks who have internal development
resources. In these cases we usually hand off web standards-based
templates for the client’s internal developers to
work with.
Engaging Blue Flavor. How to begin.
Ok, I’ve given you an idea of what we can do and what our
typical projects look like. Let’s assume you’re interested. What do
you do now?
Well, the best idea would be to fill out our contact form and
give us a clear overview of your project. We’re usually
looking for something easy to read, but chock-full of good
information about you and your project. If we have that up front,
it’s easier for us to gauge whether or not your project would be a
good fit. That’s important. A good fit can make a world
of difference!
Of course, you could just call us. Or send an e-mail. That works
too, but in my experience having a great snapshot of the project in
a digital format before we talk via phone or in person helps
a ton.
We’re working on ways to better extract that initial information
and get to know potential clients, and I’ll be the first to admit
that this is a difficult process. We’re generally happy to cater to
a potential client’s needs, as long as we can clearly see early on
that the project is one we’d be successful at.
A good, clear introduction to you, your team, your project, and
your company — without lots of fluff or added nonsense — is a great
place to start.
Engaging Blue Flavor. How NOT
to begin.
Here’s a list of a few things that will probably prevent us from
pursuing your project:
- A hefty or complicated RFP. We
generally don’t look at most RFPs unless we either know
you already or have some particular interest in your project. The
typical RFP process is simply too time
and effort-consuming and often not worth the effort. I think you’ll
find that many smaller design shops will say the same. (We don’t
have anything against the idea of an RFP,
but they’re generally not done in such a way as to make them simple
to deal with.)
- Complicated legal. We like to keep our contracts lean and
generally devoid of legal wrangling.
- An unclear scope. While we’re fine helping people discover the
true scope of their projects, sometimes we come across people who
have very little idea of what they’re looking for. This is usually
a red flag.
- No budget. We feel that if you’re serious about hiring us,
you’ll have some idea of what you’d be willing to spend.
We’re willing to take at least some stab at sorting these things
out and try to get in touch with everyone who shows interest in us.
But the take away point here is that the more prepared a potential
client is coming in, the more likely we’ll be able to help him or
her out.
The Estimation Process
The next step we take after an initial needs assessment is to
let our potential client ask us questions and get to know us
better. Then, as soon as they’re comfortable and ready, we send
them an estimate.
The initial estimate entails a simple cost/services break down,
split into phases. We take the scope as we understand it and tie it
to our our services, deliverables, and project phases, which we
then price out based on an hourly rate. If the project is
straightforward and the potential client has come prepared, our
estimates come out pretty accurate.
Most of the time we come in under our estimated cost and/or
over-deliver, especially if we’re working on one of our typical
projects. But it depends. The scope and estimation process can be
tricky, especially when client expectations are thrown into
the mix.
We do our very best to explain clearly and in as much detail as
possible the scope of what we’ll be doing and delivering. We
actually go out of our way to set expectations before we begin
work; however, we’ll occasionally have situations where we find out
down the road that the expectations we set don’t match up with our
client’s. I’ll talk about this in an upcoming installment of this
series. For now it’s important to note that potential clients have
some responsibility to read and fully grasp the scope we outline in
our estimates.
I can’t stress enough that the main issues we have with clients
arise when they don’t fully understand the scope we’ve agreed upon.
This can, and should, be cleared up before we enter into a formal
relationship. We do our best to ensure our clients have taken time
to read and understand our estimates, since trying to re-set
initial expectations after the project begins can be
very tricky.
The bottom line when it comes to our estimates is that we try
and gauge the work that needs to be done and the processes,
deliverables and timeframes needed to achieve a successful outcome.
We multiply this with our hourly rate to generate totals for each
phase and and a cost estimate for the entire project.
It’s really as simple as that. We generally don’t negotiate on
price (or quality, we try to do our best work all the time), but we
can be pretty flexible on scope, depending on
the situation.
From Estimate to Project.
So, what’s next? Well, if the potential client is ok with our
scope, timelines, and estimate they usually want to check our
references and do some due diligence. Once that is done it’s just a
matter of working out any legal and/or payment details before
pulling the trigger.
As I mentioned, we try to avoid legal wrangling and it’s true
that too much can be a deal breaker. We like to work, not deal with
our lawyers. Our contracts are set up to be easy to get through and
we’re flexible on most things.
Ownership, for example, comes up quite a bit. It’s our belief,
in most cases, that a client owns whatever he/she pays for. We
don’t have complicated licensing clauses or anything like that. I
don’t know why we would. It’s like hiring someone to build a house
for you — they might learn a new technique they’ll bring to another
project, but you own the house and can do with it what you like
once it’s done.
When it comes to legal the only things we consistently have
problems with are extreme changes to our payment terms. We can be
somewhat flexible there, but we expect to be paid for the work we
do. On time. No exceptions.
Occasionally we’ll come across someone who wants to go to great
lengths, legally, to protect themselves from us and frankly, we
usually pass on the work if the legal is over my head and/or too
complicated. The outcome is usually not worth the effort, since
those kinds of jobs tend to go sideways anyway.
Once the legal issues are ironed out, we ask for a pre-payment
(which varies depending on whether the project is priced out on an
hourly or per-project basis) and get our estimate turned into a
signed job order. We then dedicate resources and schedule a
kick-off meeting.
A Bit About Resourcing.
One of the hardest parts of my job is resourcing. The reason
why? It’s impossible to tell how long it’ll take to get from an
initial new business inquiry to kick-off. I have to then figure out
how to fit new projects into our schedule without screwing up
existing projects. This process is often complicated by delays on
the client’s side, vacations and other
scheduling conflicts.
A few general rules of thumb we stick to:
- Existing clients are the priority. Always.
- I never firmly assign resources or schedule a project until
I’ve got a pre-payment and signed job order. The sooner I get that,
the sooner we’re all good to go.
- If you tell me you want to start next week and then put the
project on hold for a few weeks while you sort out legal or
something on your end, I can’t guarantee you’ll start right away. I
have this kind of conversation often.
- We don’t legally agree to deadlines or timeframes of any sort.
Ever. In fact, we’re pretty wary about agreeing to anything
time-based at all. In my experience we’re not usually the cause of
a delay.
- The more complicated your project is, the longer it’s going to
take. This should be obvious, but sometimes it’s not.
- Development projects are generally hard for us to resource
since we’ve got less redundancy there.
- I do my very best to stick to the original resources I’ve
slated for a project, but sometimes I need to move them around.
However, I never do this mid-phase.
The Kick-off
We usually like to do a kick-off meeting to get a project going.
Most of the time we conduct these virtually, though we prefer
face-to-face meetings when possible. In the kick-off meeting we go
over the scope in detail, set down the initial schedule, and nail
down resources. At this point we consider the project a
full-on go!
Next Time: Our Process
Whew, that was a lot to cover! I hope this is helpful to someone
out there. People always ask us about this stuff, so I thought it
might be good to talk about it for the benefit of our potential
(and existing) clients and for anyone else who might
be interested.
I think it’s probably clear that much of our process is fluid,
and we are able to make many exceptions to what I’ve outlined here.
Every client is different and needs a tailored approach (I’ll talk
about that quite a bit more next time). There is no
“one-size-fits-all” method for turning a lead into
a client.
The Bottom Line.
The Bottom Line? The best projects result from a great
relationship. If a potential client comes to us prepared and
understands the value of what we do, and if our expectations are
well matched, the relationship will start off on good footing and
will almost always result in a project that everyone involved is
happy with.
Opera Mini 4.1 was released today. While I was
poking around on 
Zkout (rhymes with "shout") is
a new player in the crowded mobile social network field. Launched
(
Usability: 
