The history of the development of the service for finding tenders
Recently, more and more often on television screens, newspaper pages, on the Internet, you can see or hear the words “Tender”, “Government Procurement”, “Government Order” ... As a rule, these terms are used in the media in the context of corruption, kickbacks and arrogance of officials. But in our country there are already tens of thousands of companies that are actively involved in both government and corporate procurement and earn very good money on this.
With so many sites with tender publications, the natural idea is to gather all the information about current tenders in one place, thereby greatly simplifying the lives of simple suppliers. So the idea was born, which in the course of 2 years has grown into a real business.
In this article I will try to explain in detail the problems of the subject area and the problems that had to be encountered in the implementation of the idea - all in chronological order.
The historical definition of a tender is a form of concluding contracts, which presupposes a preliminary choice of a partner on a competitive basis. And although in Russian legislation there is no definition of “tender” at all (instead, long “orders for goods, works, services for state and municipal needs” are used), this term is used quite often in companies, therefore the term “ tender ”will be used as a synonym for procurement.
When the company takes the first steps to participate in tenders, it faces many difficulties.
Here are the most common:
Solving these and other issues takes a lot of time and distracts you from truly important work.
It can be concluded that the time spent on independent search and management of tenders can be very expensive. Employees of the tender department spend their precious time on routine work, although they could do really important things and delegate the routine to the automatic search system.
Of course, before deciding to convey our idea to the participants in the order placement (the so-called suppliers participating in public procurement), we studied the market in detail. At that time (it was the end of 2010), procurement search systems already existed both in the web access and in the boxed version in the form of installed programs. None of the existing products are not satisfied.
Having felt both, the choice was made in favor of a web solution, but as interactive as the program was.
Before creating a product, the following tasks were set in order of priority:
Keeping such simple priorities in mind, we began to work on the system. The platforms and technologies used to implement the system are not disclosed in this article - this is a separate, broad topic. If there is interest - be sure to write about it.
By May 2011, a more or less working beta version of the product was ready. Several of our familiar companies used it for free, and they helped them to catch bugs in the system. Special thanks to them for that! Since we did not take money from them, then our conscience did not torment us much, although there were a lot of bugs and the stability of the system left much to be desired. We gave our first users a system for free “lifelong” use. Now they seem to be glad that they have agreed to be the first user testers.
At that time, similar services began to appear on the market like mushrooms after rain. This was facilitated by increased attention to problems primarily in public procurement and not unreasonable dissatisfaction with the official website of the state order zakupki.gov.ru. By the way, the site had been unavailable for a long time (sometimes a whole working day), regular maintenance work was constantly going on there, the search for tender notices worked through one well-known place: then nothing was found, then thousands of irrelevant purchases were found on the same search query. Users were looking for a replacement in the form of paid search engines.
However, most of the search engines have not advanced from providing only the search line, which, in principle, we were pleased. There was a mess with prices for such services - from 10 thousand to 100 thousand rubles a year, with minimal differences in functionality. One of the market leaders "took" users with cunning - a promise to win at least N tenders during the year, which in most cases was just words. All profile thematic resources are full of this. All reasonable people understand that it is impossible to guarantee victory in a tender with white methods. Which means - there is either a crime or a deception. But the people were actively pursued and continue to be conducted on such “enticing” proposals.
We decided to work in the lowest-cost segment, i.e. up to 10.000 rub / year from the company. This means that a company that has entered into an agreement with us receives a login and password to access the personal account of the search system and can use it during a calendar year in less than 1000 rubles / month. Agree, money for the companies absolutely insignificant. The annual paid access to the closed part of the search engine functionality is the way to monetize in the melon market that had already been established by the time, and we decided not to invent a bicycle. It was decided to refuse other ways of monetization, such as contextual advertising or advertising related services. The client has already paid for the service, so why should he be filled with advertising?
The calculation was simple - with a fully automated search system, we almost do not spend resources on customer service. With us only:
- regular tracking of sources of procurement of both new and existing ones (they change quite often)
- fast technical support by email
- development of a search system in accordance with newly adopted laws and market trends.
Take your sales - so we thought. And deeply mistaken.
It is worth noting that the service is designed only for corporate clients, so payment was assumed only by wire transfer. No credit cards, electronic money and other joys of working with “physicists”.
Until June 2011, only the user's personal account worked; there was no promo site as such. The first “honest” (not familiar to us representatives of companies) potential clients were caught at the thematic exhibitions at the Expocenter and Crocus Expo. There was a high interest in the system and many had a 14-day free trial period, but it didn’t go as far as selling. During this test period, we practically did not disturb the users, did not impose our services. At the end of the test, they called and asked whether they liked it or not and whether we will continue to cooperate. The answer was something like this:
When we received about a dozen of such failures, they began to think that something was wrong here! They began to conduct a detailed survey of users during the testing of the system and drew the following picture.
Most of our users are so far from some kind of computer technology and IT in general, that the advantages that we initially conceived turned into disadvantages. Despite the presence of in-built context-sensitive help (like the one implemented in MS Visual Studio), users did not even try to create automatic search rules (one of the main features of our system), and search queries often looked ridiculous. Here is a real example of the phrase that the customer entered in the search box:
and then wondered why nothing was found.
There were quite a few such cases, and the developers had to make the interface as simple as possible for users whose knowledge and user experience in the computer field is very poor. All this was implemented in the form of:
Of course, we are to blame for not having thought in advance about the level of computer literacy of our users. However, they didn’t fundamentally abandon the already built system, since our main priority was still saving users time, and not selling another useless beautiful program to trusting customers, no matter how pathetic it would sound. We found that having spent 20-30 minutes explaining how to work with the service, and making the initial settings for the users ourselves - the latter literally “squeaked” with joy and praised us for having made a really convenient system.
In this scenario, the first sales were not long in coming. Even without having an official website, we managed to sell several annual subscriptions to completely unknown companies, which gave us confidence and strength for further growth.
In the same June 2011, our first website, written on bare html without any cms, ripened. The site turned out to be not so poor, although it was quite inexpensive, and for a long time it solved the main task - to present the FindTenders system on the Internet and give users the opportunity to register to receive details for test access ...
Little by little, business processes in our tiny company began to emerge, and the sales process was particularly notable. We didn’t wait until the user had finished the test period, but they called on the second or third day from the beginning of the test and offered to help with the system settings for free. Some refused to help, but most willingly accepted it. They could only go into the personal account of the system and watch new current tenders on their topics. Beauty and only. After a couple of days after the initial settings, we again contacted the client and asked about the use of the system - whether everything is clear, does it help with daily work, etc. A couple of days before the end of the test period, we again contacted the client and asked a direct question - I don’t like it and will enter into an agreement.
Here's how the sales process looked schematically by the end of the summer of 2011:
Each contact was accompanied by an e-mail summarizing the telephone conversation (well, so that the user does not accidentally forget)
By August 2011, it became clear that active sales could not be done. Destroyed against the blank wall of misunderstanding and passivity of users all dreams of self-selling service. After reading the wonderful books from the guys from 37 signals (“Rework” and “Getting real”), it was somewhat strange to find our users completely unwilling to at least somehow play around with the system after receiving the requisites, although there was a demand for the service itself. Only after explaining on fingers what it is and how it works - users agreed with us on the usefulness of this product. About the viral dissemination of information about us speech did not go in principle.
The actual payment under the contract is a separate topic. We consider it normal to report readiness to buy and pay in a couple of months, although the invoice for payment is valid for 3 working days. Well, what, the system - it works and fine. At that time, the client’s words about the purchase were enough for us and we opened the annual access and humbly waited for payment. It happened that the payment did not arrive, then the users were blocked.
By the end of the summer of 2011, we had a little over a dozen customers and in general things were going well, if we ignore the rather large amount of work associated with the sale. In terms of business performance at that time, nothing could be said, since Often users turned into customers somewhat randomly. For example, there were cases when the company paid for annual access to the system so never (!) Without logging into your personal account, either before or after payment. In fact, they simply donated their money. But to talk about the sales system at that time did not have to.
There was a question about developing a promotion strategy. It became increasingly clear what was needed:
The first 2 points were solved quite easily.
To attract users, they began to use Yandex.Direct and Google Adwords (they later refused to use Adwords because of significantly lower efficiency compared to Direct)
To solve the second problem, they bought a direct Moscow number from Megafon and set up an online chat on the site to communicate with visitors.
The third point was much more difficult. If it was possible to figure out the technical means, for example, using IP telephony, then it was extremely difficult to find sales managers in Moscow (with their salary expectations and due to the lack of office and experience in forming a sales department).
The situation was further complicated by the fact that the whole team, apart from the project, worked on the main jobs and could not call the clients during working hours on a regular basis.
The only way out was to search for remote employees in the regions.
In order to reduce the risks, it was decided to pay managers for the piecework, but quite good for a salesperson from the region who starts his career path.
After posting vacancies on popular recruiting sites, a stream of rather awful summaries began to spill, of which only one in five could be read without tears of laughter.
As a result, by September 2011, a couple of people were found and had a chat. It was necessary to start learning. For this purpose, a 30-page manual was written with a full explanation of the subject area, technology of sales, testing of objections, and so on. Then it seemed that as soon as managers were trained (1-2 months), they would be extremely motivated, because their profits are entirely dependent on their efficiency, and bring the company a steady income. Weekly tutorials and motivating Skype talks were also planned. After completion of sales, the manager had to fill out all closing accounting documents from the form in Excel and send it to us electronically.
The sales plan was set at 10 contracts per month for the manager. According to preliminary calculations, that is exactly what could be sold, working at least 6 hours a day, 3-5 days a week. The first 2 months did not wait for results. We talked a lot on Skype and discussed every nuance in the subject area, program or sales technique. Several times during this period, I wanted to quit everything, quit my main job and do sales on my own, because Those things and situations that we chewed on Skype for a long time seemed simple and commonplace, and for them they turned into real difficulties. But it was necessary not to break, because we were building a “business”, and not just a means for personal enrichment.
Finally, the first contracts with customers went, but before the implementation of the sales plan was like the moon.
Despite the fact that sales were tiny, by the end of 2011 it was possible to sum up the first results in terms of business performance.
So, the schedule of attendance for the period from 10/01/2011 to 12/30/2011:
Or about 130 unique visitors per day on weekdays. The overwhelming part of the traffic went through Yandex.Direct.
Conversion rates were at 4%, which is not enough for a selling site. Much later - after the site was redesigned - the conversion grew to a decent 8%. In our case, conversion means the ratio of successful registrations to the total number of visitors:
With registered visitors (leads) our sales managers began to work in a 2-week cycle. An indicator of their effectiveness was the ratio of clients / leads, which in the same period averaged 17/310 * 100% = 5.5%. Is this a lot or a little? Of course, not so much, but quite a lot. Imagine a situation that we have increased the initial traffic by 10 times due to the most powerful advertising. Then the final numbers will look much more welcoming. It should be noted that about half of the bills were not paid for one reason or another, including due to shortcomings of sales managers. Therefore, in theory, the efficiency ratio could be close to 10%. Looking ahead - the current efficiency ratio has passed this barrier, and with a decent margin.
The sales funnel in terms of the cost of each stage of work with a potential customer looked like this:
If the annual subscription cost is 10,000 rubles, 3200 rubles were spent (that is, more than 30%) only for attracting customers. Another 30% of the contract had to be paid to sales managers. Plus costs for equipment, system support and development, SEO, etc. Speech about some kind of profit did not go. All plans to get rich quickly suddenly moved indefinitely. The main task at that time was to test our system on the market and determine the strategy for further development and advancement.
Until the end of December 2011, there was only one tariff plan ... But the functionality of the system has grown significantly and we were already able to compete in the more expensive segment. By the way, the increase in price by almost 2 times in general had no effect on conversion and sales efficiency.
Since January 2012, several tariff plans have appeared:
- basic (search for current tenders) 14.900 rub / year
- extra (search by archive and results of past state tenders) 18.900 rubles / year
In addition, the period of the test period was reduced to 1 week, because practice has shown that out of 14 days, users logged in only 2-3 times. The decrease in the test period, as well as the price, had practically no effect on sales.
A lot of good articles have been written to promote the site. SEO is generally a rather controversial field of activity in IT and many experts are skeptical about it - largely due to the fact that it has nowhere many charlatans. We decided not to engage in SEO, but to follow Yandex’s recommendations for creating a good website.
As you know, the position of issuing a site in search engines is most influenced by 3 factors:
1. High-quality content with good internal relink. It is no secret that search engines are increasingly weight in the trust of the site give behavioral factors. The site should reveal the actual topic for its visitors, and not just be stuffed with keywords. Then the average time to visit the site and the depth of viewing will increase significantly.
What was done:
We conducted an analysis of all the most popular articles on the site and tried to make them interesting for users for whom the tender topic is relevant. Do not forget, of course, about the meta tags.
What is planned to do:
Daily review of the procurement market and the media, the publication and disclosure of the most relevant at the time. Add on site a free specialist response to user questions about purchases and tenders.
2. Good quality articles on thematic resources. Search engines are good in long, well-designed (more than 3000 characters) articles published on trust thematic resources. They also have quite a lot of weight in the trust of the site.
What was done:
Several dozens of high-quality articles were written by hand with placement on good sites. As a rule, the placement is paid and not cheap, but by agreement with the webmaster of the site and with really useful material, it was possible to negotiate a discount, or even place it for free.
What is planned: To
continue in the same spirit. Go to large networked media with high-quality content.
3. The increase in the reference mass. Well without him. Many grief SEO specialists promote sites only with links from well-known exchanges. For quick advancement this can be very effective, but not in our case. We came to work seriously and for a long time. And the dependence of the reference mass and constant payments makes it similar to Yandex. Direct and very expensive. However, it was not necessary to completely abandon the reference mass either, since It really affects search engine results.
We used the blogger and tratlinkposting perpetual links. Once paid - and forgot. Here, too, there are risks that the web resource where the links were placed, has ceased to exist and the link has flown out of the index, but as practice has shown, in general, there have been two such problems in a year, and it has turned off.
What was done:
Several hundred external eternal links to the resource, though not always thematic, because the subject matter turned out to be rather narrow in the blogosphere.
What is planned to do:
Over time, reduce the unnatural increase in the reference mass, replacing it with a natural one. To do this, you need to actively engage in the first 2 points and get free natural links from loyal users.
By June 2012, it was firmly decided to remove the office and deal with the formation of the sales department. By this time the search system itself has improved significantly, the number of sites with tender publications monitored by the system has increased several times.
The promotion site also underwent a change in design, significantly increasing the conversion of visitors. There was a site management system that allows you to easily add new pages and especially news (with html, this was difficult to do). The system was less recognizable in thematic circles. The weak link in our project was sales.
In the middle of June, an unassuming but quite comfortable 30-meter office was filmed, computers, laptops and office furniture were purchased. The time was to look for staff. The search was conducted on all kinds of free sites, social networks, personal acquaintances - but all in vain. The people who came to the interviews did not suit us for various reasons, most often because of the literacy of speech. Whatever you say, the first thing that a salesman should be able to do is formulate his thoughts beautifully and competently. Since the work was supposed to be on the phone, a pleasant voice became an additional advantage for the candidate.
However, nothing is in vain, and quite accidentally managed to make contact with a good sales director who was interested in our project. Our team has been replenished with a strong leader who has brought a lot of value in recruiting and managing the sales department and helped to recruit the first 3 sellers.
Here are one of the main points:
and many other less significant nuances.
Despite the summer “dead” months and inactive September, by the beginning of November it was possible not only to compensate for the greatly increased financial burden on the company (rent, corporate Internet, telephone and of course salaries of managers), but also to get into net profit, albeit not great. November looks even more optimistic.
Now there are:
- a high-quality and good-quality web product with its own vision of the process of searching for tenders
- a promotional site with very good conversion of visitors (over 10%)
- a solid team of managers and managers with good sales efficiency (leading to customers) (over 8%) )
The main sources of leads:
- Website
- Yandex. Direct
- online affiliate programs with thematic sites
- offline affiliate programs with training centers
Future plans:
- implement a lot of new ideas in our product
- more active promotion on thematic resources (conversion from them is much higher than average)
- extensive sales staff increase
- development of a related consulting business across the entire spectrum of work with tenders.
By the way, since the beginning of October a free version of the system has appeared. The functionality, of course, is very limited, but it is quite suitable for rare use. The link to the source of the notice is not hidden, unlike most free versions of competitors' products.
With so many sites with tender publications, the natural idea is to gather all the information about current tenders in one place, thereby greatly simplifying the lives of simple suppliers. So the idea was born, which in the course of 2 years has grown into a real business.
In this article I will try to explain in detail the problems of the subject area and the problems that had to be encountered in the implementation of the idea - all in chronological order.
The historical definition of a tender is a form of concluding contracts, which presupposes a preliminary choice of a partner on a competitive basis. And although in Russian legislation there is no definition of “tender” at all (instead, long “orders for goods, works, services for state and municipal needs” are used), this term is used quite often in companies, therefore the term “ tender ”will be used as a synonym for procurement.
The idea of creating a search for tenders
When the company takes the first steps to participate in tenders, it faces many difficulties.
Here are the most common:
- Many Internet resources and electronic platforms with their own search interface.
If you look for a state tender at least understand a way - you need to go to a single site for public procurement, then the question arises with commercial ones - where to look? In fact, you can search anywhere, as there are many sites for placing commercial orders. Therefore, at first they begin to look not for the tender itself, but, above all, for the place where it appears a chance to find it. - Poor search result.
Shoveled dozens of sites, and the return is weak. The most interesting is in the tender documentation, on which sites are usually not looking. In the title and description of the tender, most often customers indicate common words and phrases (for example: “purchase of medical equipment” or “food supply”) by which finding a suitable tender is problematic. To the rescue comes the search for attached tender documentation. In it, customers describe in as much detail as possible the characteristics of the products or services to be acquired. - Tracking changes in procurement notices
It happens quite often (especially in the case of a state order) that the customer makes changes to the information on procurement posted on the website of public procurement. If you do not track changes in time, then you may be faced with an unpleasant situation when the seemingly winning bid was rejected simply because the customer slightly changed the terms of purchase. Therefore, day after day, it is necessary to check the tenders for changes. - Finally, it is necessary to keep records and somehow systematize the work with tenders .
How many days are left until the end of the application? What documents should be on hand when working with the selected tender? How not to forget about the current status of the tender or to delegate work on the tender to a colleague?
Solving these and other issues takes a lot of time and distracts you from truly important work.
It can be concluded that the time spent on independent search and management of tenders can be very expensive. Employees of the tender department spend their precious time on routine work, although they could do really important things and delegate the routine to the automatic search system.
A good search system for tenders should help companies save time and energy on finding the tenders of interest and systematize the work with them.
Search for tenders is a really urgent task for many Russian companies. This market was already formed, but there were no really high-quality low-cost and functional programs to simplify the life of suppliers. Implementing this idea and bringing it to the market has become our goal for the next few years.
So let me introduce myself: we are a young IT team:
- Vladislav Trubeev
- Vladimir Ivliev
- Artyom Kindle
All of us are from the same course of the faculty of the VMK MSU. We studied together - now it’s time to work together!
')
Selecting the method of providing the service.
Of course, before deciding to convey our idea to the participants in the order placement (the so-called suppliers participating in public procurement), we studied the market in detail. At that time (it was the end of 2010), procurement search systems already existed both in the web access and in the boxed version in the form of installed programs. None of the existing products are not satisfied.
- Those that were accessible through the web were of low functionality and did not solve one of the main tasks - minimizing the time spent searching for tenders. In fact, web search engines stupidly collected in the database notice of purchases from various popular sites and provided users with a search string. Everything. There was no talk of any convenience in working with already found tenders.
- Search programs were more advanced in their work with found purchases. But the program must be installed on the computer, frequently updated. It was impossible, for example, in a foreign city on a business trip to go to the Internet cafe and see the current tenders for today. Or go to the search engine from a mobile phone or tablet. In general, not very convenient for users.
Having felt both, the choice was made in favor of a web solution, but as interactive as the program was.
Before creating a product, the following tasks were set in order of priority:
- extensive constantly updated base of sources of procurement
- fully automated search for tenders based on user tasks
- as clear as possible and clear list of found purchases
- minimum time to view large lists of tenders (no redundant transitions to other pages. Ideally, everything should be in the same window)
- convenient user collaboration
Keeping such simple priorities in mind, we began to work on the system. The platforms and technologies used to implement the system are not disclosed in this article - this is a separate, broad topic. If there is interest - be sure to write about it.
Competitors, positioning, monetization and pricing.
By May 2011, a more or less working beta version of the product was ready. Several of our familiar companies used it for free, and they helped them to catch bugs in the system. Special thanks to them for that! Since we did not take money from them, then our conscience did not torment us much, although there were a lot of bugs and the stability of the system left much to be desired. We gave our first users a system for free “lifelong” use. Now they seem to be glad that they have agreed to be the first user testers.
At that time, similar services began to appear on the market like mushrooms after rain. This was facilitated by increased attention to problems primarily in public procurement and not unreasonable dissatisfaction with the official website of the state order zakupki.gov.ru. By the way, the site had been unavailable for a long time (sometimes a whole working day), regular maintenance work was constantly going on there, the search for tender notices worked through one well-known place: then nothing was found, then thousands of irrelevant purchases were found on the same search query. Users were looking for a replacement in the form of paid search engines.
However, most of the search engines have not advanced from providing only the search line, which, in principle, we were pleased. There was a mess with prices for such services - from 10 thousand to 100 thousand rubles a year, with minimal differences in functionality. One of the market leaders "took" users with cunning - a promise to win at least N tenders during the year, which in most cases was just words. All profile thematic resources are full of this. All reasonable people understand that it is impossible to guarantee victory in a tender with white methods. Which means - there is either a crime or a deception. But the people were actively pursued and continue to be conducted on such “enticing” proposals.
We decided to work in the lowest-cost segment, i.e. up to 10.000 rub / year from the company. This means that a company that has entered into an agreement with us receives a login and password to access the personal account of the search system and can use it during a calendar year in less than 1000 rubles / month. Agree, money for the companies absolutely insignificant. The annual paid access to the closed part of the search engine functionality is the way to monetize in the melon market that had already been established by the time, and we decided not to invent a bicycle. It was decided to refuse other ways of monetization, such as contextual advertising or advertising related services. The client has already paid for the service, so why should he be filled with advertising?
The calculation was simple - with a fully automated search system, we almost do not spend resources on customer service. With us only:
- regular tracking of sources of procurement of both new and existing ones (they change quite often)
- fast technical support by email
- development of a search system in accordance with newly adopted laws and market trends.
Take your sales - so we thought. And deeply mistaken.
It is worth noting that the service is designed only for corporate clients, so payment was assumed only by wire transfer. No credit cards, electronic money and other joys of working with “physicists”.
System development and business process formation
Until June 2011, only the user's personal account worked; there was no promo site as such. The first “honest” (not familiar to us representatives of companies) potential clients were caught at the thematic exhibitions at the Expocenter and Crocus Expo. There was a high interest in the system and many had a 14-day free trial period, but it didn’t go as far as selling. During this test period, we practically did not disturb the users, did not impose our services. At the end of the test, they called and asked whether they liked it or not and whether we will continue to cooperate. The answer was something like this:
Yes, I liked it, but we will not cooperate.
When we received about a dozen of such failures, they began to think that something was wrong here! They began to conduct a detailed survey of users during the testing of the system and drew the following picture.
Most of our users are so far from some kind of computer technology and IT in general, that the advantages that we initially conceived turned into disadvantages. Despite the presence of in-built context-sensitive help (like the one implemented in MS Visual Studio), users did not even try to create automatic search rules (one of the main features of our system), and search queries often looked ridiculous. Here is a real example of the phrase that the customer entered in the search box:
All tenders of Russia for the equipment of pumping stations and maintenance of pumping stations Mosk. and region
and then wondered why nothing was found.
There were quite a few such cases, and the developers had to make the interface as simple as possible for users whose knowledge and user experience in the computer field is very poor. All this was implemented in the form of:
- contextual prompts in the personal account interface, wherever possible
- simple short video tutorials for beginners
- detailed text descriptions of working with the system from the series “for dummies”
Of course, we are to blame for not having thought in advance about the level of computer literacy of our users. However, they didn’t fundamentally abandon the already built system, since our main priority was still saving users time, and not selling another useless beautiful program to trusting customers, no matter how pathetic it would sound. We found that having spent 20-30 minutes explaining how to work with the service, and making the initial settings for the users ourselves - the latter literally “squeaked” with joy and praised us for having made a really convenient system.
In this scenario, the first sales were not long in coming. Even without having an official website, we managed to sell several annual subscriptions to completely unknown companies, which gave us confidence and strength for further growth.
In the same June 2011, our first website, written on bare html without any cms, ripened. The site turned out to be not so poor, although it was quite inexpensive, and for a long time it solved the main task - to present the FindTenders system on the Internet and give users the opportunity to register to receive details for test access ...
Little by little, business processes in our tiny company began to emerge, and the sales process was particularly notable. We didn’t wait until the user had finished the test period, but they called on the second or third day from the beginning of the test and offered to help with the system settings for free. Some refused to help, but most willingly accepted it. They could only go into the personal account of the system and watch new current tenders on their topics. Beauty and only. After a couple of days after the initial settings, we again contacted the client and asked about the use of the system - whether everything is clear, does it help with daily work, etc. A couple of days before the end of the test period, we again contacted the client and asked a direct question - I don’t like it and will enter into an agreement.
Here's how the sales process looked schematically by the end of the summer of 2011:
Each contact was accompanied by an e-mail summarizing the telephone conversation (well, so that the user does not accidentally forget)
By August 2011, it became clear that active sales could not be done. Destroyed against the blank wall of misunderstanding and passivity of users all dreams of self-selling service. After reading the wonderful books from the guys from 37 signals (“Rework” and “Getting real”), it was somewhat strange to find our users completely unwilling to at least somehow play around with the system after receiving the requisites, although there was a demand for the service itself. Only after explaining on fingers what it is and how it works - users agreed with us on the usefulness of this product. About the viral dissemination of information about us speech did not go in principle.
The actual payment under the contract is a separate topic. We consider it normal to report readiness to buy and pay in a couple of months, although the invoice for payment is valid for 3 working days. Well, what, the system - it works and fine. At that time, the client’s words about the purchase were enough for us and we opened the annual access and humbly waited for payment. It happened that the payment did not arrive, then the users were blocked.
System development, sales team recruitment
By the end of the summer of 2011, we had a little over a dozen customers and in general things were going well, if we ignore the rather large amount of work associated with the sale. In terms of business performance at that time, nothing could be said, since Often users turned into customers somewhat randomly. For example, there were cases when the company paid for annual access to the system so never (!) Without logging into your personal account, either before or after payment. In fact, they simply donated their money. But to talk about the sales system at that time did not have to.
There was a question about developing a promotion strategy. It became increasingly clear what was needed:
- the main channel of the initial attraction of users to use the Internet
- become available to users and customers through all types of communication
- hire sales managers
The first 2 points were solved quite easily.
To attract users, they began to use Yandex.Direct and Google Adwords (they later refused to use Adwords because of significantly lower efficiency compared to Direct)
To solve the second problem, they bought a direct Moscow number from Megafon and set up an online chat on the site to communicate with visitors.
The third point was much more difficult. If it was possible to figure out the technical means, for example, using IP telephony, then it was extremely difficult to find sales managers in Moscow (with their salary expectations and due to the lack of office and experience in forming a sales department).
The situation was further complicated by the fact that the whole team, apart from the project, worked on the main jobs and could not call the clients during working hours on a regular basis.
The only way out was to search for remote employees in the regions.
In order to reduce the risks, it was decided to pay managers for the piecework, but quite good for a salesperson from the region who starts his career path.
After posting vacancies on popular recruiting sites, a stream of rather awful summaries began to spill, of which only one in five could be read without tears of laughter.
As a result, by September 2011, a couple of people were found and had a chat. It was necessary to start learning. For this purpose, a 30-page manual was written with a full explanation of the subject area, technology of sales, testing of objections, and so on. Then it seemed that as soon as managers were trained (1-2 months), they would be extremely motivated, because their profits are entirely dependent on their efficiency, and bring the company a steady income. Weekly tutorials and motivating Skype talks were also planned. After completion of sales, the manager had to fill out all closing accounting documents from the form in Excel and send it to us electronically.
The sales plan was set at 10 contracts per month for the manager. According to preliminary calculations, that is exactly what could be sold, working at least 6 hours a day, 3-5 days a week. The first 2 months did not wait for results. We talked a lot on Skype and discussed every nuance in the subject area, program or sales technique. Several times during this period, I wanted to quit everything, quit my main job and do sales on my own, because Those things and situations that we chewed on Skype for a long time seemed simple and commonplace, and for them they turned into real difficulties. But it was necessary not to break, because we were building a “business”, and not just a means for personal enrichment.
Finally, the first contracts with customers went, but before the implementation of the sales plan was like the moon.
Despite the fact that sales were tiny, by the end of 2011 it was possible to sum up the first results in terms of business performance.
So, the schedule of attendance for the period from 10/01/2011 to 12/30/2011:
Or about 130 unique visitors per day on weekdays. The overwhelming part of the traffic went through Yandex.Direct.
Conversion rates were at 4%, which is not enough for a selling site. Much later - after the site was redesigned - the conversion grew to a decent 8%. In our case, conversion means the ratio of successful registrations to the total number of visitors:
With registered visitors (leads) our sales managers began to work in a 2-week cycle. An indicator of their effectiveness was the ratio of clients / leads, which in the same period averaged 17/310 * 100% = 5.5%. Is this a lot or a little? Of course, not so much, but quite a lot. Imagine a situation that we have increased the initial traffic by 10 times due to the most powerful advertising. Then the final numbers will look much more welcoming. It should be noted that about half of the bills were not paid for one reason or another, including due to shortcomings of sales managers. Therefore, in theory, the efficiency ratio could be close to 10%. Looking ahead - the current efficiency ratio has passed this barrier, and with a decent margin.
The sales funnel in terms of the cost of each stage of work with a potential customer looked like this:
If the annual subscription cost is 10,000 rubles, 3200 rubles were spent (that is, more than 30%) only for attracting customers. Another 30% of the contract had to be paid to sales managers. Plus costs for equipment, system support and development, SEO, etc. Speech about some kind of profit did not go. All plans to get rich quickly suddenly moved indefinitely. The main task at that time was to test our system on the market and determine the strategy for further development and advancement.
The main lessons learned during this period are:
- Finding a good independent remote sales manager is like finding treasure in your country house, i.e. almost impossible. A tremendous amount of time is required for explaining simple basics and solving small nuances in work. To motivate and give a beating at a distance of 1000 km. very hard. The effect quickly fades away. The manager loses the initial enthusiasm, begins to systematically violate the discipline and technology of sales, which leads to weak results and, again, negatively affects the performance and then in a vicious circle. All these problems are well understood by sales managers, they can be better and much more efficiently solved when an employee is nearby.
Conclusion: We remove the office for the sales department and tie it up with the remote. - You need to make a good selling site and do its optimization and promotion.
Yandex.Direct cost us too much. Moving along low- and medium-frequency keywords would give us relevant traffic without regular cash infusions, and regular publication on thematic resources would give a higher conversion rate.
In addition, the site itself was necessary to significantly refine and “pull” on the CMS. It was obvious that the average conversion rate could be significantly increased by simply making the homepage more “selling” (user-friendly)
Conclusion: we do a site redesign and set up a content management system. We are engaged in independent promotion of the site by keywords, we write and publish articles on thematic resources. - It is necessary to realize that outsiders who come to work in a project will not work with the same zeal as the founders. It sounds quite logical, but in reality it seemed that our performers (freelancers and hired employees) constantly underworked, boiled down and did not invest in the soul at all in the “common cause”. They did not work at night and did not get up early in the morning to write a note or study a new idea that came to mind asleep. Awareness of the fact that for third parties your brainchild is no more than a way to make money / learn new things / gain experience or a line in a resume or portfolio will greatly help novice businessmen to develop their projects. The business has its own interests - the employee has his own. Well, when the interests in general coincide.
Conclusion: when working with staff, not to demand 100% dedication, but to establish KPI criteria more clearly and not stand on ceremony when tasks are not regularly performed - these are just not your people.
Until the end of December 2011, there was only one tariff plan ... But the functionality of the system has grown significantly and we were already able to compete in the more expensive segment. By the way, the increase in price by almost 2 times in general had no effect on conversion and sales efficiency.
Since January 2012, several tariff plans have appeared:
- basic (search for current tenders) 14.900 rub / year
- extra (search by archive and results of past state tenders) 18.900 rubles / year
In addition, the period of the test period was reduced to 1 week, because practice has shown that out of 14 days, users logged in only 2-3 times. The decrease in the test period, as well as the price, had practically no effect on sales.
Promotion of the promotional site.
A lot of good articles have been written to promote the site. SEO is generally a rather controversial field of activity in IT and many experts are skeptical about it - largely due to the fact that it has nowhere many charlatans. We decided not to engage in SEO, but to follow Yandex’s recommendations for creating a good website.
As you know, the position of issuing a site in search engines is most influenced by 3 factors:
- internal content and user behavior on the site
- quality articles and links from thematic trust resources
- reference mass
1. High-quality content with good internal relink. It is no secret that search engines are increasingly weight in the trust of the site give behavioral factors. The site should reveal the actual topic for its visitors, and not just be stuffed with keywords. Then the average time to visit the site and the depth of viewing will increase significantly.
What was done:
We conducted an analysis of all the most popular articles on the site and tried to make them interesting for users for whom the tender topic is relevant. Do not forget, of course, about the meta tags.
What is planned to do:
Daily review of the procurement market and the media, the publication and disclosure of the most relevant at the time. Add on site a free specialist response to user questions about purchases and tenders.
2. Good quality articles on thematic resources. Search engines are good in long, well-designed (more than 3000 characters) articles published on trust thematic resources. They also have quite a lot of weight in the trust of the site.
What was done:
Several dozens of high-quality articles were written by hand with placement on good sites. As a rule, the placement is paid and not cheap, but by agreement with the webmaster of the site and with really useful material, it was possible to negotiate a discount, or even place it for free.
What is planned: To
continue in the same spirit. Go to large networked media with high-quality content.
3. The increase in the reference mass. Well without him. Many grief SEO specialists promote sites only with links from well-known exchanges. For quick advancement this can be very effective, but not in our case. We came to work seriously and for a long time. And the dependence of the reference mass and constant payments makes it similar to Yandex. Direct and very expensive. However, it was not necessary to completely abandon the reference mass either, since It really affects search engine results.
We used the blogger and tratlinkposting perpetual links. Once paid - and forgot. Here, too, there are risks that the web resource where the links were placed, has ceased to exist and the link has flown out of the index, but as practice has shown, in general, there have been two such problems in a year, and it has turned off.
What was done:
Several hundred external eternal links to the resource, though not always thematic, because the subject matter turned out to be rather narrow in the blogosphere.
What is planned to do:
Over time, reduce the unnatural increase in the reference mass, replacing it with a natural one. To do this, you need to actively engage in the first 2 points and get free natural links from loyal users.
Office and sales department formation
By June 2012, it was firmly decided to remove the office and deal with the formation of the sales department. By this time the search system itself has improved significantly, the number of sites with tender publications monitored by the system has increased several times.
The promotion site also underwent a change in design, significantly increasing the conversion of visitors. There was a site management system that allows you to easily add new pages and especially news (with html, this was difficult to do). The system was less recognizable in thematic circles. The weak link in our project was sales.
In the middle of June, an unassuming but quite comfortable 30-meter office was filmed, computers, laptops and office furniture were purchased. The time was to look for staff. The search was conducted on all kinds of free sites, social networks, personal acquaintances - but all in vain. The people who came to the interviews did not suit us for various reasons, most often because of the literacy of speech. Whatever you say, the first thing that a salesman should be able to do is formulate his thoughts beautifully and competently. Since the work was supposed to be on the phone, a pleasant voice became an additional advantage for the candidate.
However, nothing is in vain, and quite accidentally managed to make contact with a good sales director who was interested in our project. Our team has been replenished with a strong leader who has brought a lot of value in recruiting and managing the sales department and helped to recruit the first 3 sellers.
Here are one of the main points:
- You should not wait for the result from the manager in the first 2 months, even if he showed himself well at the interview
- A daily short morning meeting is required, in which each manager writes his or her plan for cold contacts, leads, bills and payments on the board. Glider sets up a working mood and does not relax during the day.
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and many other less significant nuances.
Despite the summer “dead” months and inactive September, by the beginning of November it was possible not only to compensate for the greatly increased financial burden on the company (rent, corporate Internet, telephone and of course salaries of managers), but also to get into net profit, albeit not great. November looks even more optimistic.
What is now and future plans
Now there are:
- a high-quality and good-quality web product with its own vision of the process of searching for tenders
- a promotional site with very good conversion of visitors (over 10%)
- a solid team of managers and managers with good sales efficiency (leading to customers) (over 8%) )
The main sources of leads:
- Website
- Yandex. Direct
- online affiliate programs with thematic sites
- offline affiliate programs with training centers
Future plans:
- implement a lot of new ideas in our product
- more active promotion on thematic resources (conversion from them is much higher than average)
- extensive sales staff increase
- development of a related consulting business across the entire spectrum of work with tenders.
By the way, since the beginning of October a free version of the system has appeared. The functionality, of course, is very limited, but it is quite suitable for rare use. The link to the source of the notice is not hidden, unlike most free versions of competitors' products.
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/159437/
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