How sales are arranged in a mobile studio

Hi Habr!

My name is Dima, I'm 21 years old. In Touch Instinct, I came a year and three months ago to the position of sales manager. He came while still a student, just to try and, perhaps, make his last attempt as a sales clerk. Before that, I tried to sell many places: I was selling USE courses, riding schools; selling construction licenses, calling around the cold base of the city of Sochi. At one time, I even fit into the murky MLM story.

Dmitrikostin will tell you how the sales department in our company is organized under the cat : CRM, planning and reports.

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Sales-Account

Before me, projects were not systematically attracted by the company's founders. Now all my activities for selling our services are concentrated on me and my assistant - these are outgoing, incoming requests processing and upsail. In the terminology of Terekhov , I am a Sales-Account.

The first thing I did when I came was taking up cold sales. There were almost no incoming leads, we had to be engaged around the clock in companies that more or less fit our target audience. The task that then stood before me was to make an appointment with a potential customer and tell about the mobile application market. Try to convey to the business what benefits it can get on the example of specific cases.

We said that there are many studios in the market that you can turn to, but please do not forget about us when you send the assignment for evaluation. Thus, my colleague Anatoly Larin and I went around almost all St. Petersburg car dealers (it seemed that they had the money and they needed it), but we didn’t sell anything.


The presentation with which we bypassed auto dealers, the full version on click.

I really did not sell for a long time. My first mini sale took place in about two months, with the incoming application. The sales process itself was not lined up and everything turned out spontaneously and clumsily - like the first sex. The amount was the first agreement was ridiculous, but we continued our cooperation and have been working on the project for the second year already.

Something really big happened in half a year. Since then, I have been trying to keep up the pace.

We do not have KPI, there is a responsibility

Opinions of experts on sales in the Digital-agency are divided: someone writes that the plan should be without him, no one, someone writes that this is a sure suicide.

We do not have KPI, there is only the concept of responsibility. Responsibility for the fact that 45 people are sitting here, who have to pay salaries, and if there are no new large projects, I will be guilty. The percentage of sales for me goes as a nice bonus to the incredible feeling that people work on every project sold and they like to make a product. Another very cool feeling is the understanding that you are helping the company grow. When I came to the company we were 9, now there are 45 of us, and including myself, I put my hand to it.

Such motivation does not scale and someday the moment of transition to plans, templates and other delights will come. With the growth of the company, I have to work hard - more people require more projects, and they have been planned in advance.

CRM did not catch on

We probably tried all the well-known CRMs: Highrise, PipeDrive, SalesForce, amoCRM, Megaplan, ... Megaplan used the longest, but it was buggy, slowed down and the sales module was implanted recently and poorly integrated with the main system. In Highrise, the functionality was not enough, in the rest it was too much. The last thing we tried was a self-made CRM on Django.



But she was abandoned after a couple of months. The reason is simple - I feel uncomfortable, laziness. Not difficult to bring a single client. And to add 100, 200, 300 takes too much time. I am morally uncomfortable to do this activity.

I keep a Google calendar, in which I bring absolutely all my activities. It works. For more than a year of work, I forgot to write two leads. As soon as I start communicating with the client, I add a reminder to the calendar. Today, tomorrow, next month or half a year.

My calendar is full of years ahead with the notes “Miss Vasya from the Otkat Kontor LLC. Vasya@otkat.ru. The entire history of correspondence with Vasya is stored in the mail. After any meeting or call Vasya is written a summary (follow up). Thus the history of meetings and calls is stored in the mail.

It is convenient for me to work this way, all these actions are brought to reflexes.

Reporting

Monthly, on the first day, I am preparing a report:

• how many leads came in the mail;
• how many of them resulted in communication;
• how many sold;
• what and with what probability customers will ripen this month, with what size of the budget and the number of people per project;
• how many interesting customers led by outgoing;
• what he did during the whole month, for example, spoke at the conference.

The reports are read by the general manager and the director of marketing. For me, reports like a diary. It is interesting to see how in a year you turn from an optimist, who writes that about three dozen projects are about to shoot, into a realist pessimist.

Where customers come from

It is surprising that very few people in the mobile market are engaged in outbound sales. Even with a few sales staff. I do outgoing, on an ongoing basis, every day when there is a free minute. Yes, it is difficult, but the conversion in orders is higher than in incoming.

It is clear that this is not about the assault on the yellow pages. I constantly read roem.ru , Zuckerberg will call , I look through high-paying IT jobs in Moscow and Peter on hh.ru. For example, after an article on enhancing Internet marketing in company X, I simply have to go to them. Or if the toilet company hires the director of an online store, I’m making friends with him.

Now any information is available to us, we can calculate from whom how much money, find out from whom what plans we need only to take the telephone and call. Why miss such opportunities?

I spend a lot of time networking. 40% of incoming messages come with the words “We were recommended to you” or “We communicated with you”. This is usually a quality lead, with which you can continue to communicate. The remaining 60% of incoming requests are like “WE NEED URGENTLY A MOBILE APPENDIX GEODATING WITH A PHOTOSHERING”. Although sometimes come quite adequate, well-known companies.

Mobile development is expensive. Usually the answer to the incoming request is: “We work with projects from $ XXX, XXX, XXX, this is a large amount, tell me if this is unacceptable for you”. Ilya Birman will tell you more about the screening of unpromising clients in the report “Template it,” and Gorbunov’s advice .

We are good guys. We always help with advice, if we have a lot of money and the client has no tasks that require our expertise, we send them to more budget studios.

Foreign market and time & material

A year ago, we started doing a project for Xamarin and became their Premium Consulting Partner . This gives us quality leads interested in our specialization and having an adequate budget view. Every third lead becomes a client.



I tried to sell abroad outgoing, but somehow it did not go. They did not send just letters or “bombing” on LinkedIn. Advertisements in Google Adwords just did not work.

Perhaps we have not yet come to understand what it is and how to sell in the States and Europe. But we really want this. It is easier to agree and start cooperation with a foreign company than with a Russian one. It is easier to negotiate, it is easier to negotiate a price, it is easier to work with papers, and, most importantly, they are accustomed to work on time & material.

I don’t know what the problem is, maybe I’m really bad, but in Russia we’ve sold t & m a little more than nothing.

How do we evaluate the project

When I make sure that the client is adequate and familiar with the minimum budget, I do a project assessment. If it is difficult I connect the project manager. If simple - I rate myself.

Our processes are no different from other studios and generally accepted "laws" of sales. Meet / call, ask the right questions , find out the "pain", propose a solution, make sure that the decision is right and then announce the cost. Hi to Camp and Rackham . Depending on the situation, this path goes from a few days to a couple of weeks.

I don’t understand programming at all (although I’m currently taking a course on CodeAcademy ), but I have prepared standard components of mobile applications with an estimate for almost all occasions. In other cases, if the task is serious or the client requires special attention, I attract project managers who help me draw up a project plan and evaluate it. I try to minimize such cases so that the cost of presale is not too high.

Sometimes I attract the CEO, I take his final meeting. This is a good move that shows the client that we care, and we really want to work with him. Especially if your general is a charismatic nurse like ours.


I'm just trying to prepare high-quality commercial proposals for the customer. Usually our offers are ridiculous compared to competitors. Therefore, I place a bet on live communication with the client. Above the ideal KP continue to work. By the way, the Gorbunov bureau published its commercial offer for Dodo-pizza . I recommend to watch it.

Sales vs PM

It is believed that sales people like to underestimate the cost, and what happens next is not their problem. We have not. I always prepare adequate estimates, lay the risks. I can explain to the client why it is so expensive and if the client does not agree, then this is not our client.

On all recent projects, I do not interrupt the communication after the conclusion of the contract. I stop by the customer to find out how things are going, I settle conflicts, sell additional functionality.

What's next

I understand that the current sales scheme is not perfect. The company is growing, the market is changing, we can not successfully exist without setting up processes. We are actively working to make sales predictable and scalable. Someday I will write about it.

And how is the sales process in your company?

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