About budget sites, people and automation

The crisis in the yard. In RuNet, the topic of cost reduction, automation, transition to the conveyor is actively being discussed. Niyaz Garayev , who has built a conveyor belt, has already spoken about this, having increased the prices to not quite budget ones. Let me continue the theme of the conveyor. In contrast to the production of Reaspekt and the more QSOFT, WebCanape works in the cheapest segment, so to speak, at the very bottom. I agree with the many described in the above article, but you should not raise prices at the first opportunity, as Niyaz advises. This is a good market, even better than many people think.

Look at the top 100 leading studios in Russia. If you make a filter for the price, we will see that most of it works with budgets from 300,000 rubles. Where do you think the highest demand is? Of course in the segment up to 50 thousand.
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Surprisingly, out of the TOP-100 in the range of up to 50 thousand only 7 companies operate. Why? After all, this is the highest demand and therefore you can earn the most. It turns out that there are no large companies, and therefore there is no serious competition.

Why do people go to the expensive segment and raise prices ahead of time? In the first two years, the developers reason like this: than to take 5 small clients, it is better to take one big one. The RFP is growing rapidly, it is necessary to provide ongoing support, a good office. Raise the price tag and forth. Those who are quicker and more talented survive, and those who do not have time - write letters to Niyazu :)

It is not immediately understood that big money requires a lot of attention: long negotiations, trips to meetings, project discussions, beautiful presentations are all an essential part of projects and your resources (up to 70%). Here, by the way, it doesn't matter where you do business: a restaurant, an apartment renovation or a website development.

As a result, we cannot serve a large number of clients with such requirements and our business becomes dependent on several clients. What happens if these customers stop working with us? We will have nothing to pay wages, not to mention profit. Do you recognize the letter to Niyazu? So it was not once when I worked in Moscow in one of the expensive studios.

With a large number of clients, the business will not fail if some of them do not pay or will delay payments, as often happens. And surprisingly, my experience shows that profitability, both in one and in another case, is about the same.

But when the code was received by the webmaster’s black belt, one can also look at large budgets) But not necessarily. You can work in any segment where you feel comfortable.

And here are 15 tips WebCanape , how to build a pipeline and learn how to earn in a highly competitive market. I am arranging in the order of chronology with which I came to them.

1. You will have to start competing at the expense of prices, be prepared to lower prices to be the cheapest in the market. Hold on at least a year.
2. Make a business plan. You will have to achieve the planned indicators by all means. This is your promise to yourself. If you don’t follow with accuracy up to 20% and don’t see how to do it, you need to change the business model.
3. Learn the expectations of people and form a business plan not only in accordance with their expectations, but also with the expectations of the team. If it seems unreal to you to satisfy people's expectations, change the team that will meet expectations or think about how to restructure a business plan.
4. Customers should always be more than you can handle. Is always. Only in this case, you can think about improving efficiency. Soon this will be a key advantage in your business. Let salespeople flood you with customers. Do not refuse, but think what to do with the stream. Give them the freedom to compete at the expense of price, and think about productivity and quality. Learn to work with small budgets, then you can think of large ones.
5. Sell ​​only "your" customers. If the client does not match your standard trend - refuse him, despite the heap of money offered. You can not earn it. You will only delay your development for several months.
6. Always look for bottlenecks and start optimizing only with them. Only bottlenecks. Your bandwidth is equal to the bandwidth of the narrow link, and on the entire system.
7. Regulate in detail the work, enter the standards and constantly analyze the results.
8. Robots can do almost everything except creative, analytical work. Do not spare money for automation. Soon it will be your main advantage.
9. Grow employees from scratch. A person accepts your values ​​and requirements more quickly if he is just starting a professional career.
10. First make strategic decisions, and then think in detail how to carry them out. It is possible to achieve everything (or almost everything). If you act on the contrary, you will not move.
11. Formulate your strategy and explain it to the team. Not everyone is ready to understand why you are not raising prices, why you are working on a stream, and what it does.
12. Think of a system that is more profitable to perform than to cheat. Man will always think how to deceive the system. Do not let this happen. For example, the more a programmer spends hours, the greater his bonus. But at the same time, the more hours a programmer works, the lower the profitability of projects and the lower the premium among managers. Managers will always control what programmers would work more efficiently.
13. Listen to people who constantly grumble and can systematically tell you their vision of problems. These are people who can develop the company. Give them a chance to try this out.
14. In the budget segment, they earn money not on new customers, but on regular ones. Think of subscription services and pay them special attention.
15. Learn to explain to everyone that the conveyor and the flow is good and does not affect the quality, except perhaps for the better.

These are intermediate conclusions that I came to first hand.

But not everything is so fabulous. With the stable work of the pipeline on the flow, it is necessary to constantly maintain a high stable flow of orders, pump marketing, develop a school of programmers, managers, etc. A new wave is covering us.

Vasily Churanov and WebCanape team