Justification of the cost of developing the site

In the article I will tell you how to justify the cost of web projects to customers, using the example of our web studio.

Introductory

In order to understand what I am talking about, I will introduce several constants:

1. We are a typical regional studio. We sit in Ufa.
2. We work in the middle price segment. From 100 thousand rubles. and higher. It happens, we take orders cheaper.
3. We have 5 people in our staff: one java-developer, one front-end developer, one layout designer, a sales manager and me (I’m doing everything else).

Go

So, suppose that we communicate with a potential client and it came to the presentation of the commercial proposal with the cost.
Estimates do not need to paint in too much detail. I used to paint everything in super-detail. If it was a corporate site, I analyzed each page and calculated its cost. Why is that bad? Because so a potential client has a lot more points where he can attack to bring down the cost. For example, he may say: “Oh, but let's make these two pages identical. Then both the design and the layout will take 0 hours and cost 0 rubles! ”On the other hand, it is necessary to break the project into stages, for each of which show the cost to the customer. What for? A few small amounts look harmless than one big.

Therefore, it is necessary to observe a certain line: to break the project, but not to overdo it.
Something like this I break a corporate website:

1. Prototyping - 40 hours, 30 000r
2. Content preparation - 40 hours, 30 000 rub.
3. Design - 67 hours, 50 000r
4. Layout - 53 hours, 40 000r
5. Programming - 27 hours, 20 000r
6. Technical works (domain, server, etc.) - 13 hours, 10 000 rub.

Total: 180 000
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However, in the internal kitchen you have to be sure that everything should be well disassembled, broken, calculated. You do not want to work in the minus.

Total price strike

Since we work in the region, and most of the market, as we know, does not know anything about web development, the most typical situation is when a potential client does not hit each of the cost items, but resorts to the following strategies:

Lazily refers to someone from above: “Nuuu, of course you are great, but the general has allocated a budget of only 150 000 rub. If you want, we will work. If not, we will find others. ”
Most likely, this person is lying at the expense of pressure from above. Yes, perhaps such a budget is really allocated, but what then prevents it from increasing? How to recognize a liar: usually, the “budget from the top” is up to 30% in the negative of your proposal. Those. your client thinks that you deliberately overcharge, and wants to knock it down. In this case, it makes sense to justify the price. By the way, the method of referring to someone from above is very typical in other situations.

You can not even try to justify the price if the “budget from above” goes to minus 40 percent or more from yours. There are two options: either a clinic or a really cut budget for marketing. Usually, I say this: “My advice to you, do not waste this money, the result will not pay off. Better dig, and make a normal site. "

Another variant of the attack on the total price: "We want an input discount of 10%." Yeah, input discount, regular customer discount, output discount, kindness discount and so on. We know, passed, thanks is not necessary.

Actually, the rationale. For adequate.
It takes only 5-10 minutes, which you can warn the client who does not agree with the price.
It is easiest for a business person to be explained in the business language. We take expenses (we think in advance!) And write them down to the client (the way is peeped from Andrei Terekhov).
For example, our usual expenses are:

1. Conditionally permanent (office, office, communal, etc.) - 10%
2. FOT - 68%:
   
   1. Production resources (developers, designers, web designers, etc.) - 42%
   2. Non-productive resources - 26%
3. Taxes - 15%
4. Marketing and advertising - 7%

Thus, to go to 0, you need to multiply the sn production resources by 2.4. Here we add downtime, risks, time for frustrating presale, at least some profit to the budget . It turns out a figure of 3.5, maybe 4. For a regional studio, this is the optimal figure.

Then say: “The average salary of production resources on the project = 30 000 r per month. This is the cost of qualified developers in our city. In the painted stages of the estimate, the man-hours of each of the stages have already been calculated. For example, prototyping, which makes the designer for 40 hours. The designer's clean hour costs 187.5 rubles. Multiply by 4, it will turn out to 750r per hour. ”In reality, I still consider time for developer, layout designer, and others, at different rates. sn they have different. Here everything is reduced to a single figure (30000r per month, 187.5r per hour) to make it easier.

Thus, the client should see that:

1. You take the price not from the ceiling
2. Well done, what do you think
3. And most importantly, you do not deceive him. The cost is really that.

Then the conversation can lead to a direct discussion of the price. Different offers - different prices , so discuss offers. I can cut the price, while throwing out something appropriate from the scope of work, or if the client offers 100% prepayment for the entire project.

Price is not the only criterion of your offer. In fact, you offer a lot more options than the price that can be important to the client. For example, the order of payment, installment payments, whose hosting, who buys a domain, payment of cash , and, finally, the amount of work.

Alternate strikes against items of expenditure

If you are faced with this, then you are either a person who is well versed in digital (he correctly justifies why you overestimated this or that point), or is simply a good negotiator. In fact, it is more pleasant to communicate with such people, because they are adequate.

Here the following factors are important:

1. The degree of development of items of expenditure in the proposal. If everything is calculated correctly (there are no errors and deliberate deceptions), then there will be no problems with an experienced digital interlocutor. He will test you on the strength of some articles, you all justify, in the manner I wrote above. And then go on to discuss other parts of the proposal.
2. If this is just an experienced negotiator, then he will put more pressure on those articles that he understands. For example, he may say: “I found you through my acquaintances, let’s eliminate the costs of marketing.” Here it is important to be able to maintain a logical chain: “Marketing costs are distributed evenly across all projects. If we make a premium for marketing only for those projects for which this expense was, then it is logical that it will grow for such clients. The check for a project that will be higher than the market average will also grow. Customers will start to leave and we will have to either reduce the quality (costs) or raise the cost. This will affect you as well. ”Argument Counter. Play this way, and, again, move on to other aspects of the proposal.

That's all, good luck with sales.