Remote work: how to sell services and make the client happy
Hello. What are the fears of web-studio clients “on the remote”, how to deal with their fears?
I want to share the accumulated experience of what features are in the remote sale of services. We are engaged in custom web development of complex non-standard projects, so our experience will be most useful to our development colleagues. Although, of course, the tips are quite universal and applicable to all areas of digital, where there is a remote sale of B2B services.
We have been working for 6 years, and all this time our clients are in other countries. Our office is located in Latvia, but there are few local customers. Most are customers from the countries of the former USSR, Western Europe and (rarely) the USA. Therefore, one of the skills that we have excellently pumped during our work is providing services for remote clients.
In general, ordering and rendering services geographically separated is one of the trends in the development of the global economy. The ability to serve a customer remotely is one of the strengths that can expand your company's horizons and provide access to new geographic markets. Therefore, learning how to work with the client “at a remote location” is useful for any service business.
Every year we process about seven hundred requests from customers, and have identified a portrait of a customer who is ready to submit a project for remote execution. As a rule, it is the owner of a business or startup, for whom the result is important and not interested in observing bureaucratic procedures or imitating hectic activities. The corporate sector, on the other hand, is often less progressive. Maybe because often the order of projects in large organizations involved hired managers who are interested not in the result, but in the process. It is important for them to gather more companies in the tender, hold personal meetings with everyone, then gather more colleagues in a spacious negotiation to discuss design with everyone - move the logo and play with fonts. The purpose of these customers is to raise their own importance and show the authorities that the work is in full swing. Such customers are even found on the freelance stock exchanges, although it would seem that the search for performers there suggests that the performer can be located anywhere in the world.
Communication with a client with whom you do not personally meet, has several features that are important to consider.
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When you first meet with the client you should always make a good impression on him. In the case when this acquaintance takes place remotely, it is also important to dispel the fears and fears that appear to the client due to the fact that he cannot see you and your team with his own eyes. Clients ask questions like “do you have a firm?”, “Are your employees sitting in the office?”, “Are your people working only for you?”. To remove the fear of a “virtual contractor”, get as close to the customer as possible. Post pictures of employees on your site, let the client see those with whom he works. The site as a whole should inspire confidence and confidence in the performer’s professionalism - well-prepared cases, a description of services and work experience, and customer reviews. Plus, what personalizes you - blog posts, direct speech of managers in descriptions.
We always offer the client to fly to visit us, look at the office and personally meet with the team. It works well to increase confidence, even if the client never meets up for a meeting - you are not hiding, do not pretend to be invisible, and are as open as possible. Some clients accept invitations and come to our office, since Riga is conveniently located and it is easy to get from Europe and the European part of Russia. Often this is the only meeting after which we work with the customer remotely.
During the negotiations, and in the process of all further work, it is very important to communicate promptly with the customer. When you work remotely, the client does not see you and any delay in the responses may turn on panic mode, “aa, where have you disappeared, what happened ???”. Therefore, the faster the client receives an answer, the more relaxed and stable the cooperation will be. Even if it is an answer like "Hello, I see the question, I will figure it out and answer it in a couple of hours." This does not throw the manager out of the process of work that he is doing at the moment, and the client does not give a reason to be nervous.
Also a good reception is to provide the client with the contacts of several people from the team. This may be a sales and project manager, or a project manager and team leader. And in the case of scrum-model development, the problem is solved in the most optimal way - the client has a common channel of communication with all team members who participate in the project development process (we are planning to write a separate article about how to work remotely via a scram). It happens that the main contact person on the part of the developer plans to fall out of communication for more than a couple of days - go on vacation, go to the conference. In this case, the client must be warned, and the contacts of the person who will resolve issues during this period are transferred to him.
The general rule is this: the client must always have a contact with which he can contact immediately.
Given that we are in another country, customers do not like to call us by phone. Although the cost of the project may be five to ten million, spending 30-40 rubles to speak seems wasteful. Therefore, our main communication channel is Skype (although, considering how rapidly Microsoft improves it, we will soon move on to some other messenger). The second most active use is mail correspondence. At the same time it is important not to limit communication only by correspondence, lively conversation is always more productive. To make a good sales impression, it is even better not just to call up, but to include video. Conversation with the interlocutor, whom you see, and not just hear, is close in effectiveness to a personal meeting. After the conversation, the agreements reached and the voiced proposals are recorded and sent to the client in writing.
Sometimes customers regret that our office is not in their city (as a rule, it sounds like: “oh, so you are not in Maskva, mm [smiley with a tear]”). For these customers, you need to prepare a short list of advantages, which strengths the location of the office in your region has. We have, for example, this: a) European level of service and business culture; b) adequate European legislation; c) stability; d) knowledge of English with the whole team; e) the possibility of payments to a European bank. Each item has a detailed justification, which is told "on request". For you, it can also be a low cost of services, the ability to quickly increase resources or coincidence with the client in a time zone.
When working remotely, customers are particularly sensitive to the level of service that is provided to them. And if in the work for a local client many roughnesses can be smoothed out at a regular meeting, after having pleasantly smiled and treated to dinner, then this trick does not work remotely. Therefore, services should be provided as professionally as possible - no “oh, I’ll call you back later,” God forbid, “dial me better” and other “I don’t know what to answer you”.
What can be said in conclusion? Selling services remotely is not as easy as live, but it is quite a feasible task. As always, the key point is the quality of the services you provide to the client. Your task is to provide a level of service that eliminates the inconvenience of remote work.
I hope our experience will help colleagues in the shop in reaching a new audience and improving work with the current stream of incoming requests.
In the next article I plan to talk about how we built the process of remote development, what techniques we use and what life hacks we discovered during our work.
I want to share the accumulated experience of what features are in the remote sale of services. We are engaged in custom web development of complex non-standard projects, so our experience will be most useful to our development colleagues. Although, of course, the tips are quite universal and applicable to all areas of digital, where there is a remote sale of B2B services.
We have been working for 6 years, and all this time our clients are in other countries. Our office is located in Latvia, but there are few local customers. Most are customers from the countries of the former USSR, Western Europe and (rarely) the USA. Therefore, one of the skills that we have excellently pumped during our work is providing services for remote clients.
In general, ordering and rendering services geographically separated is one of the trends in the development of the global economy. The ability to serve a customer remotely is one of the strengths that can expand your company's horizons and provide access to new geographic markets. Therefore, learning how to work with the client “at a remote location” is useful for any service business.
Who needs it
Every year we process about seven hundred requests from customers, and have identified a portrait of a customer who is ready to submit a project for remote execution. As a rule, it is the owner of a business or startup, for whom the result is important and not interested in observing bureaucratic procedures or imitating hectic activities. The corporate sector, on the other hand, is often less progressive. Maybe because often the order of projects in large organizations involved hired managers who are interested not in the result, but in the process. It is important for them to gather more companies in the tender, hold personal meetings with everyone, then gather more colleagues in a spacious negotiation to discuss design with everyone - move the logo and play with fonts. The purpose of these customers is to raise their own importance and show the authorities that the work is in full swing. Such customers are even found on the freelance stock exchanges, although it would seem that the search for performers there suggests that the performer can be located anywhere in the world.
Communication with a client with whom you do not personally meet, has several features that are important to consider.
')
Yes, we are real!
When you first meet with the client you should always make a good impression on him. In the case when this acquaintance takes place remotely, it is also important to dispel the fears and fears that appear to the client due to the fact that he cannot see you and your team with his own eyes. Clients ask questions like “do you have a firm?”, “Are your employees sitting in the office?”, “Are your people working only for you?”. To remove the fear of a “virtual contractor”, get as close to the customer as possible. Post pictures of employees on your site, let the client see those with whom he works. The site as a whole should inspire confidence and confidence in the performer’s professionalism - well-prepared cases, a description of services and work experience, and customer reviews. Plus, what personalizes you - blog posts, direct speech of managers in descriptions.
We always offer the client to fly to visit us, look at the office and personally meet with the team. It works well to increase confidence, even if the client never meets up for a meeting - you are not hiding, do not pretend to be invisible, and are as open as possible. Some clients accept invitations and come to our office, since Riga is conveniently located and it is easy to get from Europe and the European part of Russia. Often this is the only meeting after which we work with the customer remotely.
Be always near
During the negotiations, and in the process of all further work, it is very important to communicate promptly with the customer. When you work remotely, the client does not see you and any delay in the responses may turn on panic mode, “aa, where have you disappeared, what happened ???”. Therefore, the faster the client receives an answer, the more relaxed and stable the cooperation will be. Even if it is an answer like "Hello, I see the question, I will figure it out and answer it in a couple of hours." This does not throw the manager out of the process of work that he is doing at the moment, and the client does not give a reason to be nervous.
Also a good reception is to provide the client with the contacts of several people from the team. This may be a sales and project manager, or a project manager and team leader. And in the case of scrum-model development, the problem is solved in the most optimal way - the client has a common channel of communication with all team members who participate in the project development process (we are planning to write a separate article about how to work remotely via a scram). It happens that the main contact person on the part of the developer plans to fall out of communication for more than a couple of days - go on vacation, go to the conference. In this case, the client must be warned, and the contacts of the person who will resolve issues during this period are transferred to him.
The general rule is this: the client must always have a contact with which he can contact immediately.
Communication channels
Given that we are in another country, customers do not like to call us by phone. Although the cost of the project may be five to ten million, spending 30-40 rubles to speak seems wasteful. Therefore, our main communication channel is Skype (although, considering how rapidly Microsoft improves it, we will soon move on to some other messenger). The second most active use is mail correspondence. At the same time it is important not to limit communication only by correspondence, lively conversation is always more productive. To make a good sales impression, it is even better not just to call up, but to include video. Conversation with the interlocutor, whom you see, and not just hear, is close in effectiveness to a personal meeting. After the conversation, the agreements reached and the voiced proposals are recorded and sent to the client in writing.
Benefits bundle
Sometimes customers regret that our office is not in their city (as a rule, it sounds like: “oh, so you are not in Maskva, mm [smiley with a tear]”). For these customers, you need to prepare a short list of advantages, which strengths the location of the office in your region has. We have, for example, this: a) European level of service and business culture; b) adequate European legislation; c) stability; d) knowledge of English with the whole team; e) the possibility of payments to a European bank. Each item has a detailed justification, which is told "on request". For you, it can also be a low cost of services, the ability to quickly increase resources or coincidence with the client in a time zone.
Be professional
When working remotely, customers are particularly sensitive to the level of service that is provided to them. And if in the work for a local client many roughnesses can be smoothed out at a regular meeting, after having pleasantly smiled and treated to dinner, then this trick does not work remotely. Therefore, services should be provided as professionally as possible - no “oh, I’ll call you back later,” God forbid, “dial me better” and other “I don’t know what to answer you”.
What can be said in conclusion? Selling services remotely is not as easy as live, but it is quite a feasible task. As always, the key point is the quality of the services you provide to the client. Your task is to provide a level of service that eliminates the inconvenience of remote work.
I hope our experience will help colleagues in the shop in reaching a new audience and improving work with the current stream of incoming requests.
In the next article I plan to talk about how we built the process of remote development, what techniques we use and what life hacks we discovered during our work.
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/298464/
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