How to win a website development contract

So you’ve got a lead to see a potential new client. They want a website, and they’ve heard you’re new and have some great ideas. So what’s your plan?

Here’s your cheat-sheet to winning their business:

Before you meet the client…
Understand your customer
- research them
- research their market sector
- research their local area
Be prepared to spend an hour or two on this. Even if you don’t win this job, you’ll be able to reuse the knowledge by approaching their competitors. Talking of which…

Understand their competitors
- Analyse their sites
- See how they promote themselves
After all, their competitors have been living that sector for much longer than the couple of hours you have. Figure out the tricks they’ve been using.

Then, on to the meeting itself.
Where to meet?
Try to meet at your client’s offices, not your own. However great your offices are, they’ll never meet their expectations (too small, and you lose credibility; yet too large and they’ll think you’re overcharging to pay for them – you can’t win that one). Plus, meeting at you clients allows you to learn more about them, and will prompt you to cover issues neither of you would otherwise have thought relevant.

Online demos
This is a harder one to call, but I’d try to avoid looking at websites in the first meeting, unless the client is really keen to show you things. The issue is that you can rapidly get drawn into the detail, when you would be better off learning about general issues and building a relationship with them.

Don’t flash your iPhone /iPad etc
Sure, it’s nice to have the latest technology with you, but that’s not what the meeting is about – you’re selling a website, not a phone. What’s more, you don’t want to get drawn into one of those philosophical debates about whether you should be a PC or a Mac. And if you have your phone with you, turn it off! There’s nothing more off-putting and rude than brushing the potential client aside to answer the phone.

Take notes
On paper. Remember, you left the iPad at home. You can type up the scrawled notes later, but in the meeting itself you can’t beat the immediacy and speed of pen on paper.

Keep focussed
You may be the first technically-capable person they’ve seen in weeks, so may want you to fix their printer, sort out the wifi and advise on why their computer is running slowly. Unless that is a (chargeable) aspect to your business, politely decline the opportunity to waste your time on it. However easy you think it is to solve, there’s always a catch, and that will be your fault.

Listen to your customer…
What is their motivation?...
- Find out what problems they are facing
- Ask why they feel they want a website at all

Give brief comments to show you’re engaged, but hold back from showing all your ideas at this stage. After all, you’ll want to think them through first.

Ask lots of questions - even if they aren’t related directly to the website. You need to understand their business to know what will work well on the web:

Get the rough financials:
- Turnover (A larger site means its worthwhile spending more on the detail and functionality)
- Gross profit margin (if the margin is large then there are opportunities for creative discounting promotions)
- Number of customers (if they are caring for just a few customers the emphasis may be different to handling thousands)

Find out how much they want to spend on the website
Clients may start out thinking choosing a web designer is simply a tendering exercise, where the cheapest bid gets the job, but you need to let them understand that price (or rather, value) is just one aspect – and that making sure they get the right website is even more important. So ask directly how much they want to spend on the website. Liken it to buying a car: where the dealership has different ranges to suit different budgets, and its pointless wasting time discussing high-end models if they can only afford something basic.

Understand their skills:
- Are they born writers? (If so, you could get them blogging etc, but if they aren’t confident with words, perhaps you could offer to do that for them)
- Can they take photos – good ones? (likewise, if not, you could offer that as an extra service)
- How open to new ideas are they?

Give them some homework:
They’re probably talking to a few other people before deciding who to give the job to. So you need to get them engaged with you as early as possible. Ideally now. So give them some homework. Ask them to come up with a list of five sites that they like, and five that they dislike. They don’t need to be in their sector, but they should write line or two explain their reason for including each one in the list. This will give you some concrete ideas about their design preferences, and allows them to do this in their own time, without wasting yours as they trawl the Internet (which is quite big these days!). Give them a deadline of a few days, so you can incorporate the feedback from this into your proposal.

At the end of the meeting
As the meeting ends, explain you may have some follow-up questions over the next few days as you prepare the proposal. (And make sure you come up with some – they show engagement).

Ask if they have any questions about you and your service, and explain you will write to them with a fully-costed proposal in ten days or so. Try to avoid predicting what will be in it: it’s all too easy to get cornered into giving a firm costing at this stage, and you must give yourself time to consider that. But you should be able to give them some comfort that your proposal will be in the general price-range they detailed earlier in the meeting.

As you leave the meeting
Hopefully it went well, and you’ll get the job. But, do you really want it? Some clients are more trouble than they are worth, and now’s the time to bail if you feel they won’t fit nicely with your portfolio. However, assuming you got on with them, you need to start thinking about the proposal document.