Recession? What recession? We’ve never been busier at our lovely new offices and we’ve also seen an upsurge in the number of “out of the blue” telephone enquiries and emails.
This is great as it not only proves that the site is gaining traction via search engines but it’s also making people want to pick up the telephone or make an email enquiry.
I am however, noticing more and more calls going something like this:
CALLER: Hi. I’m looking for a website that’ll let me sell XXXXXX. Can you tell me how much it’ll cost?
Whilst I’ll never refuse the opportunity to speak to a potential new client or business startup, it is impossible to provide a meaningful price to a caller at this stage. And yet, there are companies out there who do and are happy to guess how long a particular, as yet unseen piece of string is.
When I recently refused to quote a figure to a caller I was informed that two other companies had quoted over the telephone. One of them had quoted £1500 and the other £10,000. This makes a mockery of the whole process.
At Ubisan, we prefer to talk about what we do in terms of the value it adds rather than what it costs and this is what makes us different.
My approach is simple. If someone contacts me about a potential project, regardless of it’s size, I’ll look for the following information before I’ll go near talking money:
- who or what is the intended market?
- is there any existing branding or logos to work with or are we starting from scratch?
- has the market they are entering into been properly researched?
- have they thought carefully about how to market the project?
- how or should their project be integrated with social media and what would the potential return be on this?
- do they need access to as much functionality as they may think they do? Remember at Ubisan, we don’t do web white elephants.
If I can find out a bit more about the person I’m speaking with and the direction they want to head with their project I can provide a much more accurate indication of cost and in some cases, stop them from spending more money than they were thinking they’d have to.
Got a project in mind and want to grab a chat? Please get in touch.