If you are planning on building a new app, web-app or website and are looking to hire an outside company to do it for you, be aware of empty promises, attractive pricing and impossible time estimates. There are a lot of companies out there that make empty promises and try and confuse you with buzzwords. You need to know what to look for which means arming yourself with the right information.

Before I give you all the ingredients on how to land a client, let me start by saying this: honesty is the best policy when it comes to building trust. It goes a long way especially when you are in the beginning stages of handling a potential client. People are smart and they’ll know when you are holding back. Once they catch you hesitating or holding back valuable information, it becomes much harder to regain their trust.

Even if you and the client fail to come to an agreement and part ways, the traces of honesty and transparency will still remain. This is far more important in my opinion than landing a client as it adds to your reputation in the industry. By being honest and transparent, you can foster and build strong, long lasting relationships. This creates a ripple effect across time leading to clients referring other clients to do business with you. Which begs the question, once a client comes to you, what do you do?

Inside DETL: Creating a proposals

When a client approaches us for a possible partnership, we take the time to evaluate the project. We consider creating a proposal and estimating a price as a mini project in it of itself. This means unpacking the details of the project by doing the following:

• Meeting with the prospective client once or multiple times if needed,
• Researching if other projects of the likes exist out there,
• Evaluating possible competitors and the current market the project falls in,
• Breaking down the project in terms of features,
• Drafting a proposal
• Submit proposal to client which results in:
• either the client accepts the proposal or,
• we renegotiate the deliverables of the project or,
• we part ways on good terms

Clients value a well-put thought-out proposal much more than a random price you come up with. When a client approaches you with their business, they expect you to take care of their business as if you were to take care of a baby. That is, nurturing and growing it every step of the process. This is the result when you have a design, engineering and sales team rack up and bring their brains together to consider every detail within the project. Putting forth resources in the initial stages to land a client means you have to know who your pool of clients are and what traits they should have in order for you to recognise a potential partnership. This leads us to the next section.

Inside DETL: Choosing who to work with

The days of trying to land anyone are long gone. At least, those days never existed at DETL. Building a reputation means choosing wisely who to work with as every partnership brings you to a new level. Can we build an app for 30k? Yes, we can. Do we want to? No. We believe that this price does not allow for us to build something truly stellar, something we would be proud of and something we would like to showcase down the road in order for it to bring us more business.

Cutting corners and taking shortcuts would ultimately result in a subpar product. You want a company that puts effort into every project it works on. Hiring a cheap team to build you an app that just works is not good enough. We understand that our reputation is on the line with every project we take on. We would rather give you an accurate estimate upfront than try to lowball you and deliver an average product.

Ultimately, this is what anyone trying to run a software company should aim for. Analysing every potential client before deciding to partner up with them is very important. Desperation will get no one anywhere.

Inside DETL: Honesty & Collaboration

At DETL we can confidently say that we guarentee transparency in our service. We guarentee honesty and we guarentee collaboration. Which means that if you are looking for a team that gets things done quickly in an unprofessional way, we will not be the right fit.

It is important to involve the client in every step of the process from the initial onboarding process to the production phase. Creating a relationship where there is complete transparency and an open communication line is key to a succesful project. As much as we want to understand what your business is about, we want you to as well understand us and our processes so that you can be fully informed about what to expect.

It is not always possible to have an exact estimate for a project before it starts. We avoid falling into the trap of estimating the wrong price through the use of a range. When we estimate a project, we give our clients a range of what a potential project might fall in. This way we steer clear from creating empty promises and remain realistic with respect to the projects scope and time.

A word of advice before proceeding to the next section: Start with honesty and transparency right off the bat, this way you’ll save yourself a lot of headache and the platform that you’ll be building your business on is a lot more rigorous and stable.

Inside DETL: Asking not Assuming

Potential clients often come in with the idea of wanting X, but as we discuss their project in more detail, it becomes clear that they actually need or want Y. How’s this even possible? Here are some examples of how this happens:

• The difference between X and Y was not clear to the client and so they assumed that X and Y are the same,
• Client never knew that Y existed,
• Y is a simpler start than X considering the tightness of the timeline but X looks more appealing because it has more features,
• Client knew about Y but incorrectly assumed that X is far more important than Y

At DETL, we always stress out to our clients that the product should bring value to its customers. Its mere existence does no one good if it does not make someone’s life better. These following questions give you a better perspective as to how to approach your app:

• What is the intended purpose of the app?
• What is the timing like for the app launch? Do we need to launch in a month? Two months?
• What is the budget like for the app? Are we able to develop freely? By freely we mean that if the cost of an app is X, then X will give us the freedom to focus on bringing the features that will take the app to the next level. In contrary, if the cost of the app is X, but you only have X — 1, then we might need to boil down the app to a simpler start and build upon it after.
• What phase is the app at? Are you bringing an app that has already been built or are we starting from scratch?

Knowing the right questions to ask is important as it shapes your decision on which company to choose for your product development. As much as you seek to understand the company you are building, the right company will seek to understand you in a similar manner. It’s a mutual relationship where neither of the parties truly need each other but they come together on the basis of seeing value in each other. If a company is blinded by charging you big bucks then… it is probably not wise to choose them.

Inside DETL: What it comes down to…

It all comes down to trust and transparency. Gone are the days of trying to over-promise and under-deliver. Some might say that transparency is a risk as you are not only showing your potential client what can be achieved in a set time-frame but also the contrary. You find yourself battling from within when crafting a partnership where you are constantly questioning yourself:

• Is this too much?
• Are we under-charging for our services?
• Are we over-charging?
• Are we able to deliver on this product?
• Is this partnership right?

This is why at DETL, we look for partners who do not exploit our openness and transparency. It definitely is a risk when you’re being transparent and honest and it definitely is a risk worth taking. At the end of the day it is important to know that you are dealing with human beings just like yourself and connecting on an emotional level with a client is far better than trying to connect with them on financial grounds.

Conclusion

At the end of the day, we are just people talking to each other. We have the expertise to deliver amazing software products and our partners are in need of this service. Each one of us has a different way of connecting but if you do it through honesty and transparency then you are more likely to build a solid reputation of your business and land the clients that are in sync with your business’ values. Just talk to each other. If you have an open discussion, make things relatable to each other, avoid trying to create a sales pitch then you are going to go much further. At least, that is something we truly appreciate at DETL and this is why we will continue to approach every client in such manner.