Website Bidding Process

chads2k2

Hey everyone,

This is for all the developers of all the web development companies out there. Most of you have bid on websites before. I would hope so because that's kind of what the sales people do. However, I have a problem. I am looking for everyone's input so don't be shy. I was curious how many pages you guys make for a bid on a website. Let's say it's a simple 5 page site. How many do you make and what do you make them in?

Example:
We are creating a 5 page website for some company (call them company x). My sales person wants me to create all 5 pages in full XHTML/HTML standards to present to them. We haven't even gotten paid a dime for this site. Is that standard? Do you create the entire site before it's sold?

Example 2:
We are bidding on a site that is going to be very large. We are talking 50+ pages without the database. (whew) It is going to have a full shopping cart and everything which is fine. However, for that bid we created 11 pages in full HTML standards to show them. Some with full streaming video! We are bidding against other big time firms out here on this one.

Now, I feel we should create only 1 home page, 3 sub-pages (with different designs, colors, ect). All done in Photoshop or Illustrator (or whatever). Just show them the images. Am I on the rocker here? If so can someone point me to a source that says that? Because my company doesn't believe it until they read it. You get what I mean.

Thanks everyone,
Oh, and how's your day going?
Chad

Elizabeth

Well I have a bit of a marketing background, so my answer might be a little different than most. I remember pouring hours and hours into proposals that never sold, and yes, it can be very frustrating. But the long and the short of it is that's the cost of doing business. Thats the overhead that gets absorbed by all the other projects that are sold over the course of the year. When it came down to it, I still got my paycheck every 2 weeks so I didn't take it personally. And when we did sell a project (at that time most were over $200,000) it was a great feeling, and usually involved imbibing of some alcohol somewhere when we got the news.

However, that being said, I usually work the percentages when bidding on a project. If it's a $50,000 project, I would put 5-10% worth of work into it (it's a great ROI if you can sell it, eh?). No way would I complete the 5 page site just to bid on a 5 page site. That is, unless you can use it to show future potential clients, or something to pad your portfolio. The key is to provide enough information to allow your client to visualize the end result, but not show the end result... does that make sense? You could equate it to an interior designer... they will provide a design board with swatches of fabric and pictures of the furniture they want to include, and perhaps even a layout of the room. But they won't go and redecorate a room just to show a potential client what the room would look like.

chads2k2

Thanks for the response. That is in the same idea that I am thinking. Maybe I just need to soak up the sales thing and just do the work and shut up. I just hate doing that though. I am just a bit frustrated because I see me doing all this work for a site we don't even have yet. Doesn't make much business sense to me. But hey what do I know? I am the director of web development (aka the programmer). We are a small firm that is just starting out on our own off our bigger company. Maybe they are just trying to "wow" everyone.

Thanks,
Chad

Elizabeth

The only other words of comfort I can offer are that every time you do a proposal for a job, you get a little better at doing proposals, and you help foster creativity within the company. So it's not a complete washout-- even if you don't get this job, you will be more prepared to try for the next one. And your pool of creative ideas from which you can draw from in the future will get larger. I know you can't exactly take that to the bank, but those are the intangible benefits that will come into play in the long run.

Shrike

At my place the client will often request what they want vendors to supply in terms of a bid. This will usually be a written proposal along with two or three design concepts (usually a homepage and a subpage). In one recent proposal we built the designs as working pages to try and wow them into giving us the work (which they didn't).

Doing any more than that could be considered a waste of time -are 11 pages going to bring anything extra which a homepage/subpage won't?

Furthermore in larger agency's the sales guys are only really interested in the sale - their eyes glaze over when you try to explain why building 11 pages is a bad idea (apologies to the sales guys and gals here 😉 )

Jason_Batten

I have sales expierence but not in web sites. Web sites are easy to sell though. I'm only just starting up my own business 😉 The advantage I use to have was having a product that simply put beat the rest 1000 times over. That helped but the price tag didn't.
The key to selling is creating a problem for the client but magically having the perfect solution right then and there. If you manage to create this senario you will sell everytime.
In order to achieve the above you have to learn as much as you can about the client and come up with problems for them. Say you have a client with a bookstore, they want to also have an online book store, easy enough just show them HOW easy it can be to add new titles to their site with a CMS. Create the problem of how to keep customers informed, snail mail sucks, postmen are constantly loosing mail to dogs etc. but with a customer e-mailing list there is no chance, apart from junk mail filters but we don't tell them about that do we 😉
There's a saying though, TELLING ISN'T SELLING, you could sit there and say you're services are great but what if you could get the client to say you're services are great wouldn't that be better? 😉 oh yeah.
Example. Our services offer a vast range of options for your business. Wow that was good, the client now thinks you're after his wallet, wife (or husband) and kids. To turn that into a question and getting the client to agree would be this... Mr client can you see how our services offer a vast amount of options for your business? now the client would say "yes, please take my wallet and empty it".

Bah. I hope that helps. If you want more examples, more details I can provide more serious info to yah.

Oh there's another key, value building... I could go into that but yeah... Its not for every service or business. If you are using php then you can pump value building.

No matter what the product, no matter what the service. You still have to sell it and yourself.

EDIT: In my signature is a link to a webmasters course on business stuff, it has a bit of info in there... worth taking a quick look at.

chads2k2

Thanks guys,

I really appreciate all the words. NetNerd you had me rolling in my chair laughing. Good to see there are still comics on this earth. Well I stuck to my guns with the 5 page site and said I will only create a index and two sub pages. This was done in Photoshop and told her that the only links that would be there is one picture giong to another picture.

I appreciate everyone's ideas and if you have any more please keep them coming! I could use all the knowledge with this. We are a smaller company that doesn't have much of a portfolio. Our sales lady (yes we have only one) is so keen on making every site "Sell" that I feel she is losing the site of what great design is. She wants everysite to have a "catch line" or what does she call it .... searching for notes ... oh yeah "Call to action". Now, that's for print right? I don't know if that is always on websites. A little help would be nice in that area too. I thought I knew a decent amount about how sites are supposed to look and operate. This is the prime reason why I hate design.

Chad

Elizabeth

Speaking of "call to action" - there is an awesome book by the same name that illustrates the importance of why design is so critical in converting traffic to, well, action. It's great reading I think, for coders and non-coders alike, as it helps show the bigger picture of why (and how) form and function need to work together to truly make a site successful. If she hasn't read that yet, she should.

I've never been in sales per se -- too much pressure. I remember our sales people feeling like if they didn't make the sales, not only would they not get paid, the rest of the company wouldn't get paid either. Yikes; no thanks.

Jason_Batten

I know what yah mean about design. I had a serious wake up call recently when I started to learn the differences between buddying web design and professional web design. Planning, always with the planning. I don't like to wait but I see the value in it sulks
Sales lady? I don't pretend to know everything or anything, okay I do but I don't if yah get me 😉 but I don't really see a use for a sales person unless you lack the time, the image you want to represent your company, the experience and/or confidence.

Alright a little on value building. I don't know much about prices as I have not looked into it a great deal but I am guessing anything not open source costs a great deal. I heard a friend mention $10,000 for some DB license. Anyway. Before you can value build you must make sure your client wants a web site, you have got to make them WANT a site. Using the telling isn't selling method and all that stuff to get them to say your company rules will indeed help. Value building is where you can get the website to pay for itself. You're probably thinking but how can $200,000 pay for itself? This is where it all gets exciting, this is where you need to know about the business the client is in. A company can spend thousands of dollars on stamps, letters and paper each year or they could use email. Save the trees help a hippie get high, add that if you want. Why publish a manual when there is PDF? another couple of grand. Now with software you could use MS Access and ASP, blah thats more money DOWN THE DRAIN 😉 or you could use PHP and MySQL (with the commercial license of course).

I hope I have helped yah with some ideas. I haven't explained it in great detail but you have enough there I think for some idea generation.

BTW, a latop with presentation and getting the client to use an example site is a good way to get them to feel as if they 'own' it already. Owership etc. but now I am probably over loading everyones brain :quiet:

chads2k2

Nah that's what we are doing. We use a laptop for the lady to go and show the client. We make everything customized to their business. Basically creating an entire site from scratch and seeing if they buy it. I hate that idea but I guess it's normal. I will just keep bitching that we are creating too many pages and not focusing on detail and quality work. That 11pager was utter crap. Totally a bunch of crap. I hated the colors knew the company wasn't going to like it and guess what ... they didn't.

Thank you all so much for your input. It has made me feel somewhat better about what we are doing. I am not in sales for the same reason as you mentioned Elizabeth. I just don't want that much pressure put on me. I have a lot of charisma, but I just don't like the thought of a missed sale. Don't ask a weird fear of failing. Stemms back to my early PHP3 days. haha.

Chad

Jason_Batten

Basically creating an entire site from scratch and seeing if they buy it. I hate that idea but I guess it's normal.

From what I have read thats not 'normal' seems like a waste of time. Why spend hours and hours on a site for someone and they not buy it. I don't have the expeirence as the others do but it seems pointless.
Age old saying. Time is MONEY.
BUT, thought, unless you are targetting big money. Like $200,000 dollar jobs. If you can say "we can do it better, see" they might sign up or they might say we developed the site our selves with frontpage and it's a MASTERPIECE in which case you smile, nod, turn and run!

Good luck with your business.

pohopo

I would never fully create a site to see if maybe I would get paid. Usually you create a prototype that is a non functional version of the main page and maybe one or two more. You will have a much better chance at the sell making a badass prototype then spending that same time creating all the pages and functionality.

LoganK

Bump: if it was a $200,000 job, I'd do whatever is needed to get the client to hire me! 😃

Most of the sale is psychological. Read up on marketing practices and see how them-marketing types get you to do/think things you normally wouldn't. It's all the pitch - how you sell it. There's many ways to make your product/service seem more attractive to the client than others - you just have to come up with a good one. But I like - a lot is psychological. Reading up on human behavior might not be a bad idea either. (Bad) example: Timeshares. They get you into little rooms, have many people come in and talk to you, etc. This creates fear in your mind, fear of the closeness of the room, fear of suffocation, (in some people) fear of claustrophobia, etc. - and humans, when fearful, have a natural instinct to do whatever it is to get out of the fearful situation (in a timeshare, that action would be saying yes so you can the heck out of there).

Stuff like that, when applied to marketing, can be extremely useful.

Roger_Ramjet

I would recommend you to read this Blog , full of excellent ideas and tips, both in the blog and in visitores' comments.

I especially recomend that you read this article as well.

LoganK

Good finds roger!

Roger_Ramjet

Try subscribing to sitepoint newsletters and forums and you'll get this stuff direct. Sitepoint is as good as this place, and their articles and book samples are gold.

LoganK

I don't have the newsletters or forums but I'll remember to sign up for them. I agree - Sitepoint is great. Their articles are wonderful.

And book samples? Well, I sprung for the entire book! 😃